UK will pilot AI government procurement guidelines co-designed with World Economic Forum

The United Kingdom Government announced it will pilot newly-developed artificial intelligence procurement guidelines it co-designed with the World Economic Forum.

From the announcement:

Governments want to acquire AI solutions to streamline processes and provide insights into key sectors such as transportation, healthcare and public services. However, officials often lack experience in acquiring such solutions and many public institutions are cautious about harnessing this rapidly developing technology at a time when we are only beginning to understand the risks as well as the opportunities.

Growing public concerns around bias, privacy, accountability and transparency of the technology has added an extra layer of complexity to a potential roll out on a national level. The AI Procurement Guidelines for Governments have been designed help officials keep up with this rapidly developing technology and mitigate the risks.

The guidelines were co-designed by the World Economic Forum’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning team and fellows embedded from UK Government’s Office of AI, Deloitte, Salesforce and Splunk. Members of government, academia, civil society and the private sector were consulted throughout a ten-month development process, which incorporated workshops and interviews with government procurement officials and private sector procurement professionals.

The report provides the requirements a government official should address before acquiring and deploying AI solutions and services. It also provides the questions that companies should answer about their AI development and how the data is used and processed. The guidelines also include explanatory text elaborating on how to implement, key questions to ask and case studies.

More: UK Government First to Pilot AI Procurement Guidelines Co-Designed with World Economic Forum