Driven by Results: Advancing Data & AI for Government Transformation

0:06 So we're nearly at the end, we're nearly at the end.

0:09 But just to wrap up this segment, I wanted to bring on and we're just going to have a couple of questions because we are getting a little bit tight on time.

0:16 But I wanted to welcome onto the stage John Clark, who is the Chair of Companies House, also shared business services and also a Crown Rep as well.

0:24 So John Clark, everybody fantastic.

0:32 So I just really wanted to really focus in on a couple of sort of key questions and I think one of them around, you know, how you bring on technology into the public sector, how do you make gains?

0:43 And I think firstly, if I can come to you, John, when we're talking about leadership, when we're talking about boards, when we're talking about executive teams working across government departments, working across the various sort of entities that we've we've got here.

0:57 And we're talking about governance, we're talking about creating sustainable value.

1:02 You've worked extensively in this area.

1:04 What's important, what can you tell us?

1:06 So, yeah, thank you very much and thanks for the presentation.

1:09 So I work about across five boards, mainly as the chair, and they're all similar in the sense that they're going through transformation at scale.

1:20 My view is this, that actually, if I look at the leadership of companies and boards, that one of things that needs to radically transform and change is the board itself.

1:29 You know, my job as a chair is to give a shareholder comfort and confidence in the company, its growth, its future, but it's also to raise them to the fact that the world is changing.

1:42 Right at the start.

1:43 You mentioned intelligent enterprises.

1:46 Most organisations today are intelligent enterprises.

1:50 So for me, what is the requirement of leadership these days is to basically shift us into a new place, redefine the nature of the board and be comfortable and confident in making sure you're setting expectations.

2:03 And it's a good example of that as as a chair, we've said about 30 year plus years as an executive around the world doing fairly complex technology things, you know, but I'm back at university, by the way, doing a year, a year long Provo knock on AII think chairs need to be able to embrace AI and understand it.

2:23 I'm not trying to be the AI expert in the company.

2:25 I need to understand what the company is doing.

2:29 And if you can't do that as a chair or the board, you've got a problem.

2:34 OK, fantastic.

2:35 Are you pitching for an AI board then?

2:38 So, so good question.

2:39 So I, I recruited recently 2 new Neds who are AI Neds, which is quite rare.

2:44 I'm probably an AI chair.

2:46 So part of it is I think you've got to be, you know, in the context of these things, the boy that includes cyber and quantum computing.

2:53 I think boards need to step up to make sure they are comfortable.

2:58 We can fully exploit the technology as a digital enterprise, but also be aware of the risks and also some of the interesting statistics around be careful because it's very easy to make a false assumption.

3:12 Great, thanks, John.

3:13 So just to switch tack, I want to talk about outcomes, time to value in terms of the explosion of data, data and AI enabled technologies.

3:24 There's lots of opportunity, lots of opportunity for government to bring in new technology.

3:29 What are the key things to look at when we're talking about really driving rapid gains and you know, especially working with the with the private sector?

3:39 You know, Laura, maybe if I can come to you firstly on that one, where can we get the the most gains most rapidly moving forward with AI and data enabled tech?

3:50 Well, well, the opportunities in the public sector are absolutely vast.

3:54 There's the the standard automation.

3:57 So we are seeing I think very early on simple things like ambient tech to record conversations where that's useful, medical settings, particularly automated minute taking.

4:09 We do an awful lot with summarisation and and you know, certainly in government you have many 200 page documents that the kind of advances in ChatGPT to be able to draft notes and summaries has been phenomenally transformative.

4:22 But of course there is that huge glaring gap with whether or not we have the right data.

4:26 So, you know, the biggest opportunity is going to be able to get systems in place that can manage the existing data, transform it, share it really efficiently and safely.

4:36 And hopefully we get in early enough that we change the way that the public sector collects data so that in a year or two we're in the right place to adopt all of the model technology that we currently can't necessarily always do.

4:49 Yeah, connecting, curating, access the data big theme that we've seen today it is.

4:54 And the other thing I'd love to see, and I don't know how plausible this is really, I'd like to think it is plausible.

4:58 I'd like to see a lot more synthetic data.

5:01 So in a, you know, if you look at her research into health, etcetera, the, the kind of steps that you need to go through very reasonably to get your hands on personalized health data are understandably, you know, very complex and they should be.

