Sync NI Magazine October 2025

Why Big Data Belfast 2025 matters more than ever

WhenForeword

Dr Scott Fischaber CEO, Analytics Engines

we launched Big Data Belfast in 2014, the market was fulminating around ‘big data’, the value this could leverage for an organisation, and what it could mean for Northern Ireland's tech ecosystem. Eleven years on and (to borrow a popular phrase) every company is now a data company and Northern Ireland has a rich data ecosystem.

But will every company become an AI company?

This year's Big Data conference, taking place on 22 October at ICC Belfast, arrives at a pivotal moment. Organisations are no longer asking whether they should adopt AI. They're asking how. That distinction matters enormously, and it's precisely why this year's agenda is focusing less on the potential and optimism, but more on operational execution and AI’s tangible real-world business benefits.

Greg Jackson, CEO and founder of Octopus Energy, leads our speaker lineup. His company has transformed Britain's energy sector through intelligent application of AI and data analytics, processing 30 times more data than Visa handles globally for payments. But Greg’s approach isn't about pursuing a single ‘big AI brain’ - it's about distributed optimisation across millions of connected devices.

We've assembled panels that tackle the questions organisations are genuinely grappling with as well as looking at benefits for wider society and Northern Ireland. We will hear from organisations across the spectrum from multinationals to local SMEs – learning first-hand how data and AI are being used to reshape businesses.

John Keers from Ulster University's Centre for Legal Technology will explore agentic AI in judicial decision-making. Our healthcare panel, featuring representatives from RQIA and the Public Health Agency, examines how natural

language processing is being applied to quality improvement in health and social care while Paul Brook from Dell will look at how AI is being used to tackle skin cancer.

Cat McCusker from PwC, our headline sponsor, joins Prof Helen McCarthy, Northern Ireland's first Chief Scientific and Technology Adviser, and Jean-Christophe Desplat from ICHEC to examine AI's opportunity for Northern Ireland specifically.

At Analytics Engines, we've spent nearly two decades helping organisations unlock value from their data. We understand that the gap between AI awareness and AI implementation remains substantial. Companies need more than technology - they need strategy, governance frameworks, and practical solutions that deliver demonstrable value without requiring wholesale transformation. That's why we've developed AI agents for rapid deployment, bespoke solutions for complex challenges, and strategic consulting that meets organisations wherever they sit on their AI journey.

This event wouldn't be possible without the support of organisations deeply invested in Northern Ireland's future. PwC, our headline sponsor, joins supporting sponsors including the Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre, Allstate Northern Ireland, AMD, DailyPay, Dell Technologies, GreenScale, Informatica, MCS Group, Microsoft, Momentum One Zero, Options Technology, and Version 1. These organisations represent the strength and breadth of our ecosystem - from global tech leaders to homegrown innovators, financial services to specialist recruitment, research institutions to enterprise solutions providers. Their backing reflects confidence in Northern Ireland's AI and data capabilities, and their presence at the conference ensures delegates can engage directly with the companies shaping the sector's future.

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Inside this edition

How Analytics Engines is cutting through the noise and reshaping AI adoption

AI: Northern Ireland’s moment to lead

The future of legal is here

Transforming the energy sector: How Octopus Energy is revolutionizing customer service and grid management with AI

Building trust in technology: Why responsible AI matters for everyone

The culture revolution driving Allstate NI

Why nine out of ten AI projects end in failure

Northern Ireland at the crossroads: Seizing the AI opportunity

How Rapid7 and Queen's University are forging the future for cyber security

EY's Richard Thompson on AI's next evolutionary leap

Aflac Northern Ireland climbing to new heights for The Children’s Cancer Unit Charity

Place-based innovation across the country will power the UK economy

Building enterprise GenAI infrastructure: Lessons from Liberty IT's digital transformation

Danske Bank: Leveraging AI to enhance colleague and customer experience

The impact of AI on the cybersecurity industry in NI

Innovation at Pivotal SecPlus - Shaping the future of cash management

AI in action: From hype to real-world results

How Northern Ireland can harness AI to unlock productivity and drive sustainable economic growth

How Analytics Engines is cutting through the noise and reshaping AI adoption

F

lash back two years ago and Scott Fischaber spent a considerable time educating potential clients about AI’s possibilities. Today, the CEO of Belfast-based Analytics Engines fields constant enquiries from organisations that understand AI’s importance but are paralysed by not knowing how to start.

"There's a lot of noise out there for people to contend with and new announcements every day," says Scott. "But once you start to talk about the kinds of projects we've actually delivered and the value they are creating, people realise we understand this space and they're in good hands."

The market is transitioning away from education and pilots and into implementation and operationalisation. Analytics Engines - founded in 2008 with nearly two decades of expertise in complex data challenges - is positioning itself in that gap and guiding customers to leverage practical, real world business value.

"We do prior research on the organisation and see what their core proposition is," Scott says. "We tailor it each time, as every data challenge and every business's operating context is different. We have ideas, but customers know their business best, so we invite them into a process of co-design where they feel they’re struggling and where the real pain points might be."

Qubis provides one example of progression from strategy to implementation. Following an AI workshop in January, the organisation moved through proof-of-concept work to prove technical feasibility and set the foundations for a business case and are due to launch a pilot with 10 external organisations next month. Construction group McAvoy meanwhile embarked on an “immersive strategy” engagement – where an AI Engineer is embedded with the company to deeply understand business operations before coming back with recommendations covering governance, policies, skill gaps, adoption roadmaps, and training needs.

“Often companies are really interested in going further but require assurance that everything is going to be underpinned with safety and governance," says Scott, a certified data ethics professional. “That's why we bake ethical frameworks into our methodology from the get-go.”

Alongside bespoke client solutions, Analytics Engines have developed reusable AI agents now being delivered as part of larger solutions. “What started out as virtual assistants, either stand-alone or embedded inside a business application, have expanded as the ability of these models has improved” says Scott. “Having specialised task agents for specific operations, orchestration agents to pull it all together, and QA agents to ensure quality – combined with a strong governance framework and human-in-the loop review is becoming an increasingly common pattern, so having high quality agents

we can drop into these solutions is key to rapid deployment and reducing risk for our customers.”

The agents represent the middle ground between fully custom development and off-the-shelf software. They handle complex tasks - continuously scanning for research developments, automatically generating metadata for large document repositories, serving the right content to the right peoplebut deploy relatively quickly.

Utilising these, Analytics Engines has been working with Limerick City and County Council, Dún LaoghaireRathdown County Council, and Microsoft in the development of an AI-powered tool for summarising public consultation responses. The tool addresses a genuine bottleneck where planners face a statutory 12-week deadline to process and summarise each public response to planning consultations.

"In the normal course of things, this is manual, time-consuming work that requires significant planning resources,” says Scott. “The AI automates the summarisation whilst keeping planners in control - they review, edit, and confirm every output before it's finalised.”

Initial pilot phase usage suggests approximately 40% reduction in time required with more expected as it is more deeply integrated into their existing workflows. This frees teams for more complex analytical work and represents a replicable model that could be adapted across local authorities.

The firm is currently working with organisations as far afield as Australia and the USA to develop custom machine learning models for communications, IoT, and computer vision applications.

Analytics Engines is also preparing trials with universities and accessibility

organisations in Europe and Latin America. The timing aligns with the European Accessibility Act that came into effect in June, creating both regulatory pressure and genuine need for organisations to ensure digital content meets accessibility standards.

“In response to the Accessibility Act, we have been able to spin up a new solution and go-to-market quickly," says Scott. “We’ve received some excellent initial feedback on the value we’re aiming to generate. We’ve seen the time taken to get MVPs into customers’ hands reduced with current technology and we are using this to quickly launch new scalable solutions when we see an opportunity”.

Big Data Belfast returns on 22 October for its eleventh year, expecting over 800 delegates with headline sponsors PwC. Greg Jackson, CEO and founder of Octopus Energy, features alongside speakers from Microsoft, Dell Technologies, AMD, Allstate, and DailyPay.

“When we started Big Data Belfast back in 2014, Northern Ireland's tech ecosystem was still taking shape," says Scott. "We've since hosted speakers from Netflix, McLaren F1, Disney+, Liverpool FC. But the real value isn't just in the marquee names - it's the collaborations that happens between sessions."

Big Data New York launched in April 2025 at Business Insider in New York City with Big Data Dublin shortly thereafter in June 2025 at Microsoft Ireland's headquarters, bringing together over 250 delegates and 30+ expert speakers. "Big Data Belfast has always been about connecting people," says Scott. "We don’t need to be the smartest people in the room - we're interested in getting the smartest people into the room together and seeing what happens when they start talking to each other."

Based on customer engagements and interactions around Big Data Belfast, Scott has developed a clear view about where organisations actually sit versus where they need to be.

"People are still dipping their toes in the water at the moment, and they're looking at maybe one or two pieces of their entire business," he says. "The winning companies in the future are going to be those that look across their businesses and try to understand how they can transform that business using AI."

Dublin-based Deanta, a leading publishing solutions provider operating in academic, STEM, legal and professional markets, is doing just that. They are reshaping their own business and envisioning a new publishing ecosystem where data is used to drive decisions and AI is harnessed throughout the process to enable seamless communication throughout the publishing workflow. The team at Analytics Engines are helping them through this process, from ideation, proof-of-concept delivery, and operationalisation of AI tools within their Lanstad production workflow platform.

As organisations move from AI awareness to AI implementation, Analytics Engines’ accumulated knowledge across a range of sectors is proving to be a key differentiator.

“The gap between where companies think they should be with AI and where they actually are remains substantial,” says Scott. “So we deliberately set out to understand intimately how a customer is operating, only then can our team come in behind a company to provide genuine guidance and direction.”

In a market still crowded with noise, that positioning - close enough to understand the anxiety around AI, and experienced enough to provide critical guidance - is proving to be Analytics Engines' competitive advantage.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping how we live, work, and learn. For Northern Ireland, this isn’t just a technological shift - it’s a generational opportunity to redefine our economic future, close the skills gap and build a society that thrives on innovation and inclusion.

