Many will be wondering whether the Deputy Minister for Innovation, Research and Digitalisation Nicodemos Damianou was joking on Wednesday when he said the government would introduce AI into the public sector to support civil servants in their work. Keeping a straight face after the cabinet meeting, he said this would be “an important step in the process of digital modernisation of the public sector.”
Nobody would doubt Damianou’s sincerity and good intentions, but he displays the type of optimism that would be expected from only someone unaware of the unionised backwardness of the public service. Does he seriously think that public employees would “utilise the capabilities of artificial intelligence” which would speed up the completion of tasks and “allow them to focus on what has rea value.”
Perhaps Damianou is unaware of how long computerisation of the public service took and that there are state services that are still stuck in the fax machine era, requesting documents by fax, which is considered a more reliable means of communication than email. A workforce that has always regarded change as its enemy and the biggest threat to its easy working life is unlikely to embrace artificial intelligence very warmly.
There is strong opposition to any form of modernisation in the public service, because of fears this would lead to job cuts. This was why it took so long for PCs to be introduced to government offices and even once this happened the number of public employees kept rising. Computerisation did not lead to higher productivity and improved efficiency as was the case in most other countries, because this would have put public sector jobs at risk.
And if there is one thing most people recognise is that the use of AI would eventually cut jobs in all sectors, including the public sector. Public servants and their union leaders are aware of this and will have an interest in resisting and then delaying the use of AI, even though the government plans to spend €5m on a “series of actions for the broader adoption of AI in the public sector.” The union has great expertise in obstruction tactics and will use every trick in the book to delay, as long as possible, the introduction of AI.
The government should not spend any money on adoption of AI before it has a strategy for dealing with the reactions by public employees and their union, who will be committed to defending the status quo and preventing work changes that would eventually put jobs at risk. The assumption that AI could be introduced to the public service without any problem is mistaken and could prove very costly if the government does not prepare an implementation strategy.
