Across many organisations within the public sector, customers are looking to embrace change and future-proof their business by implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. These emerging technologies offer a number of benefits to customers such as helping to better manage and use data, make public services more accessible, and improve diagnosis in healthcare.
Crown Commercial Service (CCS) opened its Artificial Intelligence Dynamic Purchasing System in early September 2020, after a year of planning and engagement with potential suppliers and customers.
CCS, an Executive Agency of the Cabinet Office, was responsible for around £18bn of public sector spend in 2019/20, via procurement agreements covering everything from technology hard and software, cloud computing and networks to construction, consultancy, and even vehicle hire. The organisation keeps a close eye on technological trends within the public sector through strong relationships with central government departments and thousands of public sector bodies across health, education, blue light and local government.
The development of artificial intelligence technology has not passed the UK public sector by… The UK published the AI Sector Deal in 2018, its strategy for Artificial Intelligence. The government also launched the Office for AI at this time, responsible for implementing the strategy. In the same year, the government launched the AI Council, an independent expert committee to provide advice to the government and the Office for AI, and support the growth of AI in the UK. Our Artificial Intelligence DPS aims to support the innovation of public sector organisations, by supporting the government’s AI Strategy’s key commitments.
Planning begins
CCS began its preparations by analysing the emerging market for AI in the public sector: what buyers were calling for, what suppliers could deliver, and where opportunities existed outside of the current mainstream thinking on the use of AI by government.
The organisation engaged with customers and suppliers in an effort to scope out any potential agreement. Suppliers were asked what they are selling, how much it cost, and how customers would know they were getting value for money. We also sought supplier input towards special terms around Intellectual Property (IP) and their capability to deliver social value – a constant demand from public bodies as diverse as small parish councils and big central government departments.
One-to-one sessions were held with 37 suppliers, a mixture of large and SMEs.
The conversations were extremely fruitful.
Shaping the agreement
We learned that customers need to better understand their organisation’s data and its limitations. It often takes a long time to get data into a usable format, and this could cause significant delays when bringing AI technology into service offerings.
Buyers also need to be sure that ethics are considered at the outset of any procurement, more details in a moment.
A common theme with suppliers’ was to use a benefits-driven approach to deliver AI. Suppliers emphasised the importance of public sector departments working with them up front to have a good understanding of what it is they want to achieve from the use of AI, to ensure that supplier proposals are realistic, with a tangible set of deliverables.
The return on investment from implementing AI often comes later down the line, such as improved business processes, making these more efficient, reducing costs and time savings using data.
One of the challenges we came across was designing an agreement that will help public sector customers to build in a strong ethics process to their procurements and ensuring intellectual property rights in an emerging market were fit for purpose.
They also need to consider the explain-ability of the AI solution, transparency and interpretability of results and to ensure fairness and mitigate bias in data.
Also, the integration with existing systems poses a challenge when buying artificial intelligence in the public sector. It is important for public sector buyers to look at processes where data is stored and consider how an AI device can work. Hidden costs could arise if accessing the data is not accounted for up front, for instance by having to build an Application programming interface (API), particularly with legacy systems.
Public sector customers will need to start with user needs and think about what they want to achieve with the AI solution, consider if AI is needed to solve a problem and know that AI doesn’t always work.
The need for this DPS was driven by the government industrial strategy, to create an economy that boosts productivity and earning power throughout the UK.
One of the grand challenges to put the UK at the forefront of the industries of the future is AI and Data Economy. The AI Sector Deal, updated in May 2019, set out new measures and targets to put the UK at the forefront of the artificial intelligence (AI) and data revolution.
This DPS aims to support the innovation of public sector organisations using AI technology to free up time and raise productivity. Help build a skilled workforce and ultimately deliver better public services to UK citizens.
There is a lot of good information already out there and we did not want to reinvent the wheel, so we worked in collaboration with the Office for Artificial Intelligence on the strategic direction for this DPS, in terms of requirements and standards and the World Economic Forum to ensure this DPS aligns to existing best practices and guidelines, and promotes them throughout the agreement. We have also designed the agreement to help customers to build a strong ethics process for their procurements.
The Office for AI published Guidelines for AI Procurement in June 2020, providing a summary of best practice and addressing specific challenges of acquiring artificial intelligence technologies in government.
These guidelines and the World Economic Forum’s AI procurement in a box workbook toolkit can help guide customers on how to buy AI.
Some benefits we hope these guidelines can bring to public procurement are to help the government to think about ethics when buying AI and help to build in a strong ethics process, reduce procurement timescales and the time it takes to go to market by encouraging public sector departments to make the right considerations up front and to maximise the value of data assets.
It is important that suppliers who bid for work under the AI DPS are committed not only to delivering the technical elements of the procurement but also delivering ethically where a buyer has stated that there is an ethical dimension to their tender. The supplier will need to be open around how the AI service was built.
We have included a list of screening questions as a template to the customer guidance documents that can be added to an invitation to tender by buyers and asked of a supplier where there is an ethical dimension to their procurement. We also worked together to draft a Data Ethics Letter of Understanding for suppliers to sign for appointment to the agreement. As the UK’s largest public procurement organisation, CCS has the ability to offer you access to cutting edge technologies and by working collaboratively alongside The Office for Artificial Intelligence, we are pleased to offer our new Artificial Intelligence DPS.