At PwC, we see AI as a catalyst for transformation across every sector. From healthcare and manufacturing to education and public services, AI is unlocking new efficiencies, enabling smarter decisionmaking, and creating entirely new business models. But the real power of AI lies not just in the technology itself - it’s in how we choose to apply it.

Northern Ireland has the talent, ambition and resilience to lead in this space. We have phenomenal thinkers and doers – from scientists spearheading world leading medical research to directors creating films for the big screen. Our universities are producing world-class research, our start-ups are pushing boundaries and our communities are hungry for new opportunities. What we need now is a bold, coordinated strategy that puts people at the heart of AI adoption.

AI: Northern Ireland’s moment to lead

That starts with skills. The pace of change demands a workforce that’s agile, digitally fluent and ready to adapt. Yet we know the skills gap remains one of our biggest challenges here in Northern Ireland. Our recent PwC Good Growth for Cities report highlighted that although Belfast is improving, we continue to lack in skills, particularly for those aged 25 and over.

These skills are really setting

the tone of the workforce for the jobs of tomorrow. AI won’t just replace tasks - it will redefine roles. That means reskilling and upskilling must become part of our everyday business strategy. At PwC, we’re embedding AI literacy across our teams, helping people understand not just how to use AI, but how to lead with it. For myself, that has meant using AI to help me collaborate, lead my team and organise my day –

giving me more headspace to think about the problems that really need solved for businesses here in Northern Ireland.

To truly harness AI, Northern Ireland must invest in the digital foundations that support innovation - high-speed connectivity, secure data environments and ethical governance frameworks. We must create spaces where public and private sectors can collaborate, experiment, and scale solutions that work for our unique context.

But perhaps most importantly, we need vision. AI is not just a toolit’s a mindset. It challenges us to think differently, to solve problems creatively and to build systems that serve everyone. That’s why I believe Northern Ireland can be more than a fast follower - we can be a global leader in adoption for this new technology.

At Big Data Belfast 2025, I’ll be sharing how we can make that vision a reality. I’ll explore the practical steps businesses can take to integrate AI, the policy levers that can accelerate adoption, and the partnerships that will drive inclusive growth. Because when we get this right, AI won’t just transform our economy - it will transform lives.

The future of legal is here

Mike Willis and his teams at PwC are helping legal professionals transform their operations at scale from the heart of Belfast. Mike discusses the value in embracing technology in this sector

The legal profession is at a turning point. For decades, innovation in law meant incremental improvements: digitising documents, centralising repositories, and automating templates. Each delivered value, but none brought the volume of change now underway. Generative AI is operational and transforming how legal services are delivered at pace.

At PwC, we see this not as adopting a tool, but as rethinking how legal teams work, create value and focus on higher-order tasks. Our global alliance with Harvey, the pioneering legal and professional services AI platform, puts us in a unique position to help clients embrace this responsibly, effectively and most importantly, with ease.

The PwC & Harvey Alliance

In 2023, PwC announced an exclusive alliance with Harvey, making us the only Big 4 firm with direct access to the platform. Since then, we have gone beyond proofs of concept to deliver real solutions. From launching our Tax AI Assistant, to building AIenabled tools for M&A due diligence, we have shown that AI is already creating measurable impact in often complicated regulated domains.

For legal teams, this means more than faster review. Harvey delivers insights across Legal, Tax and M&A domains that is enriched with PwC’s expertise. The platform is designed to operate in the real world, with workflows built around the activities that teams perform every day. This is AI applied within frameworks designed for regulatory scrutiny, auditability and professional responsibility.

Harnessing Harvey’s Workflow Builder

Harvey’s Workflow Builder allows legal teams to design and automate end-toend processes. It enables connected tasks such as contract triage, compliance checks and due diligence into structured workflows that run consistently and at scale.

PwC helps clients unlock this potential: mapping processes, configuring workflows and overlaying governance so Harvey operates within clear boundaries. AI is not just providing answers, but executing repeatable tasks, escalating exceptions and integrating into wider systems.

AI in PwC managed services

We are not only advising clients on Harvey. We are embedding it into PwC’s own managed services across contract management, compliance monitoring and regulatory reporting. This shows how AI drives resilience, scalability and quality assurance at enterprise level.

This is not about replacing people but augmenting them. Our teams combine Harvey’s speed and consistency with human judgment, ensuring services remain efficient and trusted.

For many clients, seeing Harvey in action

within PwC is as valuable as the advisory support we provide. It is living proof that AI can be integrated safely into legal delivery.

Trust, governance and quality

No discussion of AI in legal can ignore trust. PwC’s Trust in AI framework underpins how we design, test and deploy AI solutions. We emphasise transparency, fairness, explainability and accountability, all of which matter when AI is applied to legal work.

We work with clients to set guardrails: defining which tasks AI should handle, where human oversight is required and how outputs are validated. Quality assurance and auditability are built in, giving legal teams confidence in their processes.

By combining Harvey with PwC’s legal and regulatory expertise, we enable adoption that is ambitious yet responsible. This is not about replacing judgment but equipping legal teams with tools they can trust within governance structures that stand up to scrutiny.

The future of legal

Legal functions are shifting from reactive, document-driven units to proactive, insight-generating partners. Generative AI, through platforms like Harvey, underpins this transition.

The disruption of legal by AI is happening now. Those who embrace it thoughtfully will define the profession’s future. Through our partnership with Harvey, and tools like Workflow Builder, PwC is guiding clients through this shift, blending technology, legal expertise and managed services to create a new paradigm for delivery.

The future of legal is here, and it is powered by AI.

Transforming the energy sector: How Octopus Energy is revolutionizing customer service and grid management with AI

Octopus Energy Group, Britain's largest energy supplier has transformed the energy sector through innovative use of artificial intelligence and data analytics.

What started as a vision to modernize an industry running on decades-old technology has evolved into a digital transformation that's reshaping both customer service and grid management. Greg shares how data insights from the company’s enterprise software platform has contributed to an energy revolution in the UK and is set for global expansion.

Jackson's journey into the energy sector began with a frustrating realization. After building enterprise software for various industries, he and his co-founders discovered a troubling pattern: most companies failed to extract real value from their technology transformations. Projects consistently ran over budget and behind schedule, often leaving businesses fundamentally unchanged.

"We came up with a new model for enterprise software, and we decided which sector of the world could we most transform with this," Jackson explained. "Utilities were our first thought. It's a $3 trillion sector, and it's running on mainframes and 50-year-old software."

The response from traditional utilities was telling. About half dismissed their ideas entirely, while the other half

expressed interest but insisted someone else should take the risk of going first. This prompted Jackson's team to take an unprecedented approach: they would simultaneously build Octopus as an energy company while developing Kraken. The proprietary technology platform would demonstrate what a digital native technology utility could achieve harnessing the power of big data.

Kraken lies at the heart of Octopus Energy's success. A single platform that integrates everything from meter readings to customer communications, financial transactions, statements and billing. This unified approach represents a stark departure from the fragmented systems typical in the energy sector.

The impact on customer service has been remarkable. Octopus Energy now holds more five-star reviews on Trustpilot than any other company in the UK across all sectors, and is the only energy company rated above average by its customers.

Octopus Energy's embrace of AI for customer service began in earnest following the November 2022 release of ChatGPT. By January 2023, they had implemented AI customer service for a small percentage of customers. By May 2023, nearly half of all customer communication’s direct support was being aided by artificial intelligence.

The results surprised even Jackson's team. While operations

staff initially expressed concerns about AI accuracy, customer satisfaction data revealed a striking reality: "The AI got a 65% satisfaction rating, while our brilliant team got 55%, so the AI is working," Jackson revealed.

Processing the massive amounts of data required for modern energy management demands sophisticated AI systems. Octopus Energy uses artificial intelligence to create forecasts for every generating point and smart meter, updated continuously for up to two years in advance.

This capability becomes crucial when dealing with renewable energy's inherent variability and intermittency. Rather than trying to force wind and solar power into traditional "rectangular" output patterns, Jackson advocates embracing their natural fluctuations.

"When it is windy and sunny, you've got an abundant resource with no input cost," he explained. "If we can use as much of our electricity as possible at times when it's windy and sunny, then not only is electricity greener, but it's also a lot cheaper."

To illustrate the scale of their data processing capabilities, Jackson noted that Octopus Energy in the UK processes 30 times more data than Visa does globally for payments.

The practical application of AI-driven energy management extends directly to consumers through smart tariffs. It’s worth noting that not so long ago electric vehicles were considered luxury items, however today they are rapidly becoming mainstream, with price parity to petrol cars and second hand electric vehicles often cheaper than their petrol equivalents.

For families with electric vehicles and home charging capabilities, AI can optimize charging schedules based on grid conditions and renewable energy

availability. Smart charging managed through the Octopus app means that drivers can benefit from electricity up to six times cheaper per mile than petrol.

The concept extends beyond vehicles to heat pumps and home heating systems. Since average homes can store heat for several hours, AI can schedule heating during off-peak times when renewable energy is abundant, dramatically reducing costs while maintaining comfort.

Jackson envisions that homes equipped with solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and smart hot water heaters, all optimized through AI, have the potential to eliminate energy bills entirely.

As the company continues its global expansion, Jackson explains why international expansion often trips up technology companies. They often hard-code solutions for specific markets, resulting in different solutions and technology stacks for each country.

Jackson advocates for a different approach "Fundamentally the laws of physics, the laws of economics, and actually humans are the same everywhere," therefore when building technology to power an enterprise it is better to first build a platform that is abstracted from the market and then treat the market as a sort of ‘adaptor’ to deliver the final 5% of the solution.

"If you do this, what you learn in Manchester, you can deliver in Missouri. What your team in Melbourne think about will be live in Munich, and that enables us to build a global company based on local learnings and developments at lightspeed"

Looking toward the future, Jackson envisions a smart energy system that operates more like the internet. He compares current energy management to "an old minicab office" with people in control rooms on the end of a

telephone manually turning power plants on and off.

The future model resembles something more akin to Uber's approach: using massive amounts of data on supply, demand, and timing, combined with AI algorithms to match resources efficiently. This approach promises to be two to three times cheaper and more efficient than traditional methods.

