Last week Hippo was delighted to welcome delegates from the Government of Barbados for a tour of AI capability in the UK, facilitated by Global Government Forum.
This study tour offered a great opportunity for Government Ministers and officials from Barbados to meet with multiple government departments and organisations that are involved in implementing and supporting the development of the UK’s vision for Artificial Intelligence across public services.
The UK was selected as the host for this tour due its ranking as the fourth best country in the world for AI capability. Hippo is proud to be involved in these valuable discussions, reflecting our key capability in delivering citizen-level services and responsible AI processes. Core themes that were explored during the visit include harnessing AI to improve public services, the upskilling of civil servants and creating a standardised approach to AI infrastructure and data sharing across departments.
“We came to see living examples of what Barbados needs to do to move from a place of using a paper-based government service to become digitally enabled. We need to bring the citizen to the centre of everything we do and we want to service the public of Barbados much more efficiently. The study tour of the UK has shown us various aspects we would like to emulate such as getting more young people involved in innovation and AI. We’ve been blown away by the amount of information provided on the tour and look forward to further our collaboration with organisations like Hippo.”
Donna Cadogan, Head of the Public Service and Cabinet Secretary – Government of Barbados
Thursday evening offered a perfect opportunity to take in the Leeds city skyline from the rooftop terrace of Angelica & Crafthouse. This location in the heart of West Yorkshire offered the perfect venue to spotlight the region’s huge collection of innovative organisations, its evolving tech innovation hub and the ongoing work to enable AI technologies throughout its services.
“We’ve got an incredible ecosystem in this region. A really important role to play in proving how you can deliver value and make amazing outcomes for citizens. To do that here in the North is something we’re all incredibly proud of.”
Liz Whitefield, Executive Director – Hippo
Richard Corbridge, Director General (Chief Digital Information Officer), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) also shared his thoughts on the significance of the study tour:
“Cross government collaboration is key to digital transformation in the UK, being able to do this across the globe and share learning has been a superb experience, doing it in West Yorkshire through the lens of devolution and with Leeds as a great place to work in digital added still more to the rich and rewarding conversation. We need to do more of this and make sure that Leeds and West Yorkshire and all the organisations striving every day to be still better at what we do through digital transformation are on the global map.”
The delegates were on site at the Hippo campus event space on Friday for a day of AI workshops and presentations:
The importance of Responsible AI
Darren Hutton, Chief Digital Officer at Hippo explained our vision and framework for the use of AI in service delivery and the importance of putting the human at the centre of considerations.
From the lens of user researcher, Ruth Taylor, expands on the topic:
“At Hippo, a key theme we’ve been discussing is Responsible AI, and particularly for me in my role that means that we’re considering users first. We want to make sure that AI will genuinely help someone in their role and not be used just for the sake of it. So we look at who the users are, who needs to use the data, and how we can enable them to do their jobs better and in a responsible way as well.”
Anna Lay, Principal Consultant at Hippo describes responsible AI as “a useful framework to pin things back to why we’re using AI and how we can use it responsibly, and it encourages us to think more broadly about the solution we’re developing to make sure this is done in a safe and responsible way.”
Kevin Cunnington, Executive Advisor, Global Government Forum also shared insights from the study tour’s discussion and presentations:
“AI is becoming more prevalent with new technology being introduced quickly and not always successfully. One of the main things recognised across governments is that we can’t experiment with public services because people rely on them. One of the things we’ve been exploring today is how do you measure trust and confidence in the realm of AI capability before you start to deploy things.”
Adding to the discussion, Gemma Elsworth, Deputy Director: Head of Data Capability at DWP Digital also described the ongoing work in the department to ensure that user needs are at the focus of digital transformation and that any use of automation is beneficial to citizens and users.
Improving patient safety at Mid Yorks NHS Trust
Jonathan Bevan, Digital Medicines Lead at Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust outlined a case study of a recent project to harness machine learning and AI to design, develop and test a Clinical Pharmacy Prioritisation Software Tool to improve patient safety through human-centred and responsible approach.
Working closely with the Hippo team to develop this proof of concept project required transparency and a focus on building a lot of trust with everyone involved. Anna Lay, who led the project describe this important theme:
“Machine learning is quite a new subject for a lot of people, so we took time to ensure that the people in the trust including the clinical team and the wider project team understood basic concepts around these topics. That helped build up trust. We also took time to understand user needs and make sure we’re developed a tool that meets that.”
West Yorkshire’s tech ecosystem in the spotlight
Katy Raife, Sector Manager, Creative & Digital, Trade & Investment, West Yorkshire Combined Authority showcased how the region is home to a huge tech capability and thriving ecosystem, alongside how data and AI is being enabled across West Yorkshire.
“West Yorkshire is recognised as a high potential opportunity area for data and AI by the UK Government, which is a fantastic thing for us to be able to promote internationally. Across West Yorkshire we’re seeing the skills that would usually sit in data and AI are now applicable across all sectors, and we have strength across all sectors in our region. It’s not just about the traditional tech companies anymore, it’s about the wider ecosystem and influencing it to make change.”
Shaping the workforce of the future
Professor Liz Breen, Director of the Digital Health Enterprise Zone and Professor of Health Service Operations at the University of Bradford explored how AI talent and capability was being developed as part of its Health Innovation initiatives.
She said: “We have targeted educational programmes focused not only on understanding AI but also being able to apply this. We have healthy cohorts of students going through this programme, all with a view that they are able to go into healthcare and other sectors, and be able to design AI solutions, apply them, and also evaluate them.
“We’re trying to make sure AI is relevant, current, applied, and we seek the opinions of our business and healthcare partners to better understand their AI needs so we can offer support designing the workforce of the future.”
Looking ahead
We want to extend our thanks to everyone who contributed and attended the study tour for making this a hugely useful exercise for both the Caribbean and West Yorkshire delegations alike. We’re excited at the future opportunities for collaboration across our region and with the value of learning from international government approaches to put citizens first in service delivery.
Photos credited to Effyimages.