Speakers: Dr James Lapping & Piers Walker, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology
Abstract: A digital heap of a large public sector organisation typically consists of billions of messages and hundreds of millions of documents. Every one of these messages and documents will be in a container of some sort – for example an email account, a site or a drive. There are orders of magnitude less email accounts than messages. There are orders of magnitudes less sites/drives than documents.
AI can be used to support decisions made at the container level. Acting at the container level improves the scalability of a scarce resource in any digital heap programme – the expertise of recordkeeping professionals acting as humans-in-the-loop.
This talk describes approaches and data science experiments that are being worked up in Government Digital Service in DSIT with a view to providing practical ways of implementing the principles set out in the AI Insights guide Using AI to manage the digital heap.
This work includes
- the development of a set of steps for the use of AI in the review and processing of content created on shared drives
- data science experiments to break email accounts into smaller sub-containers. Such a capability could help an organisation establish a pipeline for the appraisal and sensitivity review of an email account that it deems likely (in whole or part) to have historical value
Bios:
Dr James Lappin
James is senior policy lead on digital knowledge and information management in the Office of the Government Chief Data Officer in GDS within DSIT. He coordinates the cross-government AI for GKIM group and helped draft the AI insights guide Using AI to manage the digital heap. James has worked in archives and records management in the UK and Europe for over 30 years. He was awarded a PhD by Loughborough University in 2023 for his thesis The science of record keeping systems. He is the author of the Thinking Records blog.
Piers Walker
Piers Walker is Data and Technology Lead in the Data Innovation and AI Readiness team at the Government Digital Service. A Chartered Engineer, his experience spans analytics, data science, and technology management. He has designed and tested AI systems, co‑authored the HMG AI Playbook to support responsible AI adoption across government, and currently leads work on AI readiness.