In search of green energy solutions to help achieve net zero goals and bring energy security, Jackson believes we need to look beyond grid optimization, and embrace AI-driven innovation to focus on distributed resources.

Rather than pursuing a single "big AI brain" controlling the entire grid, Jackson advocates for distributed optimization across millions of connected devices. Electric cars, batteries at various scales, heating systems, wind turbines, and solar panels can all increase or decrease their operations based on price signals from the grid while maintaining their primary functions.

"A heat pump's primary job is to heat the house," Jackson explained. "But by the way, while it's at it, if it optimizes based on price signals, it would be a lot cheaper."

This distributed approach promises transformation too – delivering cheaper, more abundant, and more secure energy through intelligent coordination rather than centralized control.

As the energy sector continues its digital transformation, Octopus Energy's experience demonstrates that the convergence of AI, renewable energy, and customer-centric design is already delivering measurable results for millions of customers while paving the way for a more sustainable energy future. The company has emerged as a global trailblazer in the quest for achieving Net Zero and helping the world transition to renewable energy.

One vision. Zero limits. Full momentum.

Northern Ireland is at a turning point. The global demand for innovation in cyber security, artificial intelligence, and wireless communications has never been greater. Businesses everywhere are searching for practical, scalable solutions to complex problems. Right here in Belfast, a bold new initiative is positioning Northern Ireland as a leader in this transformation.

That initiative is Momentum One Zero — a £70 million investment designed to create a world-class hub where businesses, researchers, and entrepreneurs can harness deep-tech innovation to grow faster, smarter, and more securely.

Who we are

Momentum One Zero is a business-led innovation centre, within Queen’s University Belfast and part of the Belfast Region City Deal. We bring together the best of academia, engineering, and enterprise to deliver innovative solutions that matter to our partners.

At the heart of our approach is convergence. Trusted Data, Cybersecurity, AI, and Wireless technologies intersect in ways that unlock new possibilities across every sector, from healthcare and agri-food to fintech, energy, and advanced technologies.

Momentum One Zero exists to make this convergence work for businesses. We lower barriers, reduce risks, and provide access to expertise, facilities and funding that can help organisations develop, test, and scale products or solutions that deliver business value

What we do

We’ve designed our offering around four key pillars — each one built to deliver business value while strengthening Northern Ireland’s position on the global stage.

q Deep-tech services & collaboration - We translate cutting-edge research into real products and services. From prototyping and system integration to collaborative R&D projects, our professional engineering team works side by side with businesses to tackle complex challenges, drawing on multidisciplinary academic expertise.

q Compute & infrastructure power - We provide stateof-the-art labs and secure, high-performance computing environments to support advanced AI, data science, and wireless research. For companies, that means the confidence to design, test and scale solutions at speed.

q Talent & skills for the future - Innovation needs people. We support a pipeline of graduates, PhDs, and professionals who are industry-ready, coming through world class courses in Queen’s. Through Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and hands-on project experience, we’re growing the skills base NI needs to compete globally.

q Integrated ecosystem - Momentum One Zero brings everything together under one roof. Industry partners can co-locate with engineers, academics and industry peers to benefit from daily collaboration and knowledge sharing. This ecosystem model reduces silos and accelerates progress.

Why this matters for NI

Northern Ireland already punches above its weight in

cyber security, fintech, and software development. With the creation of Momentum One Zero, the region has an opportunity to position itself as a testbed for global innovation. By 2040, the UK’s AI and data markets are projected to exceed £50 billion. Momentum One Zero will help ensure Northern Ireland is ready to capture a share of that growth, by embedding deep-tech innovation into businesses, generating new jobs, and attracting foreign direct investment.

Our mission is simple: to make innovation accessible and impactful. Whether you are a startup founder, a scaling SME or an established multinational, Momentum One Zero is designed to help you move faster and with greater confidence.

Real-world impact: sector opportunities Momentum One Zero is not about innovation for its own sake — it’s about outcomes. We exist to grow Northern Ireland businesses, and here are some of the areas where our capabilities are already making an impact:

Digital Health – Using AI and secure data systems to improve diagnostics, care delivery, and patient outcomes.

Agri-Food – Leveraging wireless technologies and data analytics to create smarter, more sustainable food systems.

Fintech – Strengthening cyber resilience and building AI-driven financial solutions.

Sustainability & Net Zero – Applying connected technologies to energy efficiency, smart cities, and climate solutions.

Each of these sectors represents not just a challenge, but an opportunity — and Momentum One Zero is here to ensure Northern Ireland businesses are ready to lead.

The human element Technology alone doesn’t change the world — people do. That’s why Momentum One Zero is investing heavily in skills development.

Our multi-disciplinary delivery teams are a powerhouse in applied deep tech innovation:

Our engineering team is growing rapidly, dedicated to bridging academic research with business application — and focused solely on tackling the challenges companies bring to us.

Alongside them, more than 60 leading academics in Cyber, AI and Wireless are working with industry partners on frontier research.

And beyond that, more than 40 domain experts in health, agri-food, fintech, sustainability and advanced technologies.

For students and early-career professionals, Momentum One Zero offers the chance to work on live industry projects, gaining experience that’s directly relevant to employers. For companies, it means access to a pipeline of talent that’s both skilled and innovation ready.

Why partner with us

Working with Momentum One Zero means more than just access to facilities — we are connecting businesses directly with brilliant minds and bright ideas - where you will be part of a thriving innovation ecosystem where collaboration drives results.

We provide clarity on engagement models and intellectual property from the start. We connect businesses with funding opportunities for large-scale innovation projects.

We create spaces where entrepreneurs, researchers and partner organizations can work side by side.

We deliver pathways for commercialisation, ensuring research

turns into revenue. Or, as our Industry Advisory Board Chair Paul Murnaghan put it: “Momentum One Zero represents a unique opportunity to unlock the potential of Northern Ireland as a testbed for innovation. We have a responsibility to ensure that our priorities reflect the real needs of the region and generate meaningful results.”

Conclusion: Building momentum together

Momentum One Zero is more than a project and more than a university initiative. It’s a movement for Northern Ireland’s future — a way to harness secure connected intelligence, talent and infrastructure to drive economic growth and social impact.

We already have a thriving physical home where businesses, researchers and innovators are working side by side. And this is just the beginning. Construction starts this year on a larger, purpose-built facility that will provide world-class labs, collaborative zones, and specialist environments designed to take projects from concept to scale.

This expanded space will become the anchor point for Northern Ireland’s innovation ecosystem — a place where ideas move faster, partnerships run deeper, and impact is felt far beyond our region.

We believe that by working together, Northern Ireland can not only keep pace with global change — but set the pace.

An open invitation to businesses

While Momentum One Zero is here for Northern Ireland, our outlook is global. We are already working with ambitious, forward-looking businesses, ready to collaborate on solutions that can scale today and continue to scale into the future.

If you’re a company asking, “How can we apply deep tech innovation to be faster, safer, and smarter?” — we’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch momentumonezero@qub.ac.uk Visit us online www.momentumonezero.com

The algorithm that pays you: Inside DailyPay's AI strategy for on demand pay

When New York-based DailyPay first started looking to expand internationally in 2021, Managing Director Paul Hill advocated for Belfast. DailyPay quickly saw the benefits of Belfast’s quality talent pool and creative technology ecosystem, and invested £24 million.

Today, DailyPay Belfast has created 293 new jobs and is fast becoming the fintech giant's go-to for artificial intelligence innovation.

On-demand pay, powered by AI

DailyPay’s on-demand pay, that helps daily workers get their pay early if they want, is changing the way daily workers get paid. The scale is huge - DailyPay processes millions of pay period data points monthly, with each transaction requiring meticulous tracking for audit purposes.

So how do DailyPay manage that kind of scale while keeping fraudsters out? Artificial intelligence.

Angela Friend, Vice President of Data Science at DailyPay has led the team through an ambitious growth phase, integrating

data science applications and expanding her team’s footprint into Northern Ireland.

DailyPay’s innovation centers on its on-demand pay platform, to not only meet the scale of the product her team has developed advanced machine learning models ensure employees have real-time access to earnings. The data science team in Belfast is deeply involved in shaping these models, developing systems for intelligent anomaly detection, enriched data ingestion, and platform observability.

For instance, Belfast engineers have built observability frameworks that monitor millions of transactions monthly, ensuring data integrity and transparency across the platform. Data scientists collaborate on anomaly detection tools that flag unexpected patterns in payroll processing—vital for accuracy and operational resilience.

Beyond these core functions, the team is also developing treasury forecasting models to help financial teams anticipate cash flow needs, directly impacting how pay can be delivered faster and safer to users.

Angela sees the Belfast team’s contribution as transformative: “Northern Ireland’s talent isn’t just supporting operations—it’s driving the technology behind our product and shaping how on-demand pay is delivered worldwide.” The investment is about more than job numbers; it’s about giving highly skilled local professionals opportunities to define the future of financial technology at every level.

"Fraud patterns are actually quite low, but they're somewhat unique,” she says. This uniqueness proves both blessing and curse - whilst fraud amounts tend to be small and rare, it means conventional fraud detection measures simply couldn't help.

"We had to build a custom solution in-house," she says. Working in Python within AWS's modular environment, her team has created something resembling digital Lego blocks - fraud detection systems that leverage user behaviour, statistics, and machine learning to understand patterns that might indicate fraudulent activity.

DailyPay’s innovative approach combines different AI methodologies. Why? Because "machine learning and AI serve different functions, and have strengths in different areas," Angela explains.

Last but not least, DailyPay uses AI to support daily workers using on-demand pay with an AI-powered

chatbot integrated into support systems. Paul says their Net Promoter Score is climbing whilst service times plummet. Notably, the cost to support daily workers has dropped by over 70% in the past four years.

Solving U.S. technical challenges

As Managing Director of DailyPay Belfast, Paul’s technical challenges extend beyond fraud detection to logistical.

Unlike Northern Ireland, there's no federal guidance in the US - meaning DailyPay must accommodate individual states (plus Canadian provinces), each effectively representing a different regulatory market. The complexity is mindbending. For example, one territory passed legislation making on-demand pay free of charge; then completely changed just a year later to allow on-demand pay fees of up to $30 monthly.

