Same tools, different plans: why every council’s AI journey starts in a different place
By Aneeq Star, Chief Revenue Officer, ICS.AI
A while ago, a council chief executive asked me a question I've often thought about since. "If you know all of these tools work, why do we need an assessment?"
It's a fair challenge, and it deserves a straight answer. ICS.AI has a catalogue of 250+ proven AI use cases. Our platform has handled more than 11 million AI transactions for public sector organisations. We know the tools work. So why not skip the assessment and start deploying?
The short answer is that every council starts from a different place. The long answer is what I want to set out here, because it comes straight from what we hear in leadership teams every week.
It's no longer whether - it's when and how
Nobody we speak to is asking whether local government will turn to AI – that question has been settled, and there is no shortage of AI ideas, pilots or demonstrations. The question now is how they fit together - and that is where councils tend to get stuck.
When councils come to us, they usually describe one of four situations.
Sprawl - Fragmented pilots and pockets of AI across departments, with nothing joined up. A team here has bought one tool, a team there has bought another, and nobody can see the whole picture or add up the value.
No plan - There is a vision for AI, sometimes a strategy document, but no credible organisation-wide roadmap and no business case to back it. Without numbers, it's hard to get a decision through SLT, let alone Members.
Disconnected - Leadership, services, finance and IT aren't aligned on where AI fits. Each has a different view of the priorities, the risks, and who should own it.
Stuck - Strategies and ideas that never turn into delivery. Momentum builds after a conference or a demo, then fades when the day job takes over.
Our SMART: AI Assessment is designed to answer all four: one joined-up plan for the whole council, a costed roadmap and a business case finance will back, everyone engaged from the SLT to the front line, and an actionable plan that is ready to move into delivery.
What councils are trying to achieve
The goals themselves are remarkably consistent – these four come up in almost every conversation:
Savings that count now - closing the gap in this year's budget, not in three years' time.
Better services - faster answers for residents, with fewer handoffs along the way.
Capacity - less admin for stretched teams, and more time for the work that matters.
One direction - a plan that leaders and Members can back, not another pilot.
So if the goals are the same, surely the answer is too? It isn't.
Why no two councils start in the same place
At one council we worked with, the focus was clear from day one: cashable benefits within 18 months, because of the council's financial position. Every opportunity was weighed against how quickly it could release money.
Another council had a completely different starting point. It had already done the hard work of stabilising its finances, but it wanted to hear directly from its own staff - where the pain points were, where people were losing time, and where outcomes for residents could improve. The same catalogue of use cases, but a very different plan.
Dwayne Johnson, our Chief Local Government Officer and former director of social services and council chief executive, made a point in the webinar that I think gets overlooked. The things that trip councils up are rarely the AI tools themselves – they are the vision, the governance, and how new AI works alongside legacy systems that were never designed for it. A tool that works brilliantly in one council's environment can struggle in another's if those questions haven't been answered first.
That is the real reason for an assessment. Knowing the tools work tells you what's possible, but it doesn't tell you what's right for your council, in what order, at what cost, or what your teams need to do to make it happen.
What councils get from an assessment
We have now delivered 12 SMART: AI Assessments across UK local government and higher education. Each one typically surfaces up to 200 opportunities, specific to that organisation and drawn from our catalogue of 250+ proven use cases or from ideas the council's own teams bring to the workshops.
When I ask councils what matters the most, they rarely start with the numbers. They talk about four things:
Clarity - knowing where to start, and what it will save.
Evidence - numbers their own finance team has validated, not figures from a supplier's slide.
Momentum - staff engaged and bought in, from the SLT to the front line.
Choice - a plan they own, with no obligation to go further.
In practical terms, our assessments deliver six things: an AI readiness summary showing where your council stands today; prioritised use cases ranked across every service; a savings plan built on use-case financial modelling rather than a headline estimate; a phased four-year roadmap tailored to your priorities, environment and capacity; a costed business case that is ready for committee or board; and a full report, in both written and interactive website formats.
So, why do you need an assessment?
Back to that chief executive's question. Our answer is that tools that work are necessary, but they aren’t enough. What turns tools into savings is a plan that fits your council: your finances, your services, your systems, your people and your appetite for risk.
Without that plan, the most likely outcome is more of what most councils already have - a scattering of pilots that each make sense on their own but never add up. With it, you have one direction, one business case and one set of numbers that everyone from finance to the front line has helped to build.
If any of the four situations above sounds familiar, I'd be glad to come and talk it through with your SLT in person.
Blog series:
Read the previous blog in the series – The easy savings are gone: why AI pilots can't close a structural deficit.
Look out for the next blog "What 12 assessments have taught us about getting AI right", by Dwayne Johnson.
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