Public Procurement of AI - Enabling Innovation and Managing Risks?

In this June 2025 online session of the Oxford Procurement of Government Outcomes Club (Oxford POGO Club), we will explore how public procurement can support, or hinder, the responsible adoption of AI in government, examining the tensions between innovation and accountability, and the evolving capabilities needed to navigate this complex and fast-moving landscape. All are welcome! View past previous sessions and learn more about the Oxford POGO Club here.

As AI becomes a cornerstone of digital transformation in government, public sector organisations face a new frontier of procurement complexity. This session will explore how public procurement can support, or hinder, the responsible acquisition of AI technologies. We’ll examine the tensions between fostering innovation and ensuring accountability, the unique challenges of safety, security, and risk in AI systems, and what meaningful transparency and KPIs might look like in practice.

This is a significant challenge and successful AI procurement will require a new set of enhanced capabilities and approaches to market interactions. The UK Government has been working on centralised programmes, such as 'Test and Learn', an incubator for AI (i.AI), or a newly-announced National Digital Exchange (NDX). Local government organisations, such as the Local Government Association, have issued guidelines and are fostering knowledge-exchange initiatives. At the moment, it is unclear what this will mean for AI procurement in the longer term.

Should AI procurement be centralised for efficiency, or decentralised for context? And what does ‘responsible AI’ mean when outcomes are uncertain and evolving? How should we collectively develop helpful knowledge repositories and how could we best ensure dissemination of emerging best practices while learning from the unavoidable mistakes and failures in such a fast-paced developing area?

Our excellent panellists are: 

• Prof Albert Sanchez Graells, Professor of Economic Law, University of Bristol Law School
• David Knott, UK Government Chief Technology Officer
• Saema Jaffer, Head of Commercial Policy and Capability, UK Parliament
• Dr Cari Miller, Head of AI Governance and Research, The Center for Inclusive Change
• Dr Gisele Waters, Co-Founder, AI Procurement Lab
• Kaye Sklar, Senior Program Manager for Content and Insights, Open Contracting Partnership
• Dr Mavis Machirori, Senior Researcher, Ada Lovelace Institute
• Rachel Coldicutt OBE, Founder and Executive Director, Careful Industries

This online session is co-hosted by the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law and the Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab) in the Blavatnik School of Government.