"Uniquely, every US state's a little different," says Paul. "Even over two years, we've had one state go from one extreme to another then to something in the middle."

Paul’s solution has been characteristically systematic, establishing and growing a technical programme management team to bridge big-picture strategy and granular execution.

Unlike traditional project managers who rely on engineers for technical depth, technical programme managers possess both

deep technical experience and the business acumen to translate between technical and strategic concerns, coordinating multiple teams whilst managing dependencies and risks.

“A big part of it is to have people that aren't necessarily into the weeds on the tech side - they're looking at the big picture" Paul says. Technical programme managers ask the crucial question: what are the checkboxes needed to ensure coordination and collaboration actually happen?

The future of AI - in Belfast? Angela and Paul are exploring applications for AI that haven't even been imagined yet. Angela’s background in cognitive psychology provides unique insight into human behaviour patterns, whilst Paul’s systematic approach to scaling engineering operations ensures innovations can be deployed globally.

For Angela, Large Language Models (LLMs) mark only the beginning of a transformation that will reshape work and forge new career paths. One immediate role emerging is that of the prompt engineer, a specialist who designs, tests, and refines the inputs used to guide AI models. She encourages aspiring technologists to gain an intuitive understanding of this nascent field through hands-on experimentation. However, Angela remains clear-eyed about the

technology's limits: "LLMs are not good for everything. There are times when machine learning or Bayesian methodologies are always going to be superior."

The true excitement, she contends, lies in agentic AI, systems that move beyond simple responses to queries to generate their own actions and decisions. “You’re going to eventually have layers of LLMs managing other LLMs, so we’re definitely breaking through another technological revolution.

For those worried about AI replacing human jobs, Angela offers a perspective rooted in technological history and suggests other opportunities will be forged. "That's a fear that always happens when you're in the beginnings of a technological revolutionjobs are going to change, and being ready for that change is where the opportunity is."

This philosophy of continuous adaptation is central to DailyPay’s Belfast culture, where she encourages her team to dedicate time—whether an hour daily or a full day weekly—to learning. As she states, "As technologists, it’s our responsibility to maintain our knowledge, our experience, our learning, our education throughout our careers. Technology is constantly changing.”

For DailyPay, the future of work is being written one paycheck at a time. And if DailyPay's Belfast operation is any indication, that future looks remarkably bright.

Building trust in technology: Why responsible AI matters for everyone

Artificial Intelligence has moved from hype to reality. It is no longer limited to research labs or science fiction. It is already in healthcare helping doctors read scans, in finance detecting fraud, in factories optimising production, and in classrooms supporting students. For Northern Ireland, AI offers huge potential to boost productivity, open markets and strengthen public services.

With opportunity comes risk. AI can embed bias, make decisions we don’t fully understand, create cyber vulnerabilities, or lead to over-reliance on automation. Poorly governed systems have already caused harm, from recruitment tools that discriminated against women to welfare systems that unfairly penalised families.

This is why Responsible AI matters. It goes beyond technical performance or compliance, focusing on ethical, safe, transparent and accountable use. Done well, it allows Northern Ireland to capture the benefits of innovation while protecting people, businesses and public trust. The Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre (AICC) is helping lead this journey, ensuring responsibility is at the core of AI adoption so that technology delivers its full potential without undermining fairness or trust.

What is responsible AI?

Responsible AI means using AI in a way that is safe, fair and trustworthy. It ensures technology helps people and businesses without causing harm. It rests on three areas:

1. Following the law

Businesses must follow rules on data protection, equality and safety, often across multiple jurisdictions.

2. Using adaptable principles

Laws cannot cover everything. Guiding principles like fairness, accountability, transparency and human oversight act as a compass, helping organisations make good choices even as technology moves faster than regulation.

3. Applying framework and standards

Practical tools make these principles real: ISO standards manage risk, ETSI standards focus on AI cybersecurity and the AICC’s own FAST principles give SMEs simple, flexible frameworks for safe adoption.

What important questions should you ask about AI?

Responsible AI starts with asking the right questions. Some to consider are:

1. Is it fair? Does the AI solution treat people equally and avoid bias?

2. Is it accountable? Who is responsible for the decisions it makes or supports?

3. Is it transparent? Can I understand how it works and challenge the outcome if needed?

Why responsible AI matters for everyone AI is reshaping work, business, public services, and community life. Because it affects everyone, Responsible AI is not just for experts.

• For businesses, it builds trust with customers, investors and regulators which is vital in sectors like finance and healthcare.

• For governments and policymakers, it ensures adoption reflects fairness, inclusivity, and accountability.

• For citizens, it offers reassurance that AI systems influencing their lives are fair, explainable, and safe.

Can responsible AI be a market differentiator for business?

Some think Responsible AI is a “nice to have” or an ethical aspiration. It’s not! It is fast becoming a business requirement. Trust is the currency of the new AI era. Customers, employees, partners, and stakeholders want to know that systems are reliable, fair and safe. A company that can prove it has robust Responsible AI practices will stand out in crowded markets. For Northern Ireland, this can be a powerful differentiator.

The benefits are clear:

• Risk management and liability reduction come from embedding safeguards early, which is far less costly than recovering from failure.

• Stronger reputation comes from ethical practice that builds trust and goodwill, turning reputation into a competitive advantage.

• Operational resilience is achieved when Responsible AI prevents system drift and degradation, reducing the hidden costs of rework and errors.

• Market access depends on demonstrating suitability and

compliance, which are fast becoming a prerequisite in regulated industries.

• Long-term growth and innovation follow when AI is aligned with ethical and trustworthy values, allowing businesses to innovate with confidence.

How can responsible AI shape success for businesses in Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland has a unique position. Connected to both UK and EU markets, it must navigate overlapping influences. This creates challenges, but also opportunities. By embedding Responsible AI now, businesses can:

• Prepare for dual compliance across UK and EU frameworks.

• Boost competitiveness by showing alignment with best practice.

• Build trust in a way that is fair, transparent and accountable, these are the foundations of good governance.

• Unlock opportunities in key sectors such as healthcare, agri-tech, advanced manufacturing, and digital services.

Responsible AI is not just about avoiding harm. It is about positioning Northern Ireland as a leader in trusted innovation.

Accelerating responsible AI adoption in Northern Ireland

The Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre (AICC) was established as a partnership between Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast, funded by Invest NI and the Department for the Economy, to support responsible AI adoption across Northern Ireland. Our goal is simple: to make Northern Ireland a leader in ethical, humancentred AI innovation. At the AICC, we invite businesses, policymakers, academics, and the public to:

• Explore the Responsible AI Hub for tools and resources at www.aicc.co/ responsibleai.

• Join our events and workshops where responsible AI is always on the agenda.

• Collaborate with us to build AI solutions that are ethical, inclusive and impactful.

A call to action

Responsible AI is not a one-time decision or a box to tick. It is a continuous journey. As technologies evolve, so too do the risks, expectations and opportunities. Everyone in Northern Ireland engaging with data, digital services or AI has an ongoing role to play in keeping responsibility at the core of innovation.

The future of AI is not about machines replacing humans; it is about technology enhancing human potential. By putting responsibility at the heart of innovation, Northern Ireland can lead the way in building a trusted, ethical AI ecosystem.

The culture revolution driving Allstate NI

As Managing Director of Allstate NI and Global Vice President, Stephen McKeown has orchestrated a corporate culture that's caught the attention of industry giants like Gartner and earned recognition through the prestigious Tony Hsieh Award.

The transformation wasn't just about technology. It was about people, culture, and fundamentally reimagining how a global insurance leader operates in the digital age.

The insurance industry has been changing rapidly, and Allstate has been at the forefront of that change. Over the past two and a half years, the company has undergone what Stephen describes as a "radical transformation", one centred around changing culture and the way teams approach problems.

"Having a culture of problem-solving and really having cross-functional teams has proven to be incredibly powerful," says Stephen. "So rather than having technology, business functions, and finance all working separately, we're very much focused on putting people around a table to solve business problems. This has a significant and dramatic impact on the way that you build and deliver product."

This shift represents a departure from the norm. Where many organisations struggle to break down departmental barriers, Allstate NI has made collaboration the cornerstone of its operating model.

Allstate’s teams are "embedded right in the middle of those initiatives and leading on them," spanning everything from cloud-first strategies to modern tech stacks that enable intimate customer understanding. As a result, teams in the Northern Ireland-headquartered European Digital Centre of Excellence operates at a strategic level - directly influencing products and services used by millions of customers worldwide.

According to Stephen, teams operate with a coaching mindset rather than hierarchical management, enabling faster decision-making and fostering a culture of ownership where employees take responsibility for outcomes. This shift towards empowerment has proven particularly effective in hybrid working environments, where traditional management approaches can fall short. This approach has made Northern Ireland integral to the company's technology strategy.

This means that technologists in the region aren't just supporting a multinational company, they're actively shaping how one of the world's largest insurers operates in the digital age. This approach earned Allstate the Tony Hsieh Award, named after the visionary former CEO of Zappos, presented at the prestigious TED2025 Conference. Allstate is the largest company to receive this honour, which recognises organisations that are "redefining the future of work through empowering and forward-thinking cultures."

For the Allstate NI Managing Director, culture is the capstone

that holds everything together.

"Culture is really the foundation of everything we do," says McKeown. "Technology alone doesn't drive transformations, people do. People have the ability to create connections across teams, to generate ideas, to innovate. That all comes from your culture, not technology."

This commitment to culture manifests in very tangible ways that extend far beyond workplace policies. In September this year, nearly 1,000 employees gathered at Belfast's ICC for the Allstate Activate event - a celebration devised around curiosity, creativity, and connection. It brought together inspirational speakers including physicist Professor Brian Cox, Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes, and comedian Shane Todd, alongside interactive experiences ranging from VR simulators to volcanic bubble machines and even a DeLorean that nodded to the company's automotive heritage.

Stephen opened the day with a message of togetherness and engagement, setting the tone for what he describes as "a bold statement about who we are and where we're headed."

