AI can provide time savings worth up to £8 billion per year for local authorities in England and Wales, according to thinktank the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
It has published a report – Governing in the Age of AI: Reimagining Local Government – highlighting the estimate and calling for the creation of a new Devolved AI Service (DAIS) to support councils adopting the technology.
The report says the institute has partnered with a local authority in mapping tasks performed by staff to its database of 19,000 tasks ranked according to the potential impact of AI.
This showed the technology could be used to automate or improve at least 26% of the tasks, equivalent to one million hours of work per year. In turn, this would provide a productivity gain of £30 million per year.
If similar gains were achieved at a national scale across England and Wales the total savings would be worth £8 billion, equivalent to 380 million hours and £325 per household. This would give councils scope to reduce the pressures on the workforce, bring services back in-house, improve their quality and move towards a more preventative model.
Placed for innovation
“Councils – operating at a smaller scale than central government – are well placed to test innovative tools and services, becoming the nation’s innovation lab for public services, but this transformation will not happen without support,” the report says.
It warns that local authorities have limited market power, work in organisational siloes and that many lack the confidence, capabilities and infrastructure for successful innovation.
In response, it calls for the creation of the Devolved AI Service to act as a cooperative platform for local government to support “fast and frugal” innovation, through building and incubating local AI tools and services.
This could be done with seed funding from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology and the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, following which DAIS could move towards self-sufficiency through a subscription model over the medium term. This could be accompanied by a funding stream from international access to its tools and services.
Flagship programmes
The report proposes three flagship programmes for the DAIS: introducing AI co-workers in high volume, high cost services such as social care; a pilot of a local navigation assistant for citizen’s interactions with councils, such as checking their eligibility for specific services; and the introduction of a data and decision making platform for the development of local plans, along with an AI planning assistant.
It also urges councils to adopt AI tools already proven to work, share best practice, adopt the relevant data standards and plan to adapt the workforce to working with AI.
“Through these interventions, local government can regain its ability to transform communities and drive economic growth,” the report says. “Instead of firefighting immediate crises, councils can refocus on long term priorities – building vibrant, resilient local economies and delivering meaningful improvements to citizens’ lives.”
