The challenges and opportunities of local government and AI – Tony Blair Institute report

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) has published a report on Governing in the Age of AI: Reimagining Local Government.  This is further to its papers on AI at the centre of government - Governing in the Age of AI: A New Model to Transform the State - and its subsequent paper, Governing in the Age of AI: Reimagining the UK Department for Work and Pensions, which used bespoke analysis to estimate the time savings that embedding AI could deliver for the department. 

The report is lengthy and detailed with bespoke analysis. Here, we summarise the key points. 

The challenge and the opportunity

TBI argues that councils face multiple challenges - an ageing population, a housing crisis, mounting pressures on public health - in circumstances where councils have limited budgets and are risk averse.  However, local authorities have faced significant challenges before, such as at the start of the 20th century, and have tackled them.

TBI argues that councils can tackle these challenges through new tools enabled by artificial intelligence.

“The day-to-day tasks of local government, whether related to the delivery of public services or planning for the local area, can all be performed faster, better and cheaper with the use of AI – a true transformation not unlike the one seen a century ago.”

These tools would allow councils to overturn an operating model that is bureaucratic, labour-intensive and unresponsive to need. AI could release staff from repetitive tasks and relieve an overburdened and demotivated workforce. It could help citizens navigate the labyrinth of institutions, webpages and forms with greater ease and convenience. It could support councils to make better long-term decisions to drive economic growth, without which the resource pressure will only continue to build.

TBI partnered with one local government to map the tasks that were performed by its staff to our unique database of 19,000 tasks ranked according to the potential impact of AI. According to the TBI, the analysis showed that using AI could:

"automate or improve at least 26 per cent of tasks – or one million hours of work per year – which is equivalent to a productivity gain of £30 million per year.

If similar gains were achieved at national scale, we estimate an annual time saving worth £8 billion across local authorities in England and Wales, equivalent to 380 million hours and £325 per household."

Councils can take on the challenge

TBI argues that local government is well placed to test innovative tools and services, and become ‘the nation’s innovation lab for public services’.  However, there are hurdles - increased centralisation of policy and operational decision-making, the need to improve operational and delivery role of local government, organisational siloes within and between local governments, limited market power to challenge incumbent technology providers, and that ‘councils lack the confidence, capabilities and infrastructure’.  Further, TBI argues that whilst some councils are innovating with AI, mechanisms are not in place to scale these initiatives across the country.

TBI's proposals

TBI is calling for the creation of a new institution: the Devolved AI Service (DAIS). The DAIS would act as a ‘co-operative platform for local government to support fast, frugal innovation. It would provide the vision and governance for local innovation, build and incubate local AI tools and services, transform the infrastructure for scaling innovation and improve local capabilities.’

TBI proposes that the first local authorities and related organisations to join DAIS should become test beds, adopting three flagship programmes:

• Introduce AI co-workers in high-volume, high-cost services. AI could, for instance, support social workers with the assessment backlog, helping to reduce waiting times, allowing social workers to focus on higher-value caring instead of lower-value coordination, and saving money. If adopted, TBI estimates that the care-assessment backlog (currently 227,000 cases) could be cleared in one month.
• Pilot a Local Navigation Assistant (LNA) to support citizens’ interactions efficiently and effectively. The LNA would improve the provision of information about services, including about citizens’ eligibility and the progress of their applications, and provide pre-approval for some services to reduce avoidable contact, starting with benefits that rely on locally held data, such as housing benefits. Data from this tool could be used to enable service redesign and target interventions. TBI estimates that AI could save one-and-a-quarter days per week of additional time for staff in these citizen-facing roles.
• Introduce a data and decision-making platform for local-plan development and an AI Planning Assistant to streamline the planning process. These tools would create good-quality and dynamic local plans, streamline the application process for citizens and improve the quality of decision-making for applications. TBI estimates that AI could free up almost two days per week for housing and economic planners.

Further, TBI states that there are reforms that councillors can pursue immediately: ‘championing AI innovation, adopting tools that have been proven to work, coordinating with leading local authorities and other stakeholders to share best practice, adopting data standards, and adapting the workforce and attracting the right talent.’

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