In an era where hybrid working has become the norm, events like Activate serve as crucial touchpoints that reinforce shared values and collective purpose. The

initiative was conceived as a means for conversations between areas to occur and spark innovative thinking through exposure to diverse perspectives. The day's culminating awards ceremony celebrating unsung heroes points to how Allstate weaves recognition into its cultural fabric.

This people-first philosophy has driven the company to make investments in digital skills development. Over the past two and a half years, Allstate has committed resources not just to technical training, but to fundamentally changing how people work. "We're putting people into real-world scenarios with real-world problems to solve and then having them collaborate and work on those problems as a team," he says.

For technologists

considering Allstate NI, a career presents the opportunity to work on global-scale problems for one of the world's largest companies, “alongside teammates who are creative and curious”.

Stephen describes a culture that values experimentation and prizes the power of questions, then couples these with the freedom to pursue solutions. "Our teams here are important to Allstate,” says Stephen, “and that's a huge recognition in terms of a Centre of Excellence headquartered here in Northern Ireland."

Allstate's commitment to skills development

continues to deepen, with plans to double down on digital skills investment over the next three years. This investment goes beyond technical capabilities to encompass new ways of working, particularly around collaboration and problem-solving in hybrid environments.

Recent recognition of Allstate's approach has been remarkable. The Gartner recognition demonstrates that large companies can lead in innovation, while the Tony Hsieh Award specifically celebrates the human-centric, forwardthinking work that has defined the company's digital transformation.

"Some external validation of what we're doing really is something quite special," says Stephen, "and the two coming together is incredibly powerful." The recognition isn't just about corporate achievement, it reflects the strength of innovation embedded in Allstate's culture and positions the company as a leading career destination for business and technology talent, he says.

The success at Allstate NI has broader implications for Northern Ireland's position as a global technology destination. Stephen points to the region's strength in software development, cybersecurity leadership, and financial services innovation, areas where Allstate both contributes to and benefits from the local ecosystem.

"I think [Northern Ireland]

is increasingly seen as a destination for investment and for that type of talent," he says. "More importantly, it's seen as a place that's able to lead in some of these strategic areas."

This positioning represents a significant shift for Northern Ireland's technology sector. Where the region once might have been viewed as a cost-effective location for back-office operations, companies like Allstate are demonstrating that it can serve as a centre of innovation and strategic leadership for global enterprises.

In an era where technology moves faster than traditional organisational structures can adapt, Stephen’s approach is to empower people, embrace experimentation, and to let culture drive innovation.

"People have the ability to create connections across teams, to generate ideas, to innovate. That all comes from your culture, not technology," he says.

The company's continued investment in skills development, combined with its growing global influence, suggests that this transformation is just the beginning. For technologists seeking meaningful work at a global scale, and for Northern Ireland's ambitions as a digital hub, Allstate NI's culturedriven success offers both inspiration and a proven model for the future.

Why nine out of ten AI projects end in failure

As businesses pour billions into artificial intelligence, one company's 50% success rate reveals what separates genuine transformation from expensive experimentation

Nine out of ten AI projects never make it to production. Born with fanfare and nurtured through proof-of-concept stages, they simply fall by the wayside in what Nathan Marlor, Head of AI at technology firm Version 1, terms "random acts of AI": lots of activity delivering minimal impact.

It's a sobering statistic, confirmed by McKinsey's recent report showing fewer than 10% of generative AI use cases progress past pilot stage. Yet Version 1, a Dublin-founded company transforming businesses since 1996, is hitting closer to 50%. Their success rate points to a profoundly different approach to weaving artificial intelligence into the fabric of business.

The shift in client expectations has been stark. "If you rewind two or three years, we were talking to a lot of clients who wanted to really just explore the art of the possible," Marlor explains. "But now, when we go and speak to clients, they're asking: how do we get this into production? Who's going to maintain it? How do we measure ROI?"

This transformation mirrors a broader industry maturation. Where businesses were once content with pilots and proofof-concepts, they now demand tangible results and Version 1 has had to evolve accordingly.

What sets the company apart is Version 1’s very own

Business Challenge Analysis Framework, a methodology that deliberately inverts the traditional technology-first approach. "Only when we've got a real deep understanding of the customer and what they're trying to achieve, do we look at where AI can help," says Marlor. "That starts with operational questions first, then commercial considerations including ROI, and only then do we look at technology."

It's a philosophy reflected in Version 1's recent high-profile contracts, including a €102.7 million deal to transform Ireland's school employee payroll systems and a partnership with the International Schools Partnership to develop AIdriven teaching tools.

As Marlor points out, if you walk into most organisations today and you'll find AI experimentation everywhere. Marketing teams are testing ChatGPT for content creation, HR departments are trialling Copilot for recruitment emails, business development teams are exploring automated transcription tools.

But this "scattered experimentation" rarely delivers transformation. "Countless times we'll speak to organisations who have just started to use Copilot, maybe ChatGPT, Claude or the Otter notetaker," Marlor says. "But customers that are successful are avoiding scattered experimentation. They're striving for systematic transformation."

When departments operate in silos, experimenting independently without coordination or strategic oversight, organisations end up with random acts of AI. The result is impressive demos in departmental meetings and enthusiastic early adopters, but minimal impact on the bottom line or operational efficiency.

Companies that break through this barrier share common characteristics. They resist the temptation to let AI initiatives flourish organically, instead implementing what Marlor describes as "a strategic, structured, centralised approach." More critically, they're willing to adapt existing processes rather than simply overlaying AI onto current workflows.

"Organisations that are successful typically are open to adapting and changing internal processes or workflows, rather than just sticking AI over the top and hoping for the best," he explains.

The distinction matters because scattered experimentation ties up resources and creates organisational fatigue that makes future, more strategic AI initiatives harder to sell internally.

Marlor is particularly excited about agentic AI, intelligent systems that perform specialist tasks rather than generalist content creation. He describes it as "dynamic RPA," referencing the robotic process automation tools that have been quietly revolutionising back-office operations for years.

"RPA has been around for years, automating workflows and processes, but it tends to be quite brittle and quite fixed in how it can operate," he says. "But when we overlay the fluidity that generative AI brings into that, we suddenly get a much more compelling proposition."

His favourite example involves a US insurance broker where Version 1 developed an agent that automated the tedious process of checking renewal policies and cross-referencing policy numbers. What once took a team of ten people hours of manual work now happens in minutes, with the AI system not only checking policy numbers but understanding the semantic meaning of terms and conditions.

It's the kind of transformation that doesn't make headlines but genuinely changes operations by freeing human workers from repetitive tasks to focus on work requiring human judgement.

This pragmatic approach extends to Version 1's 'AI for good' initiatives. "Working with the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Services, the company has automated the generation of personalised communications to children and families working through complex legal situations reducing the time caseworkers spend on administrative tasks from 20-25 minutes per letter to seconds. For Dyslexia Ireland, they've built a browser plugin that simplifies complex text, and with Encephalitis International they've developed tools to make medical information accessible across 75 languages.

These projects matter to Marlor on a personal level given his wife is a teacher, and he can see firsthand how AI tools can genuinely support educators.

If there's one conversation Marlor has more often than others, it's about data quality. "At the end of 2022, there was this rhetoric across the market that we must collect data, that one day it will be valuable," he recalls. "This was the start of the data lake and organisations just pooling their data in the understanding that one day it could have some real value to it. But only a very few, from my experience, did that with any kind of structure around governance or data quality."

Rather than attempting wholesale data transformation projects that can take years and cost fortunes, Version 1 takes a surgical approach. When working with a major Tier One bank on a data remediation project involving 15 years of disparate data across multiple systems, they didn't try to fix everything. Instead, they built a focused data model designed specifically for the task at hand, processing around 300,000 policies in a fraction of the time a complete overhaul would have required.

Marlor is passionate about AI governance, viewing regulation not as a constraint but as an accelerator. "Organisations with robust governance end up deploying AI faster, and that's because they've got the trust and the infrastructure to move more confidently and you can move at speed," he says.

Version 1 has partnered with Credo AI to develop governance services helping organisations navigate the increasingly complex regulatory landscape, from the EU AI Act to emerging US legislation. Working with another Tier One bank, they helped establish a responsible AI board that has now signed off on over 100 AI use cases.

"Cybersecurity is treated as first-class citizen in every organisation," Marlor observes. "Over the next year or two, we'll see governance become the same."

As Version 1 prepares to invest £40 million in UK expansion, generating over a 1000 new jobs across their technology hubs, Marlor is thinking about the next wave of developments. In the future Marlor expects to see small language models fine-tuned for specific industries becoming much more prevalent. Multi-agent systems will enable AI applications to communicate across organisational boundaries and governance will evolve from a compliance afterthought to a core business capability.

Northern Ireland at the crossroads: Seizing the AI opportunity

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer just the domain of tech giants or futuristic headlines. It is already embedded in our businesses, our public services and our everyday lives. From predictive diagnostics in healthcare to supply chain optimisation in logistics, AI is quietly but powerfully shaping how we live and work.

Yet, the question for Northern Ireland is not whether AI is coming, it’s whether we will be prepared to seize its opportunities. We stand at a crossroads. One path risks leaving us behind, as global competitors adopt AI at pace. The other positions us as a region that embraces innovation, builds trust and uses AI to drive productivity, growth and societal value.

That second path is the one we must take, and the one we are taking.

Why this moment matters

Northern Ireland has enormous potential in AI. We are home to Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast, two research-intensive universities with world-class expertise, a thriving SME base and a track record of punching above our weight in areas like cybersecurity, fintech and advanced manufacturing.

But potential alone is not enough. Globally the AI landscape is accelerating at breakneck speed. Generative AI is transforming creative industries, autonomous systems are reimagining how goods and services are delivered, and governments worldwide are racing to establish ethical guardrails.

If Northern Ireland fails to keep pace, the cost is not abstract, it is measured in lost competitiveness, stagnant productivity and opportunities that pass us by. On the other hand, if we act decisively, AI could be the lever that unlocks our next wave of economic and social progress.

That is why Invest Northern Ireland, with support from the Department for the Economy, committed £16.3 million to establish the Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre (AICC) in 2024, a groundbreaking initiative led by Ulster University, in partnership with Queen’s University Belfast. Our mission

is clear: accelerate AI adoption across businesses, upskill our workforce and create a thriving ecosystem that places Northern Ireland on the global AI map.

