The pressures on Scotland’s public services are increasing. The national mission to eradicate child poverty and drive economic growth continues, against targets for a 20% cost reduction in corporate functions.
Workforce reductions cannot solve skills shortages. Organisations across Scotland battle acute gaps in essential roles including social care, where an aging workforce and competitive labour market make recruitment difficult.
Against this backdrop we must define the role of AI in public services. It is not about mass replacement, or a cheap substitute for essential human skills. Consider it a vital partner for workforce redefinition. We are not filling gaps with robots; we must eliminate the administrative burden stopping talented public servants delivering the high value, high empathy roles they signed up for.
Start with non-value added tasks
Think about your daily work. Chances are, a large portion is spent on data entry or sifting through documents. These tasks sap time and energy.
AI Agents are the digital colleagues that action those administrative tasks. If you had 10 tireless digital colleagues to take on that load, where would you deploy your first three?
Three such Agents that create immediate impact, and mature to do more, are:
- Back Office Agent
- Use Case: A local council receives c1,000 invoices weekly. Human staff manually cross reference compliance with Scottish procurement rules. A resource intensive process prone to error.
- Immediate Impact: The Agent delivers 90% of routine invoice processing, cross checked by a human.
- Maturity: The human assisted payment process evolves to automatic payment with AI checks.
- Citizen Service Agent
- Use Case: A citizen calls an NHS helpline asking for expected wait times for an outpatient procedure. Staff manually search multiple systems and may consult clinical staff.
- Immediate Impact: The Agent is an expert 24/7 digital assistant, providing accurate guidance by harmonising approved NHS sources. This frees up clinical staff.
- Maturity: The Agent learns to proactively identify citizens who may be eligible for specific services and sends personalised, preemptive follow up communications.
- Policy Insight Agent
- Use Case: A government department is drafting policy to support economic growth. Staff spend weeks sifting through Scottish legislation and regulatory frameworks.
- Immediate Impact: The Agent rapidly synthesizes vast knowledge repositories, providing civil servants with an informed sounding board in minutes.
- Maturity: The Agent integrates real time service delivery data and citizen feedback to model and predict the societal impact of proposed policy changes.
The Exponential Velocity of AI: Why Your Partner Matters
Achieving maturity will not happen overnight, despite the huge potential. As your organisation moves faster with AI than traditional IT delivery, AI changes even faster. What you deploy today may be outdated in months; where do you place your bets?
Investing in custom built AI is a huge risk. The smart choice is using a governed platform continuously updated by a vendor with the R&D budget to stay ahead of the curve.
The Salesforce Agentforce platform delivers:
- Continuous R&D: Agentforce is continuously updated, ensuring your agents always run on the most capable and secure models, protecting your investment.
- Trusted Guardrails: It is built with auditability as a first principle, logging decisions and governing AI access to your trusted data.
- Low code Advantage: The platform is designed for rapid configuration with clicks, ensuring you scale quickly without specialist AI experts.
The journey to transformational AI in Scotland is about intelligent augmentation, not simple automation. It’s about redefining your organisation to take advantage of AI safely, building public trust to deliver greater services.
Where would you deploy your first three Agents?