根据议会支出监督机构的一份严厉评估，英国政府在推进其人工智能雄心的同时，却在替换老化的IT系统方面拖延不前，这使得各部门容易受到网络攻击。英国下议院公共账目委员会（PAC）主席杰弗里·克利夫顿-布朗（Geoffrey Clifton-Brown）爵士在其第二份年度报告中警告称，尽管人工智能为犯罪分子和敌对国家攻击政府系统提供了新途径，但白厅仍未能解决其长期存在的技术问题。
The UK government is pushing ahead with its AI ambitions yet is dragging its feet on replacing aging IT systems that leave departments vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to a damning assessment from Parliament's spending watchdog. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), warns in his second annual report that Whitehall is failing to tackle its longstanding technology problems, even as AI gives criminals and hostile states new ways to attack government systems.
克利夫顿-布朗写道：“人工智能正像海啸一样逼近政府，我对政府是否为这一巨大挑战做好了准备保持怀疑。”这位保守党议员表示，大臣们已经宣布了旨在提高数字能力的改革，但尚未解释将如何缩小公务员队伍的技能差距，以及何时缩小。他还担心又一次的白厅改组（此次涉及建立商业、创新、科学和贸易部）会让情况变得更糟。
"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 Conservative MP says ministers have announced reforms to improve digital capability but have yet to explain how they will close the civil service's skills gap, or when. He also fears another Whitehall reshuffle, this time involving the creation of the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, will make matters worse.
这些数字并不令人鼓舞。仅有6%的公务员在数字和数据岗位工作，远低于政府10%的目标。高级专家尤其匮乏，公共账目委员会警告称，实现这一目标意味着要招募并留住更多这样的人才。
The numbers aren't encouraging. Just 6 percent of civil servants work in digital and data roles, well short of the government's 10 percent target. Senior specialists are particularly thin on the ground, and the PAC warns that meeting the target will mean recruiting, and retaining, many more of them.
报告指出，还有技术本身的问题。“政府在解决长期存在的传统IT系统问题上也表现出令人担忧的缺乏紧迫感，这些系统给其网络安全性带来了重大风险，并意味着它无法收获新技术的红利。”
And then there's the technology itself. "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 report states.
报告还警告称，生成式人工智能正为欺诈者提供日益复杂的工具，而政府部门则面临着进一步落后的风险。公共账目委员会援引的数据显示，欺诈和失误每年已给纳税人造成约550亿至810亿英镑的损失。
The report also warns that generative AI is giving fraudsters increasingly sophisticated tools, while government departments risk falling further behind. Fraud and error already cost taxpayers an estimated £55 billion to £81 billion annually, according to figures cited by the PAC.
尼·克利夫顿-布朗对减少这些损失的努力也并不买账。英国就业与养老金部估计，其在2025至2026年间因欺诈和失误多支付了99亿英镑的福利，占其支出的3.2%。其计划到2028至2029年将这一比例降至2.8%，但克利夫顿-布朗指出，即使该计划成功，仍将有数十亿英镑流失。
Clifton-Brown isn't impressed with efforts to reduce those losses either. The Department for Work and Pensions reckons it overpaid £9.9 billion in benefits through fraud and error in 2025-26, or 3.2 percent of its spending. Its plan is to get that down to 2.8 percent by 2028-29, but Clifton-Brown points out that even if that succeeds, billions will still be going out the door.
内政部的情况看起来也没有好到哪里去，多年的庇护积压和不断攀升的成本引发了克利夫顿-布朗所称的“适得其反的权宜之计”。内政部和司法部在2024至2025年间在庇护方面花费了约49亿英镑，此后大臣们承诺建立一个全新的系统，但却没有解释该系统将如何运作。
Things aren't looking much better at the Home Office, where years of asylum backlogs and mounting costs have prompted what Clifton-Brown calls "counterproductive quick fixes." The Home Office and Ministry of Justice spent around £4.9 billion on asylum in 2024-25, and ministers have since promised an entirely new system without explaining how it will work.
在此批评声发出之际，“开放权利集团”的数字权利活动人士已呼吁内政部废弃其人工智能庇护工具，原因是担心其准确性、透明度和人类监督。
That criticism comes as digital rights campaigners at Open Rights Group have called for the Home Office to scrap its AI asylum tools over concerns about accuracy, transparency, and human oversight.
在其他方面，该报告再次提醒人们，政府的IT现代化往往容易出问题。以国民储蓄与投资银行（NS&I）为例，该银行为削减运营成本，于2020年开始对其IT系统进行大修。截至2024年12月，其价格标签已达到令人咋舌的30亿英镑，比最初预计的高出13亿英镑。该项目自2022至2023年以来一直被评为红色，这意味着成功交付的可能性不大，且国民储蓄与投资银行甚至无法向议员提供最新的支出数字或切合实际的完工日期。
Elsewhere, the report offers another reminder that government IT modernization has a habit of going wrong. Take National Savings & Investments (NS&I), which began overhauling its IT in 2020 in the hope of cutting running costs. By December 2024, the price tag had reached an eye-watering £3 billion, £1.3 billion more than first expected. The project has been rated red since 2022-23, meaning successful delivery looks unlikely, and NS&I couldn't even give MPs an up-to-date spending figure or a realistic completion date.
相比之下，英格兰银行成功以4.31亿英镑对其实时总额结算系统进行了大修，并在2025年4月完成了这项工作。公共账目委员会对此印象深刻，因而将其建议直接针对白厅而非该银行，并暗示大臣们或许应该做一下笔记。白厅可以从将这些经验教训应用到其现有的系统开始。
The Bank of England, by contrast, managed to overhaul its Real-Time Gross Settlement system for £431 million, finishing the job in April 2025. The PAC was impressed enough to direct its recommendations at Whitehall rather than the Bank, suggesting ministers might want to take notes. Whitehall could start by applying those lessons to the systems it already runs. ®