Agentic AI & Public Service Automation

Chatbots answered questions. Agentic AI does the work — managing casework, processing applications, and resolving citizen inquiries with minimal human intervention. This panel brings together digital leaders from central government, local authorities, and the NHS to examine what it genuinely takes to move from experimentation to autonomous deployment at the frontline, and where the line between efficiency and risk actually sits.

• What separates a truly autonomous agent from a more sophisticated chatbot — and why the distinction matters for citizens
• Real deployment lessons from frontline services already trialling agentic casework automation
• How major city councils are balancing efficiency gains against service quality and public accountability
• What GovTech providers see as the next frontier for autonomous public service delivery

Autonomy, accountability, and ambition define this opening session. Join us to explore how public services can move beyond the chatbot era and into genuinely transformative automation.

When an algorithm helps decide who gets housing support, benefits, or planning permission, fairness isn't optional — it's foundational to public trust in government itself. This panel brings together policy, academic, and governance expertise to examine how bias creeps into algorithmic decision-making, and what safeguards are needed to keep AI-assisted decisions accountable, transparent, and fair.

• Where algorithmic bias most commonly enters decisions on benefits, housing, and planning applications
• What DSIT's Responsible Technology Adoption Unit sees as the biggest emerging risks in public sector AI
• How the CDDO is shaping national standards for ethical, accountable algorithmic decision-making
• Academic and consultancy perspectives on building governance frameworks that actually hold up in practice

Fairness, transparency, and public trust sit at the centre of this discussion. Join us to explore how government can deploy algorithmic decision-making without ever compromising on accountability.

Agentic AI is only as capable as the data it can access — and across government, that data is still trapped in legacy systems never designed to talk to modern AI tools. This panel tackles the unglamorous but essential groundwork of data infrastructure, bringing together national data leaders and cloud architects to map out what it actually takes to make government-scale data AI-ready.

• Why legacy infrastructure, not algorithms, remains the biggest blocker to public sector AI adoption
• What the National Data Library project reveals about data strategy at a truly national scale
• How large local authorities are approaching the cleaning and migration of decades of legacy records
• What global cloud providers are learning about preparing public sector data environments for AI at scale

Infrastructure, patience, and ambition run through this entire session. Join us to explore how government can turn its most fragmented asset — data — into the foundation for a genuinely intelligent public service.

Technology adoption in government succeeds or fails on the people expected to work alongside it. This panel confronts the human side of the AI transition directly — addressing genuine staff concerns about displacement, the skills the civil service will need to build, and how trust in AI tools can be earned rather than mandated from the top down.

• Addressing the elephant in the room: what AI automation genuinely means for civil service roles
• How Civil Service HR is building digital capability programmes fit for an AI-augmented workforce
• The PCS union perspective on representing staff concerns as automation accelerates
• Lessons from workforce transformation specialists on managing cultural change without losing staff trust

People, trust, and partnership anchor this closing session. Join us to explore how the civil service can bring its workforce with it — building an AI-augmented future that staff help shape, not simply inherit.