Co-Founder, Stealth Labs · Former Microsoft · Former Civil Servant
It has a procurement problem.
I've spent a decade on both sides of the table. Managing government budgets, sitting across from vendors at Microsoft, and now building the kind of AI company that government actually needs: one that ships before it slides, and delivers before it charges.
"You're paying for presence, not progress." The Government AI Gap
I started my career as a civil servant. I managed teams, owned budgets, and sat through more vendor demos than I care to remember. I know what it feels like to desperately need a solution and be unable to buy one. Not because the technology doesn't exist, but because the procurement system wasn't designed for it.
From there I moved to Microsoft, where I became Azure's AI lead for regulated industries. I spent years on the vendor side helping government, defence, and financial services organisations navigate AI adoption. That experience taught me the other half of the problem: the delivery model is as broken as the buying model.
In 2024, my co-founder Steve Chan and I founded Stealth Labs. We deliberately rejected the consulting playbook: no six-month workshops, no half-million-pound discovery phases, no slideware. We prototype first, we charge when it works, and our goal is to make ourselves unnecessary as quickly as possible.
I write The Government AI Gap because the conversation around government and AI is dominated by people who've never sat inside Whitehall, or never had to sell into it. I've done both. The gap between what government needs from AI and what it's currently able to procure is one of the most significant constraints on public service delivery right now. Most of the people who could fix it don't yet understand what's broken.
Years across government & defence
Former Azure AI Lead, Regulated Industries
Security cleared, sensitive environments
DOS, ACE & G-Cloud 14 framework supplier
On AI, government, and the gap between the two
The accumulating drag of a procurement system that wasn't built for the pace AI is moving at is, right now, one of the most significant constraints on what government can deliver.
ReadGovernment has a billing problem, and it's killing innovation. A problem solved in three weeks generates £75k. Stretched to three months? Over £300k. The commercial model rewards presence, not progress.
ReadThree things would have to change. Procurement timelines matched to AI lifecycles. Security assurance frameworks built for AI, not retrofitted from legacy processes. And leaders who normalise fast and imperfect over slow and perfect.
ReadA high pilot success rate in government would be a bad sign. It means we're only testing safe, obvious things. The problem isn't failure. It's that pilots fail slowly, expensively, and without anyone learning anything.
ReadWhat I couldn't tell vendors when I worked in government. The buyer isn't your adversary. They want to make better decisions. They're navigating the same broken system from the inside. Most vendor approaches make their job harder, not easier.
ReadHow AI is transforming service delivery, predictive analytics, and cyber defence across the UK public sector, and why the barriers preventing SMEs from contributing to public sector innovation have to come down.
ReadQuantum technology is here. The UK's position in the global quantum race and the case for aggressive funding, talent strategy, and a serious commitment to becoming a quantum superpower.
ReadTwo bets on how government AI should work
AI for Government & Regulated Industries
We build bespoke AI applications for the public sector: multi-agent systems, agentic workflows, intelligent automation. Zero upfront cost. We prototype first, charge when it works, and our end goal is to make ourselves unnecessary.
"We want to get away from slideware. We're not a consultancy that spends six months and half a million pounds just to get to a prototype."
Predictive Location Intelligence
AI-powered forecasting that combines GPS, IoT, weather, and behavioural data to predict movement and activity patterns before they happen. Actionable intelligence in under five minutes.
Built for the environments where knowing what's coming next isn't optional.
If you're inside government trying to move faster, or outside it trying to sell in. I've been in both seats. Let's talk.