From vision to impact

In just our first year, the AICC has moved swiftly to turn ambition into reality. We have built a team of 19 specialists located across Ulster University’s Belfast and Derry~Londonderry campuses and Queen’s University Belfast, drawing expertise from both academia and industry. We are currently supporting over 100 SMEs across the region, of varying sizes, sectors and technical capabilities, through our Transformer Programme, offering fully funded hands-on AI consultancy. These are not theoretical exercises; they are real projects solving real problems.

Alongside business support, we are investing in the talent pipeline. 260 postgraduate scholars have been accepted onto AI-related courses at Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast. The first 17 have already graduated, bringing their skills directly into the workforce. New MScs in Ethical & Responsible AI and AI in Business are ensuring our students are not only technically proficient but also ethically aware.

And we are reaching professionals, too. Our Driving Value from AI online course, delivered in partnership with The Data Lab, has trained over 100 leaders across industries, while our AI Acceleration Tour has brought practical workshops to communities across the region, educating nearly 270 participants to date.

These interventions matter because they help to demystify AI, build trust and make adoption feel achievable for businesses and individuals alike.

A global conversation, a local opportunity AI innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. Northern Ireland cannot simply look inward; we must connect with the global AI community. That’s why we’ve taken Northern Ireland’s story to stages such as Big Data New York, The Dublin Tech Summit, and Scotland’s DataFest. At home, our seminal AI Castle Conversations event convened industry leaders, senior policymakers and academics to debate the big questions around AI adoption and ethics.

These engagements ensure Northern Ireland is not just a consumer of AI technologies developed elsewhere, but an active participant shaping how AI is used responsibly and productively worldwide.

And the world is paying attention. Our AI Capability Census, launched in August 2025, identified nearly 200 AI-active firms in Northern Ireland, employing over 1,300 professionals and contributing £82 million in Gross Value Added (GVA). With continued adoption, this figure could reach £200 million by 2028.

That growth will not come automatically. It requires strategic investment, collaboration and the confidence of businesses and citizens.

Responsible AI as our differentiator

But growth at any cost is not the goal. Our predictions should avoid the temptation to be sensationalist. AI adoption must be responsible. As algorithms become more powerful, they also raise important questions: How do we ensure fairness? How do we protect privacy? How do we hold systems accountable when things go wrong?

At the AICC, we believe Northern Ireland can differentiate itself globally by embedding Responsible AI at the heart of our approach. We have recently launched our brand new Responsible AI Hub, which will equip businesses with practical tools such

as harm assessments, policy builders, governance checks and much more. We are educating the next generation of AI practitioners to think not just about what AI can do, but what it should do.

By making responsibility our hallmark, we can build the public trust that will be essential for widespread adoption.

The road ahead

With our mandate now extended to 2029, the AICC has the certainty to think long-term. In the coming years we will:

• Scale up SME engagement through the Transformer Programme and other initiatives.

• Expand training for professionals and students,

to let AI happen to us, or we can choose to shape how it works for us. With the right investment, skills and partnerships, we can use AI to increase productivity, grow our economy and improve quality of life.

But time is of the essence. Other regions are moving quickly, and the pace of technological change will not slow down. The good news is that we have the building blocks: world-class research, innovative businesses and a collaborative culture that has served us well in areas like cybersecurity and financial services.

ensuring AI skills are embedded across the workforce.

• Grow our research portfolio, building on more than £15.5 million in collaborative RD&I projects already secured.

• Strengthen international partnerships, ensuring Northern Ireland is represented on the global AI stage.

• Lead the conversation on Responsible AI, regionally and internationally.

We are also exploring new opportunities with strategic partners, from health innovation to Net Zero solutions. The appetite for collaboration is clear, and the potential is enormous.

Seizing the opportunity Northern Ireland is at a crossroads. We can choose

The AICC was created to turn these strengths into impact. And the early signs are promising. From SMEs adopting AI for the first time, to students graduating with AI expertise, to Northern Ireland’s presence on global stages, we are demonstrating that our region is ready to lead.

The future is not predetermined. It is shaped by the choices we make today. If we choose to invest, to collaborate and to innovate responsibly, Northern Ireland can carve out a distinctive and competitive role in the global AI economy.

We stand at that crossroads. Let's choose the path forward, together.

Discover more at www.aicc.co and follow the AICC on LinkedIn to stay connected.

How Rapid7 and Queen's University are forging the future for cyber security

As artificial intelligence transforms both cyberattack and defence capabilities, the region's ability to maintain its position as a prime location for cybersecurity investment depends on staying ahead of an accelerating technological curve.

The answer, according to industry leaders, lies in the convergence of academic research excellence and commercial expertise. The prime example of this type of partnership is the collaboration between Rapid7 and Queen's University Belfast's Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT).

The partnership, launched through CSIT's Cyber-AI Hub, addresses fundamental challenges facing the cybersecurity industry. Cybercriminals are rapidly adopting AI to enhance their capabilities, creating what industry experts describe as an arms race between attackers and defenders.

For Judith Millar, Director of Operations at CSIT, the collaboration represents a strategic response to a critical need.

"Northern Ireland is known for cyber security, a strong reputation as the number one location for US inward investment. But what does that look like in five years and 10 years’ time? How do we maintain that reputation and that position?" she says.

The answer lies in Cyber AI and AI security, fields that combine traditional cybersecurity expertise with advanced machine learning techniques to detect and respond to increasingly sophisticated threats.

The QUB and Rapid7 partnership leverages distinct but complementary capabilities from each organisation. Rapid7 brings domain expertise from its position as a leader in

extended risk and threat detection, serving over 11,000 global customers. This includes not just technical knowledge from product development, but crucially, insights from real-world customer challenges and threat landscapes.

"Rapid7 brings our domain expertise and not just from our products but also from the customer challenges," says Damian Horner, VP Engineering at Rapid7. "CSIT brings in their research skills and the wealth of experience they have."

CSIT contributes academic rigour and research capabilities, particularly the ability to pursue long-term investigations that commercial pressures might otherwise curtail.

"The project with Rapid7 is about long-term impact and that’s where a university partner adds real value. We bring the tenacity to stick with things over time, navigating complex challenges, while our engineering team ensures we are equipped to deliver results in the short term too,” says Judith.

The partnership operates through CSIT's Cyber-AI Hub, which launched in 2023 with UK government funding as part of the New Deal for Northern Ireland. The hub includes a Doctoral Training Programme with 15 PhD candidates, Masters’ bursaries for 40 students, and involves eight industry partners in collaborative research and skills development.

The collaboration has already moved beyond theoretical research into practical product development and is currently working on its second major project, focusing on alert triage for Security Operations Centres (SOCs), a critical challenge for cybersecurity teams who must process overwhelming volumes of security alerts daily.

"If you're working on a SOC, you receive a feed of alerts

regarding the infrastructure and the business assets that you're protecting. They come from a multitude of different sources and it's effectively like drinking from a fire hose," says Damian. "Some of these incoming messages and alerts you know you must take action on, but some of them don't seem relevant."

The research aims to develop AI models that can better distinguish between benign and malicious alerts, helping security teams prioritise their responses more effectively. This in turn influences Rapid7's flagship products, which apply AI-driven anomalous activity detection across multi-cloud and hybrid environments to classify and prioritise threats more rapidly and accurately.

The urgency behind this collaboration stems from the evolving threat landscape. According to the National Cyber Security Centre, cybercriminals possessing any level of sophistication will soon be able to leverage AI to significantly enhance their initial access capabilities, particularly targeting cloud services that are notoriously complex and difficult to secure.

"This is essentially an arms race," says Damian. "The ways that we're talking about using AI to speed up our engineers and to make our product better, well, attackers are doing exactly the same thing. They're making their attack products better and their methods of how they conduct their business."

This dynamic creates particular challenges for cloud security, where customers are implementing AI in diverse ways that create new attack surfaces. The complexity of these environments requires security solutions that can assess AI implementations alongside traditional infrastructure components.

Beyond research outcomes, the partnership serves as a crucial mechanism for developing Northern

Ireland's cybersecurity talent pipeline. The collaboration operates on multiple levels, from PhD research through to undergraduate placements and guest lectures. Rapid7 takes Queen's placement students annually, while CSIT's PhD students regularly present at industry events such as the NI Cyber Cluster breakfast meetings.

"The team from Cyber-AI Hub, they're regularly in our offices and the learning goes both ways," says Damian. "Rapid7 benefits from the research and the team at CSIT get exposure to a commercial operation, how we build product, the decision-making that goes into that, and what's competitive in the market."

Judith Millar suggests that this has a multiplier effect. "With Rapid7 working with the CSIT team, that upscaling is two way, which is really exciting, providing real-world use cases and application for research."

The partnership extends this impact through quarterly review sessions that bring multiple company partners together with the CSIT team, creating opportunities for knowledge sharing across the broader cybersecurity ecosystem.

For CSIT, industry collaboration provides the pathway to commercialisation that transforms academic research into realworld applications.

"We see industry partnerships as a vital route to commercialisation," says Judith. "And when collaboration leads to companies employing more people, that's a win for the region, and success in our eyes."

The model demonstrates how academic institutions can contribute to regional economic development while maintaining research excellence. Success metrics include not just publication and research outputs, but commercial outcomes that

strengthen local companies and create employment opportunities.

For Rapid7, the partnership represents both product development investment and contribution to the local talent ecosystem. "If we as a company can create commercial value in our products and services and at the same time we're also contributing to the general local cyber security talent pool, then that's a win for everybody," says Damian.

Looking ahead, both organisations see the partnership as foundational to addressing expanding cybersecurity challenges. The research scope is evolving to encompass not just AI as a cybersecurity tool, but the security of AI systems themselves. The latter is a rapidly growing concern as AI adoption accelerates across industries.

"We're already looking at the next phase of the Cyber-AI Hub, and where we can scale," says Judith. The initiative has also expanded nationally through the LASR initiative, which brings together the Turing Institute, Oxford University, and Queen's as the UK Laboratory for AI Security Research.

