A Greater Manchester council wants to use artificial intelligence as it battles of £16m budget gap.
Bury Council plans to use AI to ‘automate mundane administrative tasks’ and ‘gradually reduce the workforce’.
As part of a £3m ‘strategic workforce review’, council bosses are looking at new technology to phase out vacant manager posts and help reduce reliance on agency staff.
Coun Sean Thorpe, Bury’s deputy leader and cabinet member for finance and transformation, said: “Without continuing to transform the council, we’re going to go under. So we’ve got to look at all possibilities.
“In order to survive we’ve got to embrace this technology. Bury’s scale is a risk and an opportunity. We’re quite a small council, so we don’t have hundreds of resources, which means it’s more of an imperative to embrace [AI].”
The council is proposing the roll-out of various pieces of software tailored to individual departments.
Every directorate has been considered during a ‘robust’ two-year process.
Software ranges from everyday AI assistants like Microsoft Co-Pilot, to specific tools like Magic Notes, a program designed to help social and health workers with note taking.
Others target specific processes like summarising consultation responses – which can take up a lot of officer time as they sift through hundreds of pages of feedback – or automatically sending updates on planning and licensing applications to residents.
The applications won’t result in any immediate redundancies. But Coun Thorpe said that ‘over time’ it will shrink the number of employees at the council by not replacing all staff who leave.
He added: “Just by being more efficient, you can save time. Doing things inefficiently costs money.
“Over time, you’ll reduce your workforce. It would be through natural attrition over time so we can reduce our overheads that way.
“To be clear, we’re not saying we’re going to bring in AI and get rid of all administrative roles, because you still need people in the organisation. But it’s an opportunity for those people to grow and develop in other ways.”
The shift towards AI is not just about cost-cutting, according to the council, but also improving services by ‘taking mundanity out of jobs’. For example, social workers could ‘spend more time with residents solving complex problems in people’s lives’ by cutting out time spent on note-keeping, according to the finance boss.
“It is a bit scary because you don’t know what you don’t know,” Coun Thorpe added. “We want to make sure that when we’re making decisions about implementing AI, they’ve gone through a robust decision-making process.”
The proposals will be discussed along with other cost-saving measures for the budget at a scrutiny meeting on Tuesday, February 10.
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