The i.AI Taxonomy
Engagement and Strategy Manager, i.AI
29 July 2024
The opportunities for AI in government are vast. The Alan Turing Institute assesses that 84% of the 143 million complex, repetitive transactions that take place across government services every year are ‘highly automatable’ (The Alan Turing Institute, AI for bureaucratic productivity). The Tony Blair Institute calculates that through embracing AI, the UK stands to gain around £40 billion in public sector productivity improvements (Tony Blair Institute, Governing in the Age of AI). The size of the prize is both exciting and intimidating. The pressure to pick the right projects from a never-ending list can seem high.
To navigate these decisions, i.AI has developed a taxonomy for AI in government, classifying projects not by policy area but by user and technical challenge. Although no project proposal is the same, there are often common solutions to the problems they seek to tackle. For example, the same underlying optimisation techniques could be applied to prioritise what to connect to the national grid, solve timetabling problems such as scheduling appointments, or match people to services such as accommodation. It is for the same reason that a tool detecting patterns and anomalies could help tackle both suboptimal clinical prescriptions and public sector fraud. By concentrating on solutions to technical, not policy, problems, and through a commitment to modularisation and open-source, we will be able to deliver AI for Public Good in the most scalable way.
What is i.AI's taxonomy?
Select each option to find out more:
Public facing services
A fundamental part of delivering AI for Public Good is improving the interface between government and its citizens. AI presents an enormous opportunity to make these interactions faster, more personalised and more informed.
Caddy, our customer service Artificial Intelligence (AI) copilot, helps customer service advisors and supervisors in quickly locating and sharing information from reliable sources. Caddy is currently being piloted in Citizens Advice Manchester and Citizens Advice Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale & Trafford (CASORT). We are considering how Caddy could be used to support other types of advisors in government.
Fraud and error
AI is particularly adept at identifying anomalies and analysing patterns in data, which may indicate fraud or error. Public sector fraud and error is estimated to be at least £33bn per year, with a significant portion of this in the tax and welfare system. Cutting this figure raises money for the government to spend on better public services.
In i.AI we are using similar principles to explore a tool analysing suboptimal prescriptions in community pharmacies, flagging harmful drug interactions and misallocations potentially to save millions of pounds and thousands of lives every year.
Matching and triage
AI can be used to optimise the use of resources to create more efficient and more cost-effective public services. Prisons, hospitals and housing all face demand pressures and it is crucial we maximise our existing stock. Matching algorithms could provide the solution.In i.AI we are exploring the capabilities of matching algorithms to make better use of available grid capacity, reducing waitlists and increasing investment.
Casework management
AI can process, synthesise and analyse paperwork much more quickly than humans and can provide users with new ways to interact with large bodies of text. This can free up civil servants from time-consuming tasks and reduce the costs of outsourcing such work.
i.AI’s tool Redbox includes a range of secure efficiency-generating features to augment the work of government officials. Our consultation tool, Consult, analyses responses to government consultations, seeking to save some of the £119m HMG spends processing consultations every year.
Data infrastructure
To enable widespread AI adoption and leverage data at scale, it is essential to have the right data infrastructure in government.
In i.AI we take this seriously. Project rAPId is an open-source end-to-end solution, enabling departments to discover, manage and share high-impact data internally and across government. Work is currently going beyond rAPId to offer open-source, cutting edge cloud infrastructure (named Condor) that will allow departments to create the infrastructure on demand that suits their data, analytical and AI needs.
Public facing services
A fundamental part of delivering AI for Public Good is improving the interface between government and its citizens. AI presents an enormous opportunity to make these interactions faster, more personalised and more informed.
Caddy, our customer service Artificial Intelligence (AI) copilot, helps customer service advisors and supervisors in quickly locating and sharing information from reliable sources. Caddy is currently being piloted in Citizens Advice Manchester and Citizens Advice Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale & Trafford (CASORT). We are considering how Caddy could be used to support other types of advisors in government.
Fraud and error
AI is particularly adept at identifying anomalies and analysing patterns in data, which may indicate fraud or error. Public sector fraud and error is estimated to be at least £33bn per year, with a significant portion of this in the tax and welfare system. Cutting this figure raises money for the government to spend on better public services.
In i.AI we are using similar principles to explore a tool analysing suboptimal prescriptions in community pharmacies, flagging harmful drug interactions and misallocations potentially to save millions of pounds and thousands of lives every year.
Matching and triage
AI can be used to optimise the use of resources to create more efficient and more cost-effective public services. Prisons, hospitals and housing all face demand pressures and it is crucial we maximise our existing stock. Matching algorithms could provide the solution.In i.AI we are exploring the capabilities of matching algorithms to make better use of available grid capacity, reducing waitlists and increasing investment.
Casework management
AI can process, synthesise and analyse paperwork much more quickly than humans and can provide users with new ways to interact with large bodies of text. This can free up civil servants from time-consuming tasks and reduce the costs of outsourcing such work.
i.AI’s tool Redbox includes a range of secure efficiency-generating features to augment the work of government officials. Our consultation tool, Consult, analyses responses to government consultations, seeking to save some of the £119m HMG spends processing consultations every year.
Data infrastructure
To enable widespread AI adoption and leverage data at scale, it is essential to have the right data infrastructure in government.
In i.AI we take this seriously. Project rAPId is an open-source end-to-end solution, enabling departments to discover, manage and share high-impact data internally and across government. Work is currently going beyond rAPId to offer open-source, cutting edge cloud infrastructure (named Condor) that will allow departments to create the infrastructure on demand that suits their data, analytical and AI needs.
Next Steps
We have already written over 11 million lines of code and open sourced the first 500,000 of these, with more to follow as projects develop. Follow our progress on our github https://github.com/i-dot-ai and let us know how our taxonomy could apply to your work at i-dot-ai-enquiries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.