Cabinet Secretary’s AI Innovation Award launched

The Cabinet Secretary has launched an AI Innovation Award to recognise civil servants who use technology in innovative and responsible ways.

The award will be presented quarterly, with winners receiving vouchers, a signed certificate, and the opportunity to showcase their work to ministers. The initiative was announced in a blog post in which Cabinet Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo called on civil servants to adopt a new proactive mindset and laid out plans to incentivise high performance across government.

Romeo said: "Pride comes from working for an organisation that is genuinely excelling - from doing excellent work yourself, and from knowing that what you do changes lives.

"Building a culture of pride that comes from high performance means we need to recognise and reward that performance, and also tackle poor performance where it exists."

Winners will be selected from a shortlist of civil servants nominated through anonline application process. Nominations close on Wednesday 22 July.

The award forms part of a wider government effort to encourage innovation and the adoption of new technologies across the civil service. This was one of three priorities set out by Romeo, alongside a renewed focus on excellence in delivery and building and maintaining trust in government services. The priorities were launched under the slogan: "Make it happen. Make it better. Make it count."

As part of the attempt to encourage innovation and technological adaptation in the civil service, each department is also putting in place plans to scale up adoption safely and responsibly, while also building in-house AI engineering capability. The government is introducing new AI training programmes and working to provide civil servants with access to a wider range of AI models, which Romeo said would help staff use their time more effectively.

The blog post also highlighted a number of broader reforms aimed at improving performance across the civil service. These include the work of the new Delivery Unit, which is intended to remove barriers to achieving the prime minister's priorities, as well as plans to modernise training programmes, pay structures, talent management systems, and recruitment processes.

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