Public sector organisations must move beyond “conversational AI [artificial intelligence]” to “full transformation”. Those that do, and redesign workflows around advanced AI technology, report average efficiency gains of 68%, against 40% for basic users, with productivity and decision-making improved.
Those are among the messages – and claimed benefits – delegates heard at this week’s AWS Public Sector AI Symposium in London, where Amazon Web Services (AWS) set out its UK investment plans and explained the adoption gap it argues still holds the government back.
Cloud giant AWS reiterated its £8bn commitment to build and operate UK datacentre infrastructure between 2024 and 2028, which it estimates will contribute £14bn to the economy and support 14,000 jobs a year. Amazon already claims a total UK workforce of about 75,000 people.
Research AWS commissioned with Strand Partners found 58% of public sector organisations have adopted AI. Of those, 71% report significant or transformative productivity gains, and 52% say AI has already improved decision-making.
But only 31% have reached the most advanced stage of use – combining multiple models, building custom services, and deploying agentic and autonomous AI – against 24% of all UK businesses. Closing that gap could unlock an estimated £35bn in additional growth by 2030, which AWS likens to the economy of Manchester “sitting on the table waiting”.
David Appel, acting vice-president for worldwide public sector at AWS (pictured), said: “When organisations use AI to redesign workflows, accelerate decision-making, and build entirely new products and services, they report average efficiency gains of 68%, compared with just 40% among basic users.
“We call it production, not preview,” he added. “Not AI as a concept, but AI in action.”
The keynote name-checked AWS-supported production deployments across the public sector. These included: NHS Online, which will let patients receive planned specialist care from a digital NHS trust by the end of 2027; Genomics’ Mystra platform, which lets scientists query genetic data in natural language; surgical intelligence firm Proximie, which claims to recapture nearly a quarter of operating theatre time; and the Ministry of Justice, which used AWS Transform to modernise a legacy application in about 20 hours of developer time rather than an estimated nine-plus months of manual work.
AWS also cited its “sovereign by design” credentials, pointing to its Nitro architecture, and a £15m AI Security Institute alignment project with Amazon and Anthropic.
