The departmental deckchairs have been shuffled – but helping the government's tech challenge how?

AI taskforce

There will be a new AI Taskforce within the OPMC, supported by the prime minister's adviser on AI, intended to implement “a strategic, whole-of-government approach [to AI] from the centre.” We now know that it will be Patrick Vallance – who recently departed from government as minister - who will chair this group. That is a very good thing and I hope he can gain traction and cut through in this landscape which has been rendered increasingly complex as a consequence of last week’s changes.

The Cabinet Office will take the lead on AI adoption across the Civil Service and will have responsibility for AI strategy, public sector AI adoption and the AI Security Institute.

Did they do the exact same thing the last two governments did to the exact same people, the thing that evidently they felt had failed to the point of needing fixing, and then pat themselves on the back?

Digital, with a capital D, returns to the renamed Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which gains responsibility for “digital foundations, digital transformation, digital inclusion and skills, GDS, information resilience and online harms”. The government said that this will bring “coherence to the online safety agenda”.

The GDS move is particularly problematic. GDS built whatever authority it has over the last decade by sitting close enough to the centre to mandate standards across departments that would otherwise happily ignore it. The move to DCMS reduces GDS authority - GDS’s view - to that of a single department with the ability to, well, try and influence other departments of its view. If might is right, as is so often the case within Whitehall, the very best of British with that.

Just when you thought you had a grip on the departmental acronyms, another one emerges. The Department for Business and Trade is gone, becoming the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST), taking on responsibility for the science and innovation portfolio, as well as emerging sectors.

Keeping up so far? There’s more:

The Cabinet Office, having gained some new functions, will lose the Office for Equality and Opportunity, which moves to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The Office for the Impact Economy and responsibility for policy on digital identity will move to DCMS.

The Public Sector Fraud Authority will move to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) with continued central sponsorship from HM Treasury. And the Investment Security Unit will move to DBIST.

Many questions

During our Lords debate, regret was expressed about the resignation of minister Vallance who will be much missed, though, as stated above, he has already re-appeared as the AI taskforce chair.

Many questions were raised about the changes, including responsibility for AI regulation, the "waste of time" and difficulties maintaining momentum on AI safety and sovereignty during the transition, the wrong signal being sent to the science community and the potential erosion of funding for basic science.

The severing of digital infrastructure from AI sovereign investment is also more than unfortunate. Prior to the change we had one department with effective oversight of these so clearly linked areas. This has been exchanged for a yet to be constructed coordination between different departments, with different ministers, with different incentives – is that really better?

It is positive that we are retaining Kanishka Narayan as AI minister and that he will attend Cabinet. But does he have a full picture of what is under his ministerial responsibility and who he reports to and in what order?

With all this change in Whitehall I do have cause to wonder whether a cross-sector, cross-economy AI regulation bill is more likely today than before the current PM’s arrival? Here’s hoping.

To conclude, I can’t improve upon the comments of Laura Gilbert, former director of the AI Incubator at Number 10, on hearing news of the changes:

"So now a new government has again come in, the very week that those affected by the last machinery of government [change] finally transitioned to new laptops, and what did they do? Did they arrive, ask questions, learn about what had not worked before and why, consult with people with government and technical expertise, understand the problems and carefully and thoughtfully design a solution? Or did they do the exact same thing the last two governments did to the exact same people, the thing that evidently they felt had failed to the point of needing fixing, and then pat themselves on the back?"

And, if they think it’s all over - it isn’t yet. As Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee chair Chi Onwurah said, she expects her committee to “look into the impact of closing DSIT, and how science, innovation and technology can best be coordinated across government in the absence of a dedicated department” in the autumn.

She welcomed the government’s ambition to embed science and tech across the economy but said splitting up DSIT risks “fragmenting” policies and “overloading departments that may lack capacity to give them the attention they need.”

That may well all be true, time et al will tell. One thing we can know for sure at this stage is that, as a consequence of the changes, when we all return in the autumn, the chair will be responsible for the BIST Select Committee in Parliament.