The AI Adoption Gap: What's Holding Public Sector Organisations Back?

Everyone is talking about AI, yet adoption remains surprisingly low across many public sector organisations. While countless tools promise productivity gains, many teams are still struggling to move beyond individual experimentation and isolated use cases.

Ross Mardell, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Verto, will lead the discussion as he explores why AI adoption has stalled, where it currently sits on the hype curve, how organisations can start to use it to identify meaningful return on investment, and why the future of AI lies far beyond helping individuals complete tasks faster.

Drawing on his experience building AI capabilities for programme and portfolio management in government and public sector environments, Ross will discuss how AI can support strategic decision-making, portfolio prioritisation, and organisational delivery at scale. The conversation will examine the challenges of measuring value, balancing risk and innovation, and creating the trusted data foundations needed for AI to support outcomes rather than simply generate activity.

Listeners will gain practical insight into where AI is genuinely delivering value today, why many AI implementations fail to progress beyond pilot stages, and what organisations should be doing now to prepare for the next phase of AI adoption.