The Public Sector Transformation Board

The Draft Budget proposes that £95 million Resource DEL will be set aside across the budget period to support projects recommended by the Public Sector Transformation Board. The Workers Party believes that this money will be used as part of project managing a smaller, cheaper state while using the technocratic argument that technology (AI in particular) should be recognised as central to driving efficiencies and improved outcomes.

It should be noted that the use of information technology does not always produce optimal outcomes. For example, in Scotland HMRC’s automated processes for identifying Scottish taxpayers initially failed to identify 400,000 Scottish taxpayers. In relation to AI, it is important to insist that humans have the ability to review and override AI-derived decisions within the NI public sector. AI is unable to reason or make a decision as humans would and AI is not a neutral technology.

As Marxist scholar Jathan Sadowski notes, “many of the most consequential decisions made by social services, welfare agencies, and public assistance programs are made with the help of - if not largely outsourced to - a diverse arsenal of [AI generated] risk scores. They are among the most insidious tools … public social services around the world have implemented some of the most severe forms of [AI] risk governance, which treat already disadvantaged populations as threats that must be identified, tracked, managed, investigated, and neutralized”.

Although outside the terms of the draft Budget, the Workers Party places its criticism of AI in the public sector within the context of our opposition to the construction of ever-larger data centres and our support for public ownership of technological infrastructure rather than corporate interests.

We also note that trade unions and working civil servants (apart from the Head of the Civil Service) are absent from the board. Since "transformation" involves changes to working conditions, staffing levels, and service delivery, workers and their representatives should be on this Board.

The PSTB and the Department of Finance are in control of the "transformation" and "recovery" funds, and the Workers Party demands these grants to be tied to mandatory trade union recognition.