Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are at varying stages of deployment across the Welsh public sector and are already making a difference to the way the sector delivers services.

This project aimed to understand the maturity and readiness for automation and AI across the Welsh public sector and gain a clear understanding of the public sector’s existing automation and AI attitudes, practices, processes, and skills, to shape what future support could look like, based on user needs.

We worked in partnership with the Chief Digital Officer for Local Government and Welsh Government to complete a 6-week discovery.

Impact

Our primary outcome of this discovery was setting up a new automation and AI community of practice, to explore how to implement automation and AI in a responsible, ethical, and safe way with community members.

This discovery also led to further sector support including knowledge sharing webinars on a variety of AI topics including managing bias, procurement and meeting the Public Sector Equality Duty. These webinars were very popular with 622 total attendees across the 5-part series and a total of 4777 YouTube views.

Next steps

Our next steps are to continue building our new community of practice and enabling members of the community and the steering group to decide what direction to go in next.

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How it meets our objectives

CDPS’s objectives:

Objective 1: Supporting the leadership and culture amongst public service leaders to drive good digital policy making and support digital transformation.

Objective 4: Using the output of the landscape review to shape CDPS priorities now and in future, with a particular focus on collaboratively solving shared sectoral, or geographical, issues and concerns.

Objective 5: Continuing to promote shared use of the technologies and create and embed common and shared standards in digital, data and technology.

Objective 6: Actions to help business in Wales better meet the digital transformation needs of public services.

Objective 7: The Centre should support Welsh Government to influence at the UK Government level to help shape policy priorities and help others to secure public and private investment into Wales.

The Five Ways of Working – Well-being of Future Generations Act

  • Long-term
  • Integration
  • Involvement
  • Collaboration
  • Prevention

7 well-being goals – Well-being of Future Generations Act

  • A prosperous Wales
  • A more equal Wales
  • A Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language
  • A globally responsible Wales