The UK government is racing ahead with artificial intelligence initiatives while dragging its feet on upgrading outdated IT infrastructure that exposes departments to cyberattacks, according to a scathing evaluation from Parliament's Public Accounts Committee released this week. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the committee's chair, warns in his second annual report that Whitehall continues to ignore longstanding technology weaknesses even as AI hands criminals and hostile nations fresh methods to breach government networks. Ministers have announced improvements to digital capability but haven't clarified how they'll eliminate the civil service's talent shortfall, or set a timeline for doing so.

The staffing picture reveals a stark deficit. Only 6 percent of civil servants currently hold digital and data positions, well below the government's 10 percent objective. Senior experts are especially scarce, and the PAC cautions that hitting the target will require recruiting and keeping far more of them. Fraud and error drain taxpayers of an estimated £55 billion to £81 billion each year, the committee notes. The Department for Work and Pensions calculates it overspent £9.9 billion on benefits through fraud and error in 2025-26, representing 3.2 percent of its budget, with plans to reduce that to 2.8 percent by 2028-29. The Home Office and Ministry of Justice together spent roughly £4.9 billion on asylum in 2024-25. Meanwhile, National Savings & Investments' IT modernization project, launched in 2020 to cut operating expenses, had ballooned to £3 billion by December 2024, £1.3 billion beyond initial projections.

"AI is approaching government like a tsunami, and I remain sceptical that government is prepared for the enormity of this challenge," Clifton-Brown writes. The report states that "government is also showing a worrying lack of urgency in addressing the long-standing issue of legacy IT systems, which create significant risks for its cyber security and mean it cannot reap the benefits of new technologies." The Conservative MP also expresses concern that another Whitehall reorganization, this one creating the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, will compound existing problems. The committee chairman isn't satisfied with efforts to shrink those losses, pointing out that even if the Department for Work and Pensions meets its 2028-29 target, billions in taxpayer money will still vanish annually.

The report warns that generative AI is handing fraudsters increasingly advanced capabilities, while government agencies risk sliding further behind technologically. The National Savings & Investments overhaul has carried a red rating since 2022-23, signaling successful completion appears doubtful, and the agency couldn't provide MPs with current spending figures or a credible finish date. In contrast, the Bank of England replaced its Real-Time Gross Settlement system for £431 million, wrapping up in April 2025—a performance that impressed the PAC enough to aim its recommendations at Whitehall rather than the Bank. Years of asylum backlogs and rising expenses have triggered what Clifton-Brown labels "counterproductive quick fixes" at the Home Office, where ministers have pledged an entirely new system without detailing how it will function. The committee suggests Whitehall could begin by applying the Bank's lessons to the systems it currently operates. For departments racing to embrace AI while patching decades-old infrastructure with skeleton digital teams, the choice between innovation and security may prove illusory. Organizations that split focus between tomorrow's technology and yesterday's vulnerabilities often find they've mastered neither.