Mr. Barry Lowry:

We try to have accelerated processes, but one of the things we are always aware of, in the context of government, is that we are custodians of the public purse. People will say things like, "How much is it okay to invest in an experimental project in respect of which you do not get a return on the investment?" In some respects, the answer is "Zero" because it is taxpayers' hard-earned money we are spending. We therefore try to put checks and balances in place.

If I may give an illustration I touched on earlier, before the Deputy came in, we did two proofs of concept in OGCIO on how we could use AI to better manage our knowledge management systems. That included not only what we call structured data, that is, reports that were published and in the public domain, but also just things like emails, Word documents and so on that we have ourselves. The technology had moved on so much by the time we had written the report that we realised we could use Copilot and not go to the cost of curating a place and an AI tool that would be accessed. People just use Copilot on their desktop. They choose the documents they want to use to get the advice on and they drop them into Copilot and it works seamlessly. That is an example of a degree of fairly cheap experimentation leading to an active use of Copilot. Before Copilot was introduced in our Department, we developed a policy for the use of AI. That policy set out the rules and guidelines about what it can and cannot be used for. It is in a secure part of the cloud which we rent and procure. It is deleted after a certain amount of time and so on. All those checks and balances are in place, but it is sort of a decision cycle whereby you try to be innovative and try to put the technology in people's hands but where you also try to put guardrails and safety mechanisms in place.