What is it?

This resource is a report that LOTI commissioned from Faculty, identifying a shortlist of artificial intelligence (AI) opportunities in housing services for council officers and others interested in the potential of AI to deliver public services better.

There are seven short-listed opportunities, each of which have a one page assessment of their technical feasibility, impacts and risks, alongside a set of recommendations for councils at large to be better users of AI.

Why did we create it?

Council services are under incredible stress, and in the last 18 months, AI has been increasingly touted as an opportunity to help solve some of the problems facing councils. However, councils may lack the capacity individually to identify what opportunities they should prioritise, and can feel so overwhelmed by AI hype that they can’t identify where the real value might be.

Therefore, LOTI members asked LOTI to research what might be good, feasible solutions to using AI in particular high impact service areas: housing and adult social care respectively.

The use cases described within the report were identified and prioritised with the help of officers from across the service areas within LOTI members, meaning that these use cases are likely to be ones that council officers think will be high impact.

LOTI hopes that this report will help steer innovation with AI in this service area in an impactful and responsible direction.

Who should use it?

This resource should be useful for anyone involved in housing services, or more broadly interested in how AI might transform public services, including but not limited to:

• Council officers working in housing services
• Council officers working in digital or technology roles
• Public servants interested in wider lessons for how they might use AI
• Technologists interested in developing genuinely useful solutions for government