The Milltown Tech Policy Conversation #3: Tony Blair on reimagining government for the technology age
Welcome to issue number three of our newsletter!
With the help of some of today’s most influential and interesting tech policy thinkers, each month we dive into a different theme to try and answer some of the big questions facing tech policy and responsible innovation professionals.
This month, we heard from Former Prime Minister Tony Blair on how to turn radical policy ideas into reality, and how governments need to adapt for the technology age.
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In this issue:
The Conversation: Tony Blair, former Prime Minister and founder of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
The Milltown POV: a stock take on the UK tech policy landscape as Parliamentary recess draws to a close and we move ever closer to a general election.
Mark your diaries: our Responsible AI research, with Clifford Chance, launches this month with events for policy, communications and legal leaders in London, Dublin, Brussels, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C.
The Conversation: Tony Blair on reimagining government for the technology age
Tony Blair is Former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He founded the Tony Blair Institute on the belief that a country’s success and ability to enact transformational change is dependent on the effectiveness of its leadership and governance. We spoke to him as part of Milltown Partners’ tenth anniversary celebrations.
Highlights:
Technology is the big real world change that's happening right now and we need big policy ideas about how governments can adapt to seize the opportunities this presents.
We haven’t yet seen governments completely reimagined for the technological age. Some governments like Estonia, France, Israel, Singapore and parts of Africa - grasp the importance of technology. But we need to fundamentally rethink what government does with technology and its interaction with citizens. We need to reshape healthcare systems, education systems and welfare systems. Working out the exact detail of this is a big challenge. But until we do, we will not have the productivity growth or services to meet citizens’ evolving needs and expectations.
This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. We now have a lot of lessons around how you operate in government: how you take the right strategic decisions; how you develop policy; and so on. The purpose of writing the recent New National Purpose reports with William Hague, a former Conservative politician, was to say: this is not about traditional party politics of left and right - it's about understanding the way the world is changing and how you reposition government to take advantage of it.
Most government departments are nowhere near where they need to be to grasp the magnitude of the change that’s coming with AI, and the necessity of reshaping government around it. We need new institutions and, more importantly, a reorganisation of government led from the centre.
In today’s era of innovation, governments need technology specialists in addition to civil service generalists. If I were back in government today I would bring in people from the outside. I would have a much easier flow between the public and private sector. And I would be developing specialist skill sets, particularly around technology.
You can read the full interview HERE.
The Milltown POV: the state of play of UK policy and politics
Will the UK catch Europe in the race for regulation? Heading into what the polls are predicting will be the last year(ish) of the Conservative government, UK tech policymakers find themselves in a strange place. For years they considered the EU machine to be woefully inefficient at producing new legislation. But now UK policymakers must look with envy at the relatively smooth passage of both the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, given the major issues still to be ironed out in the Online Safety Bill and strong hints that No.10 will be intervening either on the competition bill, or OSB, or both, to make the UK more ‘innovation friendly’.
Labour under the tech policy spotlight. For Labour, all action (or indeed inaction) will be scrutinised for hints of what the implications are for a future Labour government. Starmer’s reshuffle yesterday led to the appointment of Peter Kyle as Shadow DSIT Secretary - Kyle will have a lot to get up to speed on very quickly which may delay any direction on tech policy from Labour. While the election will not be won and lost on tech policy (sorry to break it to you), Starmer will present this new team as a Cabinet-in-waiting, so engagement over the coming months is an opportunity both to shape the conversation as Kyle gets up to speed on current issues, and help define priorities for a future Government. However, the appointment suggests that Starmer would follow Sunak's machinery of government changes - which will likely be positive for industry in the long run.
While both parties will want to keep some of their policy powder dry, conference season offers an opportunity to at least set out their vision for Britain in broad terms - and Britain's leading role in developing new technologies could be part of that vision.
Making AI work for government. While the Government is already staking a claim as a leading voice in how to regulate AI, this challenge may be dwarfed by the task of reorganising government to harness the potential of new technology. It's an issue that's unlikely to be a vote winner (just as well, as our interviewee Tony Blair says we'll have to look beyond traditional party politics to tackle it), but as the party leaders consider how and where to expend their political energy, how to make AI work for government could prove one of the more consequential decisions facing them. The opportunity cost of inaction, at least, looks high.
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