Productivity by design

The latest State of the Service Report 2024-25 (*3) discusses a public sector system that is lifting capability and strengthening stewardship, with reforms that focus on people, integrity, and delivery. It describes a workforce that is service driven and eager to learn new skills.

However, there are practical pressures that cannot be ignored. Ageing technology is hard to change and costly to secure. Critical data remains locked in silos, and processes reflect legacy system limits. The result is a workday that often feels harder than it should. These challenges flow through to the public in the form of, who experience delays, repeated questions, and decisions that can be hard to understand. If modernisation is going to earn public trust, it must fix these everyday pains in a visible way.

The use of AI across the public sector is starting to move, and for good reason. AI can help employees triage cases, draft correspondence, summarise long files and identify large dataset patterns, offering significant potential to streamline processes and gain efficiencies. But the opportunity comes with challenges. Weak data foundations, governance gaps, and opaque algorithms can erode trust and adoption. Public sector AI must be responsible: transparent, auditable, and supported by human‑in‑the‑loop oversight, especially where sensitive data or high‑risk decisions are involved.

Unlocking the potential from AI requires more than adding technology to the stack. Success demands a fundamental shift in the way agencies organise, operate and deliver services; it is a transformation that considers human–machine collaboration at its core. This will look different across different agencies based on factors such as funding, level of maturity, and risk appetite. It will inform which elements of the organisation can function using AI, a hybrid human-AI or purely human involvement. What might this look like?

Public sector leaders must operate across two horizons: delivering visible value within the current planning cycle while building a digital foundation flexible enough to keep pace with rapidly evolving AI. The good news is that both can be achieved at once.

Value now focuses on the next 6–18 months. Target those journeys where the organisation can save the most time or reduce the most risk. Stabilise the basics. Introduce AI in narrow, safe, and explainable use cases. Measure human outcomes and build trust step by step so staff and citizens feel the improvement.

Flexible foundations require parallel investment in what takes time: consentful data products, strong identity and access controls, common patterns for explainability and human‑in‑the‑loop oversight, and consistent standards for devices and meeting spaces. These elements form a digital core designed for adaptability, not just capability.

This approach respects political cycles, demonstrates value early, and gives government a platform that can scale as AI accelerates.

1. Revisit the Agency’s mission and how it can be achieved with a human-AI perspective

2. Seek to understand how workers experience the workplace and how constituents experience government’s current services. Design to elevate those experiences and meet needs more efficiently with AI.

3. Start with improving the employee experience through AI driven digital workspace and connect it deliberately to achieve better citizen experience.

4. Design the organisation for safe human-machine collaboration and delivery of services through an informed choice of AI models, infrastructure and readiness of data.

5. Measure impact for continuous improvement.

The Treasurer has made productivity the central focus (*5) of the next phase of economic management. He has emphasised (*6) the need to lift the economy’s speed limit by improving productivity, strengthening resilience, and supporting budget sustainability.

A human‑centric, AI‑enabled digital workplace directly advances this agenda. It enables agencies to deliver more public value with the resources they already have. It cuts avoidable costs by reducing rework and accelerating strong decision‑making. It builds staff capability, confidence, and morale. And it establishes shared digital foundations that support cross‑agency collaboration and create a more consistent experience for the public. To achieve this, agencies need a partner who can help them start where they are, focus on what matters most, and build from there.

This is how taxpayer investment becomes visible public value: fewer forms, faster answers, clearer reasons, trusted tools, and services people want to use. That is productivity by design, and it is within reach now.