Imogen Parker

We at @instituteforgovernment.org.uk have coordinated a letter in @thetimes.com today in which numerous individuals and organisations call on the government to withdraw its mistaken rules which are having a serious chilling effect on civil servants speaking in public…

UK government’s deal with Google ‘dangerously naive’, say campaigners Company to provide free technology and ‘upskill’ civil servants but concerns raised over UK data being held on US servers

If you don't pay for the product...

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

License to build Public attitudes to public sector AI

Government departments and local authorities are looking to accelerate AI use in the public sector.

Our new policy briefing presents six findings from six years of Ada’s research on public attitudes towards the use of data and AI in public services.

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

License to build Public attitudes to public sector AI

Brilliant work from my @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social colleagues @imogen-parker.bsky.social and @lauracarter.bsky.social on what the UK public expect from AI deployment in the public sector

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

signed up!

Building blocks: four recommendations to strengthen the foundations for AI in the public sector How can government ensure trustworthy use of AI and deliver public value?

Rapidly deploying AI has become one of the government’s top priorities.

Read our new blog from @elliotmjones.bsky.social and @imogen-parker.bsky.social proposing four targeted recommendations to strengthen the foundations for AI in the public sector ⬇️

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/four-re...

3. Create a Taskforce for local government AI procurement
4. Fund and leverage public attitudes research on AI

. @elliotmjones.bsky.social and I lay out four recommendations to strengthen the foundations for AI in the public sector

1. Establish a What Works Centre for AI in Public Services
2. Strengthen the Algorithmic Transparency Reporting Standard

Building blocks: four recommendations to strengthen the foundations for AI in the public sector How can government ensure trustworthy use of AI and deliver public value?

If Ada's public services research landed on the desk of those leading digital transformation within government – alongside an extensive to-do list and a myriad of competing pressures – where should they start?

@adalovelaceinst.bsky.social
www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/four-re...

Alf Dubs and Jacob Rees-Mogg: citizenship stripping is fundamentally unBritish Shamima Begum made grave mistakes. But she is our responsibility and no one else’s

I failed to post this last week, but it’s one of the best op-eds you’ll read all year. Two politicians with *wildly* different orientations but a common thread of belief in the nature of citizenship and nationality. (They’re also 100% right obvs.)

on.ft.com/3GS1rPl

Private data including criminal records stolen in Legal Aid hack MoJ says data includes addresses, national ID numbers, criminal histories and financial details dating to 2010.

Highly sensitive information, relating to people in moments of vulnerability, has been hacked.

The advice warning people of scams is important but only part of it. It's not hard to imagine harms arising if this type of information circulates or is weaponised.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Why public legitimacy for AI in the public sector isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ - Global Government Forum Imogen Parker of the Ada Lovelace Institute argues that if the public are not convinced that the government is using their data, and AI, in their best interests, it could have big implications – inclu...

Why public legitimacy isn't just a 'nice to have'.

My new column for Global Government Forum on public sector AI - and risks of moving out of step from the public.

www.globalgovernmentforum.com/why-public-l...

Interested to see how this pans out...

In particular, I welcomed this crucial finding making it into the report summary: "there is no systematic mechanism for bringing together and disseminating the learning from all the pilot activity across government."

Time for a What Works Centre for AI in the public sector?

Learn fast and build things Lessons from six years of studying AI in the public sector

Many findings align with our recent evidence review, highlighting issues with data quality and curation; legacy systems; transparency and assurance www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

Use of AI in Government - Committees - UK Parliament Government’s ambition is for the public sector to set an example in the safe and ethical deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), which both has the potential to transform services for the taxpayer...

PAC have published their Use of AI in Government report.

Lots of valuable insight, acknowledging potential for transformation while warning Gov "faces significant challenges if it to grasp these opportunities, & we remain concerned at the scale of the task." committees.parliament.uk/work/8580/us...

Home

Want to know how the public feel about AI?

We've got you.

Here's the next wave of Ada and Turing's UK public attitudes survey published today 📢

attitudestoai.uk

Associate Director, Emerging Technology and Industry Practice - Ada Lovelace Institute The Ada Lovelace Institute (Ada) is a hiring an Associate Director to lead our Emerging Technology & Industry Practice research directorate and collectively set its agenda and workplan in our next...

Job alert!!

Could you be Ada's new Associate Director in Emerging Tech & Industry Practice, leading a fab team and a highly impactful research programme?

It's a pretty amazing gig, @agstrait.bsky.social has built something incredible (no pressure). Get in touch if you have Qs!

“There is this terrible misconception that disabled people just take, but actually by taking from us, you prevent us from being able to give – we want to be able to participate in life equally the same as anyone else, and that includes going to work.” Disability campaigner Tanni Gray-Thompson

Really like this list of questions to consider in the context of public sector AI. And lots of resonance with findings from Ada's research synthesis.

A big +1 to sorting out the building blocks.

Game-changing new funding from Wellcome for OpenSAFELY and mental health data | Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science This morning the Today programme on Radio 4 did two great spots on OpenSAFELY.

I'm delighted to say our highly secure and productive OpenSAFELY platform has received a further £17 million in funding from Wellcome, including for a new mental health data project. More here, and clips from Today on Radio4 this morning too!

www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2025/02...

Technology provides an opportunity beyond the technology itself. If AI is a “golden opportunity”, as Starmer put it, it is as a catalyst for fundamental service redesign, placing people at the centre of public service delivery. @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social

What do we want public services to look and feel like if we adopt greater data, digital and AI? What do we want our relationship to be with the public and private sectors? Where do we want technology to be accelerated or deferred to? Which relationships do we not want mediated by datafication?

Following yesterday's speech by Starmer, it's the final point which stands out. We should see AI not as an opportunity to automate the public sector, but to reimagine it.

For those working in the field, many of the lessons won't come as a surprise. They are the consistent issues around terminology, transparency, procurement for example that hamper understanding and confidence in tech roll outs.

Learn fast and build things Lessons from six years of studying AI in the public sector

📢 New report out (and offering serious competition for best Ada title).

Today we publish Learn Fast and Build Things. It's a synthesis of the 6 years and 30+ publications on public sector data and AI.

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

X has become an extraordinary case study in irresponsible innovation. The lesson is that carelessness does not just make a technology less nice, it also makes it less useful.

The move to 'security' centres a framing of malicious harm - bad faith actors that could use AI. These types of treats need to be addressed.

But we also need to mitigate the here-and-now risks where careless AI might replicate inequality, take away jobs, or harm the environment.

The AI Security Institute (AISI) The AI Security Institute is a directorate of the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology that facilitates rigorous research to enable advanced AI governance.

The addition of criminal misuse seems sensible. But I'm interested in whether others see the addition of human influence and societal resilience to make up for the loss of evaluation of 'societal impacts'.

Especially as bias has been explicitly cut out of AISI's scope.

www.aisi.gov.uk

Now missing from their site, are previous commitments to build and run evaluations for -

Societal impacts: How models could affect our social fabric, e.g. by weakening democracy, harming individual welfare and perpetuating unequal outcomes.