109 the problem worse, not better. Augmentation is most effective when it integrates seamlessly into the flow of work – built with people, not dropped on them. It should give civil servants their craft back.” Getting AI right for employees provides a foundation for every other area of transformation. In fact, employee sentiment has become as important as traditional productivity measures for government AI deployments. “It is difficult to redesign citizen experience, operate reliably at scale or build institutional trust if the workforce does not trust the tools they use every day,” says Doyle. “Workforce adoption is where decision intelligence either takes root or stalls. “In one reported deployment, the UK Government Digital Service rolled Microsoft 365 Copilot out to approximately 20,000 civil servants, and a majority of respondents indicated they wouldn’t want to return to working without it. That isn’t really a productivity statistic. It’s an engagement measure, and engagement is the harder one to earn in any workforce, especially in public service. We’re seeing the same pattern across local government, including organisations like Buckinghamshire and Aberdeen councils, where the focus has been on reducing administrative burden and giving employees more time for higher-value work. “In these examples, AI was implemented with the workforce and the deployments were treated as workforce enablement, not rollouts. Adoption can indicate the technology is delivering value. Sustained use suggests the workforce trusts it. That’s the difference PUBLIC SECTOR In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Boti app, built using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Services, manages approximately two million natural language queries per month “ Augmentation is most effective when it is built with people, not dropped on them” Photo: iStock/Jeremy Poland
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