The UK Government's recent announcement of its £14bn AI investment plan to drive growth and productivity presents local government with a generational opportunity for change.
With two million employees delivering services that touch every citizen's life every day, we're not just one of many sectors touched by this new national agenda: we're a crucial engine for delivering the transformation and the infrastructure renewal that Britain needs.
Having led HR transformation in local government for over two decades, I've witnessed successive waves of technological change. What's abundantly clear is that while the focus on investment and infrastructure is important, the precondition for success isn't technological: people, culture, vision and organisational transformation is what will get us there.
We must invest in our people. Every employee needs to understand how AI can enhance their role, not just technical teams. This means identifying and delivering the learning and development that will build confidence and capability at all levels
To succeed, we need to be asking the right questions from the outset to ensure the conditions are right for success. How do we create organisations that combine the best of human capability with AI's potential? How do we build confidence in our workforce while developing new skills? How do we ensure this technology helps us engage better with communities currently alienated by traditional approaches?
As we ask with these questions, we must acknowledge the mixed emotions AI prompts in our workforce. At a time when stories are emerging of AI agents replacing whole teams and automation at scale, our people aren't necessarily convinced by the argument that AI will free them from administrative burdens to focus on what matters. Colleagues in social work have genuine concerns about AI replacing their professional judgement. Customer service colleagues question their future role, and service managers worry about leading teams through such fundamental change.
We have an initial argument to win: that AI has the potential to provide more meaningful work and better outcomes for the people they support. But critically, we must look beyond the obvious starting points of automation and efficiency to set out ambitions for fundamental change in the way we work.
Health and social care is in desperate need of reform, so let's consider how care systems can be redesigned around preventative interventions rather than reactive ones. For climate change, AI can help at local level by connecting transport, housing, and environmental services in ways previously impossible. Let's think about bridging the democratic deficit by building genuine insight about those who use our services but are so hard to engage or whose voices aren't heard.
This isn't just about making existing processes more efficient – it's about fundamentally reimagining what local government can achieve.
While starting with practical improvements will build necessary confidence, we must also elevate our horizons. The real transformation lies in empowering our workforce to tackle previously unsolvable challenges in radically new ways.
For this transformation to take place, we as a sector need to grasp the fact that we not only have the right but the imperative to lead and to start making the changes which will help us get there.
We must invest in our people. Every employee needs to understand how AI can enhance their role, not just technical teams. This means identifying and delivering the learning and development that will build confidence and capability at all levels. Success comes when we pair service experts with technical specialists, so we need to recognise the imperative to work across organisational silos for both to learn from each other and innovate together.
We need to reimagine work itself. Many existing processes are ripe for automation, but the first question should be whether we should do them at all, challenging ourselves to think how services could be delivered differently. This means involving frontline staff in service redesign, ensuring their expertise shapes how AI is used. When we engage our workforce in designing the future of their roles, we see higher adoption rates and better outcomes.
We must also collaborate across boundaries. No single council can develop all the capabilities needed. We should create networks for sharing learning, rotating talent, and building collective expertise. The most promising innovations emerge when councils work together, pooling resources and insights.
The prize from AI is significant: more fulfilling jobs for our people, better services for our communities, more efficient use of public resources and improved infrastructure which business and investors value.
Achieving this requires us to be proactive about workforce development and organisational design. So the time to move on this is now.
This means creating development programmes that build AI confidence across all roles. It means establishing cross-council learning networks to share experiences and expertise. Critically, it means building ethical frameworks that put human judgement at the centre.
As HR leaders, we understand that significant change succeeds only with genuine employee engagement and clear purpose. We know how to build capability and confidence in our organisations. These skills are crucial now, and leaders in the corporate core working in transformation, digital and finance roles must draw on them.
Let's not wait as a sector for others to determine how AI will shape our future. With our scale, reach, and understanding of public service values, local government can lead the way in showing how AI can enhance rather than replace human capability. The technology will evolve, but our focus must remain constant: using AI to help our people deliver better services to our communities.
Pam Parkes is PPMA President and Commissioner, Birmingham City Council
