Transform Gov - the digital government podcast

Public services need to deliver more, for a growing and increasingly complex population, but the people and technology resources available to do it are finite.

Could AI change that?

In Part 2 of her conversation with Transform Gov, Audrey O'Mahony of Accenture gets practical about where AI could have its biggest impact and how we reskill to meet the challenge.

She explains how public-sector CIOs are already looking at AI to compress transformation timelines, increase the capacity of technology teams and rethink software delivery, coding, data migration and testing.

We also hear how AI can change citizen services themselves — including a striking example where technology helped identify vulnerable people hidden within a huge backlog of correspondence, allowing public servants to prioritise those who needed help most.

Where to start: Audrey brings us through the five imperatives for moving from isolated AI tools to genuine end-to-end transformation.

This isn't AI as another productivity tool. It's a conversation about whether AI can give government something it badly needs: more capacity to transform and more capacity to serve.

Missed Part 1? Catch Audrey's earlier conversation on agentic AI, data foundations, and the mindset shift from cost-cutting to capacity.

🎧 Transform Gov is part of the Ireland eGovernment Awards, brought to you in partnership with Accenture.

📅 The Ireland eGovernment Awards and Leadership Summit take place 24 September at O'Reilly Hall, UCD. Find out more at digitalgovawards.com

#TransformGov #AI #PublicSector #FutureOfWork #Accenture

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For decades, Ireland has built its economic identity on being a knowledge economy: highly skilled, highly educated, and a magnet for global investment. Agentic AI is about to test whether that advantage still holds.

Most conversations about AI start with cost – how do we do more with less? Audrey O'Mahony, Accenture's Head of Talent Reinvention for UKIA, argues that's the wrong starting point entirely. Her question instead: what would you do with 10,000 extra employees? Thinking capacity instead of cost-cutting changes what preparing for AI actually looks like.

In Part 1 of this conversation, Audrey talks about what's at stake for Ireland if that knowledge-economy advantage slips, and why government and the public sector have a uniquely important role to play. As adopters of AI, but also as enablers of it across the wider economy.

🔹 The risk to Ireland's knowledge-economy advantage if AI readiness doesn't keep pace
🔹 The mindset shift — why "what would you do with 10,000 extra employees?" is a better question than "how do we cut costs?"
🔹 The public sector's dual role — adopting AI in its own services, and enabling AI readiness across the wider economy
🔹 The foundation — why agentic AI is only as good as the data sitting underneath it
🔹 The real driver of adoption — trust, not training modules

Part 2 coming soon.

🎧 Transform Gov is part of the Ireland eGovernment Awards, brought to you in partnership with Accenture.

📅 The Ireland eGovernment Awards and Leadership Summit take place 24 September at O'Reilly Hall, UCD. Find out more at digitalgovawards.com

#TransformGov #AI #FutureOfWork #Accenture #PublicSector

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ireland's Government CIO Louise McKeever returns for part 2 to talk about what it actually takes to join up government services around citizens.
Louise takes us inside:

🔹 Digital building blocks — the reusable infrastructure (gov.ie, e-forms, payments, messaging, a digital wallet) that means departments don't have to rebuild the same systems
🔹 Leading without authority — how you coordinate a whole government's worth of independently governed departmental CIOs toward one shared goal
🔹 Data as a national asset — and why citizen trust has to come before the benefits
🔹 Digital sovereignty — what "resilience and control" really means for Ireland during its EU presidency
🔹 Life events — how registering a birth, a bereavement, further education and social housing are being redesigned as one simple experience, hiding the departmental complexity behind them

Missed Part 1? Catch Louise's earlier conversation on delivering Intreo and Agile at Scale in Irish government.

🎧 Transform Gov is part of the Ireland eGovernment Awards, brought to you in partnership with Accenture.

📅 The Ireland eGovernment Awards and Leadership Summit take place 24 September at O'Reilly Hall, UCD. Find out more at digitalgovawards.com

#TransformGov #DigitalGovernment #PublicSector #GovTech #DigitalSovereignty

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Louise McKeever started her civil service career as a clerical assistant in 1995. Today, she is the first woman to serve as Ireland’s Government CIO.

In Part 1 of this conversation with TransformGov host Maeve Kneafsey, Louise takes us inside:
🔹 Intreo — how Community Welfare Services, Activation Services and Local Office operations were merged into a single case management model, integrating two commercial providers for the first time, in what may have been the first large-scale Agile programme in Irish government
🔹 Change management under pressure — bringing established specialists onto a new system by treating resistance as a concern for business continuity, not stubbornness
🔹 AI in government, before it was called that — using robotic process automation to clear COVID-era claims backlogs
🔹 AI with humans in control — an NLP tool flagging GDPR anomalies in farm applications, and a satellite-imagery compliance system for Common Agricultural Policy payments, with every payment-affecting decision made by a human officer
🔹 Her own path — from clerical assistant to first female CIO at the Department of Agriculture, to Ireland's first female Government CIO

Part 2 coming soon.

🎧 TransformGov is part of the Ireland eGovernment Awards, brought to you in partnership with Accenture.

📅 The Ireland eGovernment Awards and Leadership Summit take place 24 September at O'Reilly Hall, UCD. Find out more at digitalgovawards.com

#TransformGov #DigitalGovernment #AI #PublicSector #GovTech #WomenInTech

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An Garda Síochána is replacing paper files, ageing technology and fragmented information with mobile devices, body-worn cameras, drones and carefully governed AI.

But transforming one of Ireland’s largest and most complex public services is not simply a technology project. It means changing how thousands of Gardaí work — while protecting public trust, individual rights and the judgement of the officer on the ground.

In this episode of Transform Gov, Maeve Kneafsey goes straight to the source: Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis, strategic lead for organised and serious crime at An Garda Síochána and a Garda officer with more than 30 years’ frontline experience.

Angela explains:
How information-led policing gives Gardaí vital context — including previous incidents, firearms risks and court orders — before they arrive at a call
What happened at Dublin protests when body-worn cameras were introduced, and why behaviour appeared to change almost overnight
Why An Garda Síochána is replacing an interview-recording system that rely on CDs that are no longer being manufactured
How frontline feedback forced the team to rethink and improve a major national investigation system during its rollout
Where drones and AI could help Gardaí work faster and more safely — and where human judgement must remain firmly in control
Why the hardest part of digital transformation is rarely the technology; it is earning the confidence of the people expected to use it

This is a candid and highly practical conversation about modernising a high-stakes public service without losing sight of the Gardaí doing the work — or the people they serve.

🎧Transform Gov is part of the Ireland eGovernment Awards and is brought to you in partnership with Accenture.
📅The Ireland eGovernment Awards and Leadership Summit take place on 24 September 2026 at O’Reilly Hall, UCD. Find out more at digitalgovawards.com.
#TransformGov #DigitalGovernment #AnGardaSiochana #PublicSectorTransformation #GovTech

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.