UK public sector staff are working an average of five hours a week more than they should thanks to inefficiencies in service delivery, new research shows.
Appian's 2025 UK Public Sector Efficiency Survey revealed that virtually all complained of extra work or delays. Extrapolated across the UK's 6.12 million public sector workforce, this adds up to 30.6 million hours of unnecessary extra work every week.
The main sources of inefficiency, the report found, were the number of manual and repetitive tasks workers were required to carry out, the need to access multiple legacy systems to view or enter the same information, and a lack of training and support.
More than nine-in-ten public sector workers said their organization found adapting its processes challenging - particularly when it came to trying to maintain productivity while coping with changing service demands, citizen needs, and government policies.
Six-in-ten workers were enthusiastic about the potential of AI to improve their organization's efficiency, with those in back-office IT roles the most positive, followed by those in citizen-facing services and back-office business roles.
Meanwhile, more than seven-in-ten said they believed that automating repetitive tasks would simplify their jobs and improve efficiency. Virtually all of those that were already using workflow or process automation tools said they were experiencing benefits as a result.
"Every public service organization is built on processes. When those processes improve, so do the services delivered to citizens," said Peter Corpe, industry leader, UK public sector at Appian.
"With millions of hours at stake, automating low-value admin tasks and resolving process inefficiencies offers the public sector a chance to work more efficiently. This means more time for the strategic and value-driven activities that directly impact citizen outcomes."
Long-running concerns over public sector efficiency
Public sector efficiency is very much under the spotlight in the UK right now. A report from the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) earlier this year concluded that legacy technology was crippling productivity and damaging public satisfaction in services.
The report also highlighted the previous government's over-reliance on contractors, which prompted a surge in costs. Similarly, an over-reliance on paper was also highlighted, with some departments managing more than 500 paper-based services.
In its latest budget, Labour called for productivity, efficiency, and savings improvements of 2% across all departments next year, with digitization seen as central to these efforts.
Indeed, the government estimates that it could bring £45 billion per year in savings and productivity benefits.
"The government is clear on its mission to automate processes in the public sector," said Corpe. "AI adoption in the public sector is no longer a question of if but when."
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