Establishing AI Procurement Standards for Public Services: Centre for Digital Public Services, Welsh Government and Cyd

The Welsh Government is committed to using AI for the public good. The Welsh Government, the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS), and Cyd, all play key roles in ensuring this happens responsibly and effectively, that efforts are coordinated and that lessons learned are shared broadly. 

Recognising the transformative potential of AI in public services, CDPS emphasises the importance of a standards-based approach to governing delivery of new or redesigned digital services funded by Welsh public sector organisations, which includes AI procurement. This involves setting clear guidelines and criteria for evaluating AI solutions, ensuring algorithmic transparency, accountability, and ethical considerations are embedded throughout the procurement journey, and multidisciplinary teams are diverse and inclusive, and work in the open.

Results

As part of and during the year that followed the CDPS webinar series on AI, we provided awareness-raising and upskilling for public officials covering: 

• The public sector digital commercial context in Wales (legislation, regulation and policy) 
• The ever-changing digital, data and technology landscape, and the importance of situational awareness, e.g. making and maintaining value-chain maps, using prototypes to test what best meets users’ needs, allowing for evolution, and using foresight approaches to help deal with uncertainty and change
• Digital commercial fundamentals, i.e. good practice, whatever the procured technology 
• Process-based governance frameworks and auditability, and testing AI models
• Promoting a culture of integrity, responsible innovation and responsible business conduct
• The importance of ensuring that teams developing and deploying AI capabilities have a diverse mix of people, experience, expertise and disciplines, and decisions are made as a team. 

This enabled the Welsh Government and CDPS to draw on best practices and collaborate with stakeholders across the public sector, to better understand how to develop and implement standards-based governance of commercial and pre-commercial procurement, to enable the sensible adoption of AI to improve public service delivery.  

Let’s Build Better Procurement, Together

At Posterity Global, we work with public sector leaders who want procurement to be strategic, future-ready, and drive social value for money.

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