The UK has no shortage of AI strategies, summits and action plans - but a policy paper cannot retrain a civil servant, fix a legacy data system or scale a pilot beyond single departments. How can the government translate these action plans into actual impact? What is currently holding back the way AI is integrated into public services? And are current government strategies enough to match the scale of opportunity?

In this episode of the Policy Fix podcast, host Joe Owen is joined by James Kuht, CEO of PAIR and founding member of No 10’s data science team and Mallory Durran, executive director of Nesta’s applied research and methods and former lead of the government's Incubator for AI, to explore what needs to happen for the UK to become a world-leader in public sector AI use.

Our guests dive into the core internal barriers holding the public sector back - skills, culture, digital public infrastructure - and the risk appetite required to genuinely innovate and turn AI policy into a national operational capability.

James and Mallory map out the more practical and (slightly unglamorous) fixes needed to unlock public sector AI adoption, debate how the state can compete with big tech for top-tier talent and ultimately set out how the civil service can maximise its real-world impact using AI.

Watch the full episode on our YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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James Kuht MBE, chief executive officer, PAIR

Dr James Kuht MBE is the CEO of PAIR, a company which helps organisations build AI native workforces through its role-personalised training, working with the likes of Boeing, Darktrace, the Ministry of Justice and hi-impact. Prior to this, he had a 16-year career in the military, which included being chief technology officer of a large regimen; being seconded to 10 Downing Street to build the prime minister’s data science team; and research into the basis of consciousness at the University of Oxford - for which he was nominated as British Young Neuroscientist of the Year. He was made MBE in 2021 for services to military innovation.

Mallory Durran, applied research and methods director, Nesta

Mallory has led public sector and start-up teams harnessing data and technology for the public good for over a decade. She brings extensive experience from the heart of UK government, including in No 10 and the Cabinet Office, and most recently as Interim Director of the Incubator for AI at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, leading an engineering team building AI applications for public sector improvement. With an academic background in computational neuroscience, Mallory is a badged statistician and former SCS member of the Government Statistical Service. She has contributed to significant government standard setting and reviews on data and digital infrastructure, ethics, and AI safety and opportunity and led No 10's open API framework development (project rAPId). At Nesta, Mallory oversees the applied research, methods, AI, and technology offer for the group, bringing innovative approaches to improving access to and efficacy of interventions across Nesta’s missions and the wider public sector. She remains relentlessly enthusiastic about the power of data and technology to fuel positive change.