Automation could transform the public sector more than any other – that's a good thing

We have all endured, at some point in our lives, the rigmarole of trying to get an appointment with a GP. The process invariably involves multiple phone calls, listening to mind-numbing hold music, followed by a fraught negotiation with the receptionist. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the job most people want to see automated is that of a GP’s receptionist.

Cases like these are why we at the TaxPayers’ Alliance are calling for a rapid increase in the pace at which public services are automated. If the technologies available and on the horizon were enthusiastically embraced by the public sector, the standard of services would improve dramatically. At the same time, the cost of their provision would be substantially reduced.

However, despite the many benefits of automation, it has been much less enthusiastically received in the public sector than in the private sector.

Many in government departments and local authorities are reluctant to automate services due to concerns about job losses. The rollout of automation across the public sector has been disjointed and lags behind the private sector. This has led to public dissatisfaction, with only 29 per cent of people thinking that their council was embracing the opportunities provided by new technology.

So the public sector has much potential to benefit from automation. Professors Frey and Osborne at Oxford developed a clever way of determining the susceptibility of tasks to computerisation. In collaboration with Deloitte, they have estimated that up to 861,000 jobs in the UK’s public sector could be automated by 2030.

This transformation could eventually yield staff cost savings of up to £17 billion annually in public sector staff costs when compared to 2015. This works out at more than £620 per household every year, which could be spent on other priorities or left in peoples’ pockets.

Public sector workers will also benefit. The type of tasks most easily automated often involve repetitive and uninteresting activities. Automating these tasks opens the way to redeploying the staff, with retraining, into more productive and rewarding jobs.

The UK has proved highly successful in recent years in creating these new jobs which are usually more complex, social and creative. The very nature of these jobs means they are less susceptible to future automation and therefore more sustainable.

Those who leave the public sector as a result of automation will find new and better jobs in the private sector. Not only will this benefit the workers, but will also be a great boost to the private sector as they will help to plug the skills shortage.

Productivity in the UK, and in particular in the public sector, is lower than in other advanced economies. There is disagreement among economists as to why productivity has stagnated globally, and why productivity in the UK is particularly low. The cause is likely to be multifactorial with issues such as the restrictive planning system, high levels of taxation, and transport congestion all contributing factors.

However, embracing automation will increase productivity not just in the public sector but also contribute to an overall increase in productivity growth across the economy. It is estimated that widespread adoption of automation using AI technologies has the potential to increase productivity in the UK by 25 per cent.

No discussion about automation would be complete without thinking about the impact that it will have on the labour market. In recent years there have been numerous voices expressing their fears that automation will cost untold numbers of jobs.

Perhaps the most well-known example of the opposition to new technology is that of the Luddites. So strong was the fear that new machinery would result in their livelihoods being lost, the textile workers destroyed the new machinery in the mills of nineteenth-century England.

Yet, we can see that this did not happen. The Industrial Revolution saw the introduction of new labour-saving devices and technology and resulted in some jobs becoming obsolete, true. But it also led to new, safer, better jobs being created, the economy growing and living standards increasing.

Not only has this been true throughout history, but it has also been the case in the 21^st century. Between 2001 and 2015, technology made over 800,000 jobs in the UK obsolete, but it also created around 3.5 million new ones.

Automation will displace some jobs, it always does. However, it will create new, better, more interesting ones. The government should push ahead with automating the public sector. Everybody will benefit as a result, and not least of all because the quality of the public services we consume will increase.

This is the future of high-quality, sustainable public services, and Britain should embrace it.

Andrew Allum is chairman of the TaxPayers' Alliance

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