For Damian Horner, the partnership's success demonstrates its potential for continued growth.

"I can see it growing in a very practical sense. 'Incident Command' is our flagship SIEM product and the research that we're doing here is critical to it and critical to expanding on the success in the market that we have," he says.

The collaboration between Rapid7 and CSIT represents more than a research partnership, it's a strategic investment in Northern Ireland's ability to maintain its global cybersecurity leadership. By combining academic rigour with commercial expertise, the partnership creates a model for how regions can compete in rapidly evolving technology sectors while building the talent pipeline necessary for long-term success.

Many businesses believe they're winning the AI race. They've deployed ChatGPT-style tools, rolled out Microsoft Copilot, and ticked the ‘digital transformation’ box. But according to Richard Thompson, Director of AI and Data at EY, a far more transformative technology is quietly reshaping business operations - the agentic AI that makes decisions and executes tasks without human oversight.

As a Director in AI and Data for one of the world's Big Four consulting giants, Richard has occupied a ringside seat to profound technological shifts, of which agentic AI is the latest.

"We've seen organisations deploy various AI tools over the last two and a half years," he says. "But are yet to truly recognise the value of an incorporating agentic AI into the workforce”

Chatbots have captured headlines, and the autonomous agents are quietly reshaping industries, but it is agentic AI that is the next phase of where artificial intelligence is heading.

Unlike the generative AI tools that have dominated public discourse since ChatGPT's explosive debut, agentic AI represents something far more transformative.

The term ‘agentic AI’ can be a little opaque to an outsider, but Richard sees this as artificial intelligence that doesn't merely respond to human prompts but acts independently, making decisions, executing tasks, and driving outcomes with a reduced level of human oversight.

Consider a manufacturing floor. Traditional approaches might see engineers reviewing data after an event or a problem occurs. But this reactive stance costs time, money, resources and sometimes safety. Agentic AI flips this paradigm entirely, moving from AI as assistant to AI as a proactive, autonomous actor.

“It is a question of how can these AI actors actually use some of the data that's been given to them to be proactive rather than waiting for something to occur?" Richard says.

This transformation isn't merely theoretical for Richard and his team. At EY, the development of EYQ – the firm's private Gen AI ecosystem – is now driving the transition from experimental technology to enterprise-grade transformation. What began as a four-week proof of concept has evolved into an enterprise reality and a comprehensive ecosystem serving 400,000 EY professionals globally.

EY’s Richard AI's next evolutionary

Richard Thompson on evolutionary leap

Beyond offering ChatGPTstyle conversations, the system features domainspecific conversational agents tailored to particular functions. Practitioners can navigate complex projects without wrestling with 70 different applications and information sources. It's AI as enabler rather than replacement; and yet the obstacles companies face in building truly data-informed cultures are often human and cultural, and less about the technology.

“Most organisations now have explored the use of Copilot and various other productivity tools," he says, but the real barriers are distinctly human. "It's more around the people, the processes, the mindset shift."

While businesses scramble to deploy the latest tools, they're often missing the fundamental cultural transformation required to unlock AI's true potential. The technology exists, but the human infrastructure to support it often can be overlooked or underdeveloped. Richard's approach to solving this challenge within his own teams offers a blueprint for leaders grappling with similar transformations.

"It's about modelling the behaviour that I would like to see," he says. Rather than mandating AI adoption from above, Richard makes a point in demonstrating how data-driven decisionmaking works in practice by choosing evidence over

instinct in daily operations.

Richard sees AI fundamentally reshaping how businesses conceptualise value creation. "Over the last two-and-a-half years, since the various Gen AI tools started becoming available to people, it's now around trying to change people's mindset into actually treating data like an asset or product," he says. For Richard, this shift from data as byproduct to data as strategic resource represents a fundamental reframing within the transformation process.

Working within a highly regulated industry, EY's AI initiatives must navigate complex considerations around data governance, privacy, and societal impact. Richard’s team can draw on deep expertise – including Partners who advise the Irish government on AI guidelines and serve on national advisory panels.

"Working in a highly regulated industry and working with regulated clients, data governance, and data privacy has always been central to a lot of our roles," he says. "That's no different when it comes to AI."

This regulatory awareness is invaluable now governments worldwide consider the implications of AI. According to Richard, "ethical and regulatory considerations are going to become huge over the next couple of years. Governments are still

getting to grips with what this means – how can we control and do it in a safe, secure way?"

For Northern Ireland specifically, Richard sees extraordinary opportunity emerging from this technological revolution.

The region's combination of educational infrastructure, existing talent pools, and growing tech sector positions it to benefit from AI's expansion. EY's local investment in opening a new Northwest Office in Derry/Londonderry, and running their Assured Skills Academy programme which trains and places technology professionals, demonstrate how global organisations can contribute to regional development while addressing their own talent needs.

Recently, Economy Minister

Dr Caoimhe Archibald announced 20 training places on EY's seventh Assured Skills Academy, focusing on Business Operations and Technology.

The six-week intensive programme, running from 10 November to 18 December 2025 at Belfast Met's Springvale and Titanic campuses, will provide practical experience in Strategy and Transactions roles with guaranteed job interviews at EY for successful participants.

"Within Northern Ireland, we are seeing a huge demand for AI skills across various different organisations," Richard says. "So how we attract that talent, and how

we retain that talent is going to be key."

It's a challenge that reflects broader questions about how regions can position themselves advantageously within AI's emerging landscape and ultimately develop their human potential.

“First and foremost, it's important to have a real diversity of skills and thought,” he says. Rather than seeking AI specialists exclusively, Richard reflects on the importance of diverse perspectives and empowering team members to bring their unique viewpoints to projects. This approach recognises that AI's most significant applications often emerge from unexpected combinations of personal experience, domain expertise and technical capability.

Looking forward, Richard acknowledges the inherent difficulty of predicting AI's trajectory. He anticipates consolidation among AI providers as a handful of major players establish dominance, greater infusing AI across all business functions, and continued evolution toward incorporating traditional workplace models with an agentic workforce.

Perhaps most significantly, Richard foresees a somewhat redefined understanding of human roles within certain organisations. "How can we redefine what the human role is?" he says. “How can

we free up [humans] from repetitive, manual tasks? How can we ultimately drive more value for the business?”

The answers depend entirely on an organisations' willingness to embrace the mindset shifts Richard describes. Companies that view AI merely as a productivity enhancement tool risk missing its transformational potential. Those that reimagine their operations around autonomous intelligence –treating data as a strategic asset, fostering cultures of innovation, and redefining human-AI collaboration – position themselves to thrive in an increasingly automated world.

“When you are driving innovation through exploring new technologies or proof of concepts, it’s important embrace a failfast approach: if something isn’t delivering the expected value, acknowledge it quickly, learn from it, and pivot to the next idea” he says. In an era of rapid technological change, the ability to experiment, learn, and adapt may prove more valuable than any specific technical capability.

According to Richard, the businesses that recognise agentic AI's potential – and undertake the difficult cultural work necessary to harness it – will find themselves with the sharper competitive edge and all the benefits that flow from it.

Aflac Northern Ireland climbing to new heights for The Children’s Cancer Unit Charity

During Childhood Cancer Awareness

Month, employees at Aflac Northern Ireland set out to raise funds for The Children’s Cancer Unit Charity (CCUC) with the Three Peaks Challenge, a trek to the Mournes that includes Slieve Binnian, Slieve Commedagh and, finally, an ascent to the top of Slieve Donard.

Aflac Northern Ireland, located in Belfast, is a global IT and cybersecurity center that develops technology and innovative solutions to help support customers in their greatest time of need. A supporter of CCUC for five years, Aflac Northern Ireland took that commitment to new heights on Sept. 12, when 53 employees swapped their keyboards for hiking boots to help build awareness of pediatric cancer and raise funds for CCUC.

The result: more than £23,000 was raised and donated to support the Children’s Cancer and Haematology Unit at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children.

“Care is at Aflac’s core, particularly when it comes to supporting children and families affected by cancer and blood disorders. Through our longstanding partnership with CCUC, we’re able to be there for families during

a difficult time,” said, Aflac Northern Ireland Head of Talent and Culture Sarah Milliken. “We set out to raise £10,000, but thanks to the enthusiasm of our team, we surpassed that goal and are eager to see every pound go directly to the Children’s Cancer and Haematology Unit.”

Each year, more than 60 children in Northern Ireland are diagnosed with cancer and complex blood disorders, and any child diagnosed with one of these conditions will visit the Children’s Cancer Unit at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children during their treatment journeys.

Funds raised during the Three Peaks Challenge will help provide crucial resources such as equipment and infrastructure, as well as training and development for staff who work in the Children’s Cancer Unit. The money will also help the

charity to provide direct support to families and support vital research into childhood and adolescent cancer.

Jane Hoare, Chief Executive at The Children’s Cancer Unit Charity commented: “We are incredibly grateful to the team at Aflac for their generosity, enthusiasm and dedication to our charitythey always go the extra mile for the children, young people and families we support and always set the bar high for their fundraising challenges. Thank you to everyone who took part and contributed to this fantastic total.”

Aflac Northern Ireland’s collaboration with The Children’s Cancer Unit Charity builds on Aflac’s longstanding and global mission to support children diagnosed with cancer and blood disorders, as well as the medical professionals who care for them.

Since 2020, Aflac Northern Ireland has raised a total of £100,000 — that’s in addition to the deliveries of 100 My Special Aflac Ducks® to bring smiles to children and help them express their feelings through play. My Special Aflac Duck is a cherished robotic companion that uses medical play and realistic motions to emulate emotions and interact with children as they navigate their cancer or sickle cell disease journeys. As part of Aflac's 30-year and nearly $192 million commitment to children and families facing these conditions, the company has given, free of charge, more than 39,000 My Special Aflac Ducks to children with cancer or sickle cell in the United States, Japan and Northern Ireland.

Learn more about Aflac’s commitment to providing support for those facing pediatric cancer and blood disorders by visiting AflacChildhoodCancer.org.

