The Future of AI in the Public Sector – And the Question Everyone Asks Next
- ICS AI
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a future ambition for the public sector. It is already reshaping how services are delivered across the UK - from local authorities to education providers, policing and wider government.
In a recent Thrive Q&A with Funding London, our Founder and CEO Martin Neale shared his perspective on how ICS.AI was founded, where public sector AI
stands today, why the UK has emerged as one of the world’s leading markets for AI adoption, and what meaningful AI transformation actually requires.
The discussion offered a rare combination of long-term vision and practical realism – grounded in what is already working, rather than speculative futures.
Why ICS.AI Was Founded
ICS.AI was founded in 2018 on a simple but powerful belief: AI was finally ready to deliver real value at scale – particularly for the public sector.
As Martin explained in the interview:
"ICS.AI was founded in 2018, born out of the belief that AI was finally ready to thrive at scale, particularly with the introduction of AI on Microsoft platforms, which brought the cost down to pennies per transaction.”
At the time, enterprise AI was often expensive, fragmented, and limited to isolated experiments. Advances in cloud infrastructure and AI tooling fundamentally changed that equation, making it possible to deploy AI responsibly, securely, and affordably across large, complex organisations.
Martin continued:
“I’d always been passionate about AI, and it felt like the right moment to build a business that was completely focused on AI and the public sector. The environment had matured, and the opportunity was there to create a company dedicated to making AI genuinely work for public services.”
From day one, ICS.AI made a deliberate choice: not to chase one-off pilots or novelty use cases, but to focus on organisation-wide AI capability – embedding AI into operating models, governance, and day-to-day service delivery.
That focus continues to define how we work with customers today.
Why the UK Is Leading on Public Sector AI
Another strong theme in the discussion was the UK’s position as one of the most advanced markets globally for real-world public sector AI adoption.
Martin pointed to a combination of factors: strong digital foundations, a pragmatic regulatory environment, and – critically – a clear pro-AI stance from central government.
“I speak to a lot of chief executives and senior leaders, and almost all of them are actively looking to begin or accelerate their AI journeys.”
Government support has helped de-risk adoption at an organisational level, at a time when public services face sustained pressure from rising demand, constrained budgets, and an ageing population. AI is increasingly seen not as an optional innovation, but as essential national infrastructure for productivity and service resilience.
What’s Next for ICS.AI and Public Sector AI
Looking ahead, the interview made clear that the next phase of public sector AI is not about more pilots – it’s about scale, depth, and durability. That shift requires different leadership decisions, operating models, and ways of measuring value.
For ICS.AI, that means:
Deepening our market-leading position in local government
Scaling rapidly in higher education
Expanding into new public sector domains, including policing
Growing a partner ecosystem capable of delivering full, end-to-end AI transformation
As Martin put it:
“Our approach allows us to guarantee value for customers by delivering organisation-wide AI transformation, rather than the usual slow, fragmented ‘one use case at a time’ approach that rarely leads to meaningful change.”
Technologically, this also means laying the groundwork for the next generation of capability – particularly agentic AI – while ensuring governance, accountability, and trust remain designed in, not bolted on.
The Question That Always Comes Next: Jobs
Across all of these conversations – adoption, scale, productivity, and transformation – one question consistently surfaces: “Will AI take most of our jobs?”. In the interview, Martin’s answer was clear and consistent with ICS.AI’s lived experience: “AI automates tasks, not roles.”
Public services depend on judgement, accountability, empathy, and human oversight. AI is most effective when it removes administrative burden and repetitive work, allowing skilled professionals to focus on complex, high-value tasks.
But while the Thrive discussion addresses this at a principle level, the wider public debate is often dominated by fear, headlines, and speculation rather than evidence.
That is why Martin has since published a new whitepaper, The Human Firewall: Why AI Won’t Replace Most Jobs.
From Perspective to Proof: The Human Firewall
The Human Firewall builds directly on the themes raised in the Thrive Q&A, but goes deeper – examining global labour-market data, alongside legal, regulatory, and operational realities.
Its core conclusion aligns precisely with what public sector leaders are seeing in practice: AI is reshaping work and redistributing tasks, but law, liability, and accountability place hard limits on total automation. Humans remain essential – not despite AI, but because of it.
The paper also highlights a more subtle but urgent risk: the compression of entry-level roles and the need to redesign early-career pathways in an AI-augmented world. This is not a future concern. It is already happening.
What Comes Next: From Understanding to Execution
With the jobs debate addressed, the focus now shifts to execution.
Once leaders are confident that AI can be adopted responsibly – without undermining trust, accountability, or the workforce – attention turns to how AI moves from isolated deployments to organisation-wide capability. How adoption translates into predictable, measurable value. And how leadership, governance, and operating models need to evolve to support that shift.
This is the next part of the conversation – and the focus of the next paper in this series, which explores how public sector organisations can move from AI curiosity and experimentation to measurable, sustainable organisation-wide impact.
One Connected Story
Read together, the Thrive Q&A and The Human Firewall tell a single, coherent story:
Why AI in the public sector is accelerating now
Why the UK is leading on real-world adoption
Why organisation-wide transformation matters more than isolated use cases
Why humans remain central to AI-enabled services
And what operating models are required to make AI work responsibly, at scale
If the Thrive discussion sets the direction of travel, The Human Firewall provides the evidence needed to move the conversation beyond fear and speculation.
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