Digital in an AI-era
Digital in an AI-era is responding to change with technology.
In his book The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman, currently CEO of Microsoft AI, talks about the importance of technological breakthroughs helping us meet the most pressing challenges in society, but he also warns about focusing solely on technology:
“The idea that technology alone can solve social and political problems in a dangerous delusion. But the idea that they can be solved without technology is also wrongheaded.”
One of the key themes from my work on Multiplied is that a focus on change with technology is a useful way of understanding digital. I’ve continued to develop this as part of work with leaders and organisations over the past 3 years.
There’s a lot in what we think about as ‘change’ here. I see that as being defined by the challenges organisations face, and then the type of responses required for us to organise, invest, and work in new ways, including how we adapt to new business or service models. It’s about how organisations will be able to deliver the best possible outcomes and create the most impact through their future work.
Breaking down organisational challenges
Responding to any type of change requires the right problem framing. When thinking about the opportunities of emerging technologies, and with UK government priorities to realise these through investment in AI, we need to be able to frame problems through a perspective of how services, and the organisations we’re part of, need to change.
In some of their own words, most of the organisations and leaders I talk to are facing a combination of these challenges:
1. Increasing demand
“We need to change because of increased demand for our services. More people are trying to contact us, and want access to services or support.”
This is the need organisations have to find new ways to meet demand, or to scale the capacity and reach of their services. They might need to create entirely new services and ways of delivering policy to achieve organisational goals.
2. Increasing complexity
“We need to change because the demand for our services or support reflects increasingly complex needs and situations where we’re expected to respond appropriately.”
This is about recognising that not only is there more demand, but there is increasing complexity in the needs organisations are being expected or asked to meet. This is also the need to deal with system complexity, or systems that are fragmented, complex, and next to impossible for users to navigate, such as the difficulty many parents face getting SEND support in the UK education system.
3. Increasing expectations
“We need to change because people’s expectations for how they interact with us are not aligned with our services or how our organisation works.”
This is about recognising that how people expect to interact with organisations is continuing to change, including expectations of different types of support, both human or increasingly digital, automated interactions. There’s also a question of choice here and how modern life pressures demand levels of flexibility and adaptability within services. This includes what could be described as increased need for convenience.
The cost of change
All of these challenges point back to the cost of delivering policy or services. For the UK government, this is currently within the context of departments being asked to identify 5% efficiency savings as part of spend reviews, with expected reduced operating budgets to result from this in the coming years (BBC News report in December 2024). In other areas such as the third sector, organisations are working to deliver and extend the reach of services, but within increasingly challenging financial constraints.
With current funding, existing UK public service infrastructure simply doesn’t scale with demand and complexity, even before we start to think about how it best meets needs or expectations. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), published the book Follow the Money in 2023. As a clear example of system complexity and fragmentation, he describes how Adult Social Care in the UK is made up of 152 local authorities buying care from 18,000 organisations with 34,000 establishments. He goes on to share how Engage Britain research found that half of unpaid carers say they have had to ‘fight’ to get care and one in six of all adults have struggled to arrange care for an elderly relative. The research here highlighting how many people struggled with “knowing where to go and getting into the system.”
Recognising the changing meaning of digital
Many digital leaders, including myself, have previously argued that digital is not really about technology, except now in an AI-era, more than ever, it is. But I think this needs to be seen through a different type of vision or ambition for change.
Just as with education, housing, and health, the challenges presented by social care require a different type response from organisations, and more of a combined response from the systems they’re part of.
The way we must think about responding to these challenges isn’t about technology, but at the same time it is. In the case of solving demand, complexity, and meeting expectations, they’re not technology problems, but the question is how technology can support the transformation of services, and the underlying capabilities and ways of working that support these systems.
As Mustafa Suleyman goes on to describe in The Coming Wave:
“Too many visions of the future start with what technology can or might do and work from there. That’s completely the wrong foundation. Technologists should focus not just on the engineering minutiae but on helping to imagine and realise a richer, social, human future in the broadest sense, a complex tapestry of which technology is just one strand.”
I think this points to the need for a different type of imagining. Something bolder. It’s the need to rethink every part of our systems and what could be possible with technology. We can still be tactical, finding and realising efficiencies in current ways of working (see examples like automated note taking for social workers). But we need a different type of framing if we’re going to truly realise the benefits of AI in transforming the most complex and challenging areas of society.
New expectations for AI-era transformation
Effective change will be determined by how we work with the system and institutional complexity being described here. It will be how we’re able to work with people and teams to transition how organisations work, and the types of tools and technologies they use. Most of all, it will be how we’re able to approach this work with care, applying and evaluating ethical approaches.
It’s this approach to change that I think can determine what successful organisations look like in an AI-era, building on previous understandings of what it meant to respond to change in a digital-era. This is a new type of organisation and system response that needs to be reflected in the culture and mindsets of our organisations if we’re going to be able to adapt and work in new ways – making the most of emerging technologies.
I do think that the UK government is beginning to understand this through its missions, and, as Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology since July 2024, has said: “Technology is the foundation of every one these national missions.” But understanding that, I hope we can continue to see missions such as raising living standards, building more homes, fixing the NHS, and working towards net zero as far more than technology problems, even if each has great opportunities that can be realised through how we understand, design, and deliver future tech.
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.