AI Essentials Workshop - April 2026

This report sets out a framework for UK leaders and policy makers on building robust AI systems, organised around four interconnected pillars: security and adversarial resilience, reliability and performance, data integrity and quality, and operational resilience. It explains why AI systems are inherently more fragile than traditional software due to their statistical nature, opacity, and expanded attack surface and provides practical, evidence-based guidance on addressing each risk area. The core message is that good practice reduces risk but does not eliminate it, and that ongoing monitoring after deployment is just as critical as pre-deployment testing.

1st March 2026

This month we are looking at the UK’s AI readiness. The UK government spends £26 billion every year on digital technology. It employs nearly 100,000 digital and data professionals. It has been running large-scale digital transformation programmes for over thirty years. Given all of that investment and accumulated experience, what percentage of the government's major technology programmes were assessed as "Green" (i.e., successful delivery is considered highly likely) in the government's own review, published in January 2025?

Have a guess. How about 70%? 50%? 30%?

The answer is 9%.

Less than one in ten. And those same technology programmes are 60% more likely to be rated "Red" (i.e., successful delivery is considered highly at risk) than non-technology projects sitting alongside them in the same portfolio.