The Cabinet Office and 10 Downing Street have launched a new round of the No. 10 Innovation Fellowship Programme indicating a strong focus on AI and automation.
This is the second round of the programme aimed at bringing high level talent from the digital and technology sector into the Civil Service.
Fellows work on six to 12-month secondments with the possibility of an extension, working in small teams on projects that are judged to be technologically challenging, highly impactful and deliverable within a year.
The call for applications for the new round states: “Advancements in AI provide a generational opportunity to reimagine how government works, drive efficiency and generate better value for money, improve equality of access. If done well, it will enable us to generate a huge leap forward in the way we deliver services to the public.
“Therefore, this year we are recruiting predominantly AI and automation specialists. We are looking for the best technical talent in the country to join us and help drive this revolution, harnessing the power of AI to transform government and improve the lives of the people we serve.”
Solving public problems
It says there is a particular interest in applications from people with direct experience in applying AI and strong digital skills used to solve public problems.
But it emphasises that it wants to find a diverse group from areas such as social purpose technology companies, larger tech firms and data scientists with a special interest in privacy preserving machine learning.
It also highlights achievements from the first round of the programme, which was launched in 2021, in a handful of areas. These include: using real time insights to safeguard vulnerable children; building a community health API to identify infectious diseases; creating a data enabled solution to support clinical research; developing a health data infrastructure for research; and developing a digital, data and technology strategy for the Department for Education.