5:13 If we could get really effective synthetic data sets and maybe even kind of good digital twins, then you can build your health solutions on fake data that looks personalized whilst never having access to real human data that could be really risky.

5:28 And then you can build your models, port them into the, you know, secure environments and test them at that point.

5:33 I'd love to see people working on that.

5:35 And we don't see a lot of it.

5:36 Yeah, fantastic point.

5:38 And, and John, obviously we've already referenced, you know, some of the work we've been doing at context with the Public Sector Fraud Authority, the Snap platform, which we're now also utilising across other departments absolutely down the company's house.

5:52 Maybe just share a little bit about that and sort of some of the some of the hopes that having to achieve that and obviously tackling economic crime and some of those other sort of aspects.

5:59 Yeah, certainly.

5:59 So again, I I feel agree the the the opportunities in public sector almost so, so many it overwhelms you.

6:07 That's why public sector is amazing, by the way, but actually it relies on private sector to do that.

6:13 So we do need to engage properly.

6:15 But if I, and I think it particular about context and say company's house, you've also got to think about, you know, AI solutions are very contextual and every context is different.

6:25 But where it really helps us in particular is, you know, by using Snap.

6:29 Well, it's a platform and that platform stems across government between ourselves and PFSA, because we all have the same mission.

6:35 You might not know about Companies House.

6:37 Our mandate changed a few years ago when I took over our job.

6:41 We're an intelligence agency as much as a register.

6:44 My job is to find oligarchs who are doing bad things.

6:47 Also to find people doing things that they shouldn't be doing.

6:50 The only way we do that back to the context is by linking up government.

6:55 We working with banks, working with agencies, and we work more agencies than you'd imagine if you had a logo page here.

7:02 Quite, quite busy.

7:04 But it's things like that.

7:05 Identify the outcomes and part of the outcome is help us do joined up government, because joined up government is where the real magic and value lies.

7:13 But it can be quite hard to join parts of government up and I think likes of Contexta do a great job at giving us that platform and building platforms is the way of the future, not building silo products.

7:26 So I do love Context of what they do and help us.

7:28 Yeah, that's great.

7:29 Thank you, John.

7:30 So we're running out of time.

7:32 I'd love to stay up here longer, but I think just a little bit about the future.

7:36 We've seen the launch of the AI Opportunity Action Plan by the government holds a huge amount of promise.

7:43 I, I think also, you know, the, the promise of a national data library.

7:49 We see things moving very positively.

7:50 So just very in brief before we just close, maybe just a little final word on what we see about the future, the next or the three 4-5 years, you know, what are we seeing?

8:02 What's the opportunity?

8:04 If I'd come to you, Lauren, I mean the opportunities are almost limitless.

8:09 And as we know the the tech has changed very quickly and sometimes in unexpected ways.

8:13 I can tell you what I want to see very, very much with a lot of people I think have been really impacted by news recently.

8:22 There's a very unsettling geopolitical climate.

8:26 You know, very not without going into details.

8:28 You know, various parts of the world are changing.

8:30 We don't know in which directions.

8:33 I had friends sort of call me up and say, gosh, I just don't know.

8:36 I feel so bad about the way things are going in certain areas.

8:38 I wish I could go and enlist or I wish I could help.

8:40 I wish I could do something.

8:42 And that's affected people in the AI community, I think, because of a little bit of a change in direction in certain areas around the way that people are starting to think about security and safety and ethics and fairness and access and equality.

8:58 And I think that this community of people that really understands the value of that and how to do that really, really well has a genuine opportunity to direct the way that technology is built to protect people who are vulnerable and to build for a future that is really better for everybody.

9:18 So what I hope to see is more community events, more people building together, more people having the sort of conversations we saw on stage, talking about how you make sure that the access is fair and that you build in a really ethical way and pushing forward as an international community regardless of what goes on outside.

9:38 And I think that we, this group, very small numbers of people working in this as a percentage of the population have an outsized opportunity to impact the future that our children are going into.

9:50 And that's what I'd like to see personally.

9:52 And I feel really strongly about it, really thought breaking point and probably a very one to finish on.

9:58 So everybody, Laura Gilbert, John Clark.