\n<\/p>\n
Google has agreed a sweeping deal with the UK government to provide free technology to the public sector from the NHS to local councils\u2013 a move campaigners have called \u201cdangerously naive\u201d.<\/p>\n
The US company will be asked to \u201cupskill\u201d tens of thousands of civil servants in technology, including in using artificial intelligence, as part of an agreement that will not require the government to pay. It is considered in Whitehall to be giving Google \u201ca foot in the door\u201d as the digitisation of public services accelerates.<\/p>\n
However, the agreement prompted concerns about the precariousness of UK public data potentially being held on US servers amid the unpredictable leadership of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said Google Cloud, which provides databases, machine learning and computing power, had \u201cagreed to work with the UK government in helping public services use advanced tech to shake off decades old \u2018ball and chain\u2019 legacy contracts which leave essential services vulnerable to cyber-attack\u201d.<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s services are considered more agile and efficient than traditional competitors, but there are concerns in Whitehall\u2019s digital circles about the government becoming locked into a new kind of dependency.<\/p>\n
Other US tech firms including Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic have also been providing services to civil servants as they attempt to harness technology to boost the efficiency of cash-strapped public services.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, met two of Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s most senior lieutenants, Meta\u2019s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, and the head of its global business group, Nicola Mendelsohn.<\/p>\n
During the pandemic in 2020, Palantir, a tech firm founded by the libertarian Trump donor Peter Thiel, provided services to the UK government for \u00a31 and in 2023 it won a \u00a3330m deal to create a single platform for NHS data.<\/p>\n
DSIT also said Google DeepMind, the tech company\u2019s AI division, which is led by the Nobel prize-winning scientist Demis Hassabis, would \u201ccollaborate with technical experts in government to support them in deploying and diffusing new emerging technologies, driving efficiencies across the public sector, including accelerating scientific discovery\u201d.<\/p>\n
But with ministers and government regulators facing pressing decisions on how to regulate AI, search, cloud computing and copyright, Martha Dark, the co-executive director of Foxglove, a non-profit organisation campaigning for fairer use of technology, said: \u201cHow is the government going to be able to hold Trump-supporting US big tech giants to any kind of serious account on this \u2013 or any other issue \u2013 after we\u2019ve given Google the keys to the data kingdom? It\u2019s hard to see this as anything other than dangerously naive on the part of Peter Kyle [the science and technology secretary] and government as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other experts said the agreement could \u201centrench the market power\u201d of a company such as Google and leave the UK government reliant on the technology from giant firms. Kyle, who announced the deal at a Google event in London on Wednesday, said \u201cwherever possible, UK technology companies \u2013 large and small \u2013 [will] get a fair shot\u201d at winning public tech contracts.<\/p>\n
The opportunity secured by Google was not put out to public tender as no money was changing hands, a government source said. DSIT said: \u201cThese arrangements will operate in full compliance with all applicable public procurement laws, and may be subject to future commercial agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle has held 11 meetings with representatives of Google since Labour took office, according to departmental registers up to the end of March.<\/p>\n
The government said the agreement does not grant permission for Google to train AI models on government data or access the data for other purposes. It also said data could only be stored overseas when satisfactory legal and security measures were in place.<\/p>\n
Google said it offered clients control of where their content was stored and processed, including in partnerships with independent infrastructure providers or through \u201cair-gapped\u201d systems that provide an extra layer of protection.<\/p>\n
Kyle has said he wants to \u201cexploit the full potential of a partnership between government and Google, with much more collaboration between their UK AI lab, DeepMind, and my own AI developers\u201d.<\/p>\n
There have been signs of new technology delivering efficiencies in the public sector. A recent trial of Microsoft\u2019s AI Copilot tool, provided with a discount, by 20,000 civil servants found it saved them 26 minutes a day on average, according to a government study, and 82% said they did not want to return to previous working practices.<\/p>\n
But Imogen Parker, an associate director at the Ada Lovelace Institute, a research body focused on ensuring technology works for society, said the deal raised questions about the UK\u2019s digital sovereignty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public needs to understand what Google is getting from this partnership and what the return will be for taxpayers in years to come,\u201d she said. \u201cDeals like this might look like good value for money today, but they risk lock-in tomorrow \u2013 limiting our ability to seek alternatives in future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle has previously been accused of being too close to big tech, and he opened his speech by saying he pleaded guilty to the \u201ccrime\u201c of meeting tech executives far more than his predecessor, after it was reported by the Guardian.<\/p>\n
\u201cI make absolutely no apologies for meeting with technology companies \u2013 that\u2019s the job,\u201d he said, adding that it was important for keeping children safe on social media, making sure Britain was prepared for developments at the frontier of AI, and securing better deals for the taxpayer for the billions of pounds spent every year on technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Google has agreed a sweeping deal with the UK government to provide free technology to the public sector from the NHS to local councils\u2013 a move campaigners have called \u201cdangerously naive\u201d. The US company will be asked to \u201cupskill\u201d tens of thousands of civil servants in technology, including in using artificial intelligence, as part of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1185,1359,696,2016,2984,3369],"class_list":{"0":"post-10414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-campaigners","9":"tag-dangerously","10":"tag-deal","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-governments","13":"tag-naive"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}