A day at Government Transformation Summit 2026

This year the Transformation Summit returned to its former home Church House, flanked by Westminster Abby and Parliament street, the building is steeped in the history and tradition of a bygone era. A fitting juxtaposition perhaps for an event looking forward in a period of fundamental change for both Government and the world around us.

The event focused on a series of keynote presentations, panel sessions and roundtable discussions centred around transformation, technology and how the Public Sector must continue to evolve and adapt to the challenges and opportunities that the future holds.

The initial sessions placed an emphasis on the importance of increasing public trust, with a wider awareness of the reality of transformation, in the sense that it rarely stops, and so the need for Government to keep up with the rate of change has arguably never been more of a challenge.

AI remains a focal point across Government

While Government technology for citizens has improved dramatically over the last 15-20 years, AI presents a generational opportunity to simplify everything, although the skillsets, mindsets and culture will be critical to enabling this opportunity to become a reality.

First we heard from Samantha Jones OBE, Perm sec from DHSC, who delivered an insightful keynote, focused around reimagining health delivery for better outcomes, where harnessing technology to drive the improvements needed was fundamental. The entire country uses health system in some form, and there is an ambitious plan to shift everything relating to health from analogue to digital in the next ten years, with the NHS app set to become the front door to everything relating to the NHS for citizens.

In the following session, James Mitton, Chief AI Officer from HMRC built on Samantha Jones’ thoughts from more of a technical perspective, highlighting the need for building the right capability being central to the ability of AI to able unlock opportunities and ultimately improve real-life situations for citizens. He expanded with a particularly important point, that while AI is groundbreaking, without the correct adoption you can end up going round in circles without making any progress, which is something that many organisations we’ve been speaking to, both in the public and private sectors, are seeing at the moment.

Alongside adoption, he stressed that ability to move at pace is what underpins the most successful organisations around the world, with the combination of having the foundations in place and enabling people to use the technology they need being essential for delivering key changes and developments quickly. His vision of speed being a leadership choice as opposed to a constraint was something I found particularly thought-provoking, and he went on to highlight the need for empowering individuals, making key decisions and creating an environment that allows for meaningful progress to be made.

Matching the ambition with the resources underpinned the session, and Mitton also shared how he’d studied the way large organisations such as Amazon and Netflix have innovated and adopted AI. I found it interesting to hear the way he’d looked outside of Government for inspiration, with the obsession around the impact on the end-user of the two global companies offering plenty of useful learnings for his department.

An interesting theme I noticed that ran throughout the whole day was the notion of prioritising and allowing for experimentation, with the need for both a culture and mindset shift to allow greater testing and learning, which is necessary to not only deliver greater impact to citizens, but to do this in a shorter timeframe.

The need to break down silos and share data more effectively has been a talking point I’ve noticed at a number of Government-related events we’ve attended over the last year, and remains a key challenge across the public sector as it continues to modernise. From disconnected systems and misalignment to slow processes and ultimately a suboptimal user experience for citizens in many cases, the need to use data more effectively presents an ongoing, complex challenge across Government, and demonstrates that the environment being created to enable innovation to take place is as important as the need for the innovation itself.

Trust underpins the outcome of every successful initiative

The recognition that collaboration is essential in order for transformation initiatives to succeed remained present throughout the day, with other themes such as modernising legacy systems and learning from successful projects that delivered measurable outcomes consistently present in each of the discussions and presentations we attended. This linked closely to the topic of discussion at the roundtable sessions we hosted during the event, where the RedRock team looked at AI use cases from across the public sector that enable departments to scale responsibly and identify high-impact opportunities.

Several speakers highlighted the challenge of balancing innovation with accountability, with the need for transparency and appropriate governance key concerns, together with responsible practices being a key priority for citizens. Ensuring there is a genuine reason to introduce or build an AI tool is dependant on a deep understanding of the user needs, which links back to the importance of ensuring it makes genuine, measurable improvements to people’s lives.

The sessions revealed that the attitude is increasingly shifting from the question around can AI be used, to how can it be used responsibly and effectively, demonstrating an awareness of the need for tangible benefits, together with the need to deliver them in an honest manner.

The human element and the importance of the human intervention required to ensure anything developed by AI stays in line with the original requirements and end user needs of a project was acknowledged in a number of the sessions we were present at, which links back to the importance of understanding where it will add value and where it integrates into existing services before projects begin.

Looking forward with optimism

It was apparent just how far reaching the impact of AI has been across the Government landscape, as a presentation in the early afternoon looked at how it is being used to transform transport data and improve the services used by citizens throughout the country. The scale of the project was striking to me, in both its complexity and ambition, while the key principles of data sharing, creating a consistent, holistic view of data to improve user needs and changing the culture around embracing new technology, demonstrated ambition as well as a focus on the ethical side of AI usage.

Embedding data into the sector and linking with other departments demonstrated many of the themes covered throughout the day being put into practice, while there was an awareness that the project is underpinned by technology that is moving at pace.

From a government perspective, the key aim of AI adoption is to make departments more productive and outline exactly how AI initiatives are benefiting the citizens they serve, as outlined by Phil Swan from DSIT. He reminded us all in the audience that the combination of having the right people, the right technology and the right skills is absolutely crucial to the success of any transformation project, and stressed the importance of collaboration and data sharing, echoing the thoughts of various earlier speakers throughout the day. A later panel session built on this point, emphasising the need to develop and build the right team to ensure the capability is in place in the organisation, before then looking to scale the technology once the foundations are in place.

One thing I noticed at the event was a sense of optimism for the future with AI, especially now we’re starting to mature in terms of our understanding and integration of AI into everyday working life, as the opportunities it will present in the coming years will be truly groundbreaking.

As one speaker noted, reality will set the pace with or without us, and Government must be willing to learn quickly, foundations, focus relentlessly on outcomes and embrace technology responsibly in order to succeed with future transformation initiatives, ensuring that citizens sit at the heart of every decision. A brilliantly insightful day for the RedRock team at this year’s summit, leaving us and the other attendees with plenty of reasons to be optimistic for the coming years when it comes to technology, while for me personally, it was a brilliant opportunity to continue learning about the intricacies of digital transformation in Government, an area I’ve found particularly interesting since joining the company.