The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will get £1.2bn over the next three years to “drive forward cross-cutting digital priorities”, Rachel Reeves has announced.
The chancellor announced the extra funding in her Spending Review speech this afternoon, taking total funding for the objective to £1.9bn over the SR25 period.
The funding will be used to pay for the rollout of new products and services such as the already-announced GOV.UK Wallet and GOV.UK App; “productivity-enhancing AI tools” across the public sector; and replacing legacy systems.
The Spending Review identified two priority areas for funding digital programmes: digital public infrastructure, for the public and for government; and modernised public services by harnessing the power of AI.
As well as the GOV.UK Wallet and app, the first priority area includes the National Data Library, which was a Labour manifesto commitment in last year’s general election. Plans for the data library, which will allow policymakers, researchers, and businesses to use linked data sets for key sectors like healthcare, employment, and infrastructure planning, were confirmed in February.
Plans to use AI to modernise services include the introduction of a single patient NHS record so that every part of the health service has a full picture of a patient’s care with appropriate safeguards and privacy.
“Funding will also be used to help scale the most promising opportunities for AI adoption in the public sector, from reducing hospital waiting times to making faster planning decisions and increasing the productivity of the civil service,” according to SR25 documents.
The work will be supported by the Government digital and AI roadmap, which will set out the government’s digital priorities to deliver better public services.
However, the publication of the roadmap – which was trailed in DSIT’s January blueprint setting out plans for a new “digital centre of government” – has been delayed from summer to autumn.
The Digital Inter-Ministerial Group, which was also announced in A blueprint for modern digital government, will provide strategic oversight for digital transformation.
DSIT’s Spending Review settlement also includes £2bn to implement the AI Opportunities Action Plan – published in January – in full.
Of that figure, £240m will go to the AI Security Institute – a DSIT directorate that conducts research and builds infrastructure to understand the capabilities and impacts of advanced AI and to develop and test risk mitigations.
Other developments being funded include: a twentyfold expansion of the UK’s AI Research Resource capacity to support the discovery and advancement of AI technologies; Up to £500 million for the creation of a new UK Sovereign AI Unit working with the British Business Bank to “support the emergence of national AI champions”; and £48m for the TechExpert programme to fund PhD students, announced earlier this week.
