The guidance landscape: where to start
The central guidance available to public sector AI practitioners is now genuinely excellent. You don’t need to build frameworks from scratch.
The starting point is the AI resources for the public sector collection on GOV.UK, which brings together the AI Playbook, AI Insights series and skills resources in one place. For data foundations, Making Government Datasets Ready for AI sets out practical standards. For transparency and accountability, the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard is now a compliance obligation for central departments and arms-length bodies. The NAO's 2024 report on AI in government remains the clearest independent assessment of what is working and where the systemic gaps lie. And the AI Knowledge Hub publishes real implementation lessons from across public sector.
This guide does not repeat that material. It builds on it.
The Governments AI Playbook: ten principles
The AI Playbook sets out ten principles that should be threaded through every deployment. Where this guide refers to “the ten principles”, this is what we mean.
Posters for each principle are published on gov.uk. They are not a sequence; they should all hold true at the same time.
PRINCIPLE 1
You know what AI is and what its limitations are.
PRINCIPLE 2
You use AI lawfully, ethically and responsibly.
PRINCIPLE 3
You know how to use AI securely.
PRINCIPLE 4
You have meaningful human control at the right stages.
PRINCIPLE 5
You understand how to manage the AI life cycle.
PRINCIPLE 6
You use the right tool for the job.
PRINCIPLE 7
You are open and collaborative.
PRINCIPLE 8
You work with commercial colleagues from the start.
PRINCIPLE 9
You have the skills and expertise needed to implement and use AI.
PRINCIPLE 10
You use these principles alongside your organisation’s policies and have the right assurance in place.
REACH
our change management framework
Every pathway in this guide refers back to REACH, which is our change management framework built on a single insight:
AI change succeeds when individual adoption and organisational enablement move together. Most frameworks address one. REACH addresses both.
REACH was developed in delivery, not in a workshop. It draws on peer-reviewed research in behavioural science and organisational psychology, and has been refined across technology, AI and transformation programmes in both public and private sector organisations. It has five stages, each described from two perspectives: the individual experience, and what leaders must create around it.
Why this matters for AI.
The AI Playbook and the People Factor guidance both make the same point: the hardest part of public sector AI adoption is human, not technical. DSIT's Future of Work Unit exists because identity, trust and labour-market change are first-order risks. The government has also recognised that realising AI's potential requires the public sector and the wider UK workforce to be genuinely capable of using it, which is why the AI Skills Boost programme is targeting 10 million workers with free AI training by 2030. REACH is how we address that at the organisational level as connective tissue across technology, people and outcomes.
Recognise / Rally
Engage / Enable
Acquire / Architect
Capability / Cultivate