 By Deborah Colville, National Director of

Place-based innovation across the country will power the UK economy

For too long innovation and investment in the UK have been concentrated in the ‘Golden Triangle,’ comprising London, Oxford, and Cambridge. While the Triangle represents significant value, the country cannot afford to rely solely on this region to fuel its economic growth. By offering access to resources that innovators across the country need to scale, place-based innovation is proving to be a key mobiliser of regional development and success.

At Digital Catapult, we have championed investment in regions across the country, delivering interventions that enable deep tech regional companies to scale successfully. To ensure that more regional startups see a viable path to commercialisation however, place-based innovation must be a long-term priority for business and industry.

The regional innovation divide

Having partnered with academic institutions to deliver innovation and accelerator programmes that drive the practical application of deep tech innovation for over a decade,

at Digital Catapult we recognise the value of regional academic institutions in fuelling innovation. Academic institutions are making considerable progress commercialising innovative solutions, and currently, UK higher education and research make a total net contribution of £265 billion to the economy. While many academic institutions are partnering with business and industry to support startups, what remains clear however, is that the disparity between regions in terms of successfully commercialising new solutions remains stark.

Research by Beauhurst for example, has found that Northern regions continue to struggle to keep pace with the South, with the North East, seeing its share of total UK deals decline from 2.6% to 1.9% in the last year. Moreover, while most regions across the UK saw an increase in investment volume, London still accounts for the main share of this growth, serving as a reminder of the need to promote place-based innovation. While regional investment has improved in recent years, the discrepancy in funding and successful scaling of local startups is a risk to broader economic growth in the UK. Failing to nurture or support the deep tech pioneers located across

other regions will be of detriment to the UK’s innovation landscape, particularly when these regions offer such strategic value and importance to economic output and growth.

The value of place-based innovation

Considering the success of regional hubs in the UK, the impact of regional achievements exceeds far beyond economic impact, bringing cultural and social benefits to regions too. The West of England for example, has become a hub of creative innovation. The region’s creative economy generated almost £900million in economic value in recent years, and a key determinant of this success has been place-based innovation that has established the West of England as a creative technology hub, through effective partnerships and collaboration. By bridging the gap between local government, local academia, and local industry as part of a place-based strategy, Digital Catapult has played a key role driving the practical application of deep tech innovation in the creative industries and enabled deep tech companies to scale successfully in the region.

The MyWorld Programme, for example, was an initiative delivered by Digital Catapult in collaboration with the University of Bristol that saw leading universities in the region convene with over 30 technology, creative and film companies to cement the West of England’s position as a creative media powerhouse. Innovation and accelerator programmes that we delivered fuelled a pipeline of local companies that have since commercialised their solutions and solved industrial challenges in the UK and globally. The success of this initiative speaks to the value of embracing a place-based approach to innovation, boosting the local economy, supporting sectoral growth, and boosting employment opportunities and regional pride too. A place-based approach must be broad however, accounting for the breadth of talent

that exists across the UK and Northern Ireland, where Digital Catapult has achieved remarkable success.

Powering place-based innovation across regions

Since we were founded in 2013, Digital Catapult has delivered interventions that support regional hubs across the UK, providing startups from the South West of England, Northern Ireland to the North East of England with access to innovation and accelerator programmes, testbeds and facilities and investment readiness support. In Northern Ireland, our Smart Nano NI programme in collaboration with Queens University Belfast, accelerates the practical application of photonics in sectors ranging from high value manufacturing to agriculture, further driving regional innovation and growth. The UK Digital Twin Centre in Belfast also works closely with academic institutions as a mechanism to bridge the gap between local academia and industry.

The opening of the UK Digital Twin Centre is one of the most compelling examples of our place-based innovation approach and has seen regional transformation in Belfast by building on local strengths. The Centre is an initiative delivered by Digital Catapult with funding from Belfast Region City Deal and Innovate UK, with co-investment from industry leaders, Spirit Aerosystems, Artemis Technologies and Thales UK. The Centre will position the UK as a leader in digital twin capabilities, and makes digital twins more accessible and meaningful in the country. It has recently launched its first accelerator programme open to businesses across the UK, further driving regional growth in Northern Ireland and sharpening the UK’s competitive edge in the realm of this deep tech innovation. The Centre serves as an example of what can be achieved when the gap between industry, academia and government can be bridged to fuel a place-based

innovation approach, and another example of our success in this space is in the North East of England.

Digital Catapult has seen great success in the North East of England, and in Gateshead we have invested in a pioneering facility that forms part of the UK’s first 5G connected network of advanced media production studios, called PROTO. By collaborating with the North East Combined Authority (NECA), as well as local skills colleges, we have bridged the gap between local industry, academia and government to enable local deep tech companies to scale successfully. Having worked in the creative industries for over a decade, our place-based innovation approach is now fuelling a pipeline of creative pioneers in the North East, with each one contributing to other sectors in the region including film and television production and the gaming industry. Our regional success, is testament to how place-based innovation is critical to driving long term economic growth for the UK, capitalising on regional strengths. This strategy can be replicated, but only if business and industry take note of the innovation and talent that exists outside of the Golden Triangle.

Place-based innovation is already reshaping the UK’s innovation landscape, proving that talent and potential extend far beyond the Golden Triangle. By unlocking the strengths of regional hubs, fostering collaboration between academia, industry and government, and ensuring equitable access to resources, the UK can build a more resilient and inclusive economy. Digital Catapult’s experience demonstrates the transformative power of targeted regional investment, with initiatives from Bristol to Belfast delivering measurable growth, jobs, and pride. To maintain global competitiveness and drive sustainable prosperity, the UK must commit to making place-based innovation a longterm national priority.

Building enterprise GenAI infrastructure: Lessons from Liberty IT's digital transformation

Sinead Shackley is the Senior Director of Engineering at Liberty IT, a leader in digital innovation employing over 800 employees across the island of Ireland. The company is part of the Fortune-ranked Liberty Mutual Insurance and one of the key drivers behind its global digital enablement journey

q What was the catalyst that convinced your company to seriously invest in generative AI technology? Was there a specific moment or project that proved its potential?

At Liberty IT, we regularly scan for emerging technologies as part of a process we used to call the Futurist Challenge and now call our Digital Progression Program. This used to be a quarterly process within the organisation to scan the landscape for new and emergent technologies to determine their suitability for our world within insurance. Towards the end of 2022, we did a Futurist Challenge and at this event we identified GenAI as an interesting technology and created a white paper on it.

When ChatGPT went mainstream in early 2023 we examined our white paper again and that started everything for us. Because we were already aware of the technology and had already considered how and where we would apply it within our insurance business, we were quickly able to stand up several foundational capabilities including our own inhouse version of ChatGPT, our in-house AI platform which currently makes a portfolio of foundational and frontier models available to the use cases, we had already considered potential risks from the technology and so quickly stood up our Responsible AI approach. From there, we then built the rest of the ecosystem, including a north star GenAI architecture, identified use cases and identified and built out reuseable GenAI capabilities.

q What measurable impacts have you seen in terms of efficiency, accuracy, or customer satisfaction since implementing these technologies?

We’ve lots of examples, too many to mention but to detail just a few:

Our own in house instance of ChatGPT, we have a significant number of users of this tool, with hundreds of thousands of hours saved, giving people time back to work on other tasks.

Our AI platform which supports a portfolio of frontier and foundational models. These models are in turn used by our teams in their use cases with projections in the many millions of dollars (across all parts of our business).

Our engineers use Github co-pilot to help with coding efficiency.

We also use GenAI in our tech modernisation journey, e.g. database conversions from Sybase to MS-SQL that were converted seamlessly using GenAI.

We continue to experiment with various models and products. For example, we recently had hundreds of stored procedures that we needed to convert. We tried firstly using the OpenAI models and only had a low success rate. We sought advice from an external third party who offered to come in and do it for us. We then experimented again using Claude models and

various prompts until we got 100% of the stored procedures converted cleanly and saved us significant external spend!

q Have there been any unexpected applications or benefits of generative AI that surprised you?

Liberty has experimented with AIpowered knowledge assistants to help engineers and claims adjusters quickly surface information. The surprise has been how much tacit knowledge (often trapped in SharePoint, Confluence, or Slack threads) could be unlocked, reducing time spent hunting for answers.

q What are the biggest technical hurdles you've encountered in integrating generative AI into legacy insurance systems, and how have you overcome them?

Like I’m sure all companies, we encountered lots of hurdles, particularly in the beginning, when we literally knew nothing. I laugh when I think back to the times when we never had enough tokens and to get more, we had to complete a form and submit it to Microsoft! We also couldn’t get access to models etc, so not enough throughput to support our use cases, problems with resiliency. Layer on, net new things we hadn’t even heard of, content moderation and guardrails etc

Although I would say the largest hurdles aren’t tech related, they are people, process and data related.

It has taken a village of people within Liberty to overcome the hurdles, including colleagues within our privacy, compliance, data science, technology, security, infrastructure and procurement areas.

q How has the introduction of generative AI changed the skill requirements for your engineering teams and what initiatives does Liberty currently have in place to address this? What new competencies are you prioritizing in hiring?

Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming how we work and serve customers. At Liberty, we’re equipping all employees with tools, practical training, and guidance to use AI responsibly to ensure that everyone can experiment with confidence, build skills, and help deliver faster, smarter outcomes together.

We have designed and developed a GenAI Learning Mission. This consists of several complementary workstreams for all members of our organisation whether in an engineering role, people leader role, product role etc. The mission includes:

• GenAI Literacy

• Tools & Ways of Working

• Building AI into Apps

• Evolving GenAI Skills

• People Leader Journey (including modules on change management)

These are all supported with monthly office hours for everyone to come along and connect with SMEs. On top of this we have regular promptathons, unconferences and knowledge shares.

q There's ongoing debate about AI replacing versus augmenting human workers. What's your perspective based on what you've observed in your organization?

AI tools are being positioned as augmenters of human capability rather than full replacements.

For example, engineers use AI to accelerate coding, testing, and documentation, but the decisionmaking, architectural thinking, and context-sensitive trade-offs remain firmly human.

Similarly, in customer operations, AI assists with triage, summarisation, and insights, while human employees handle nuanced judgment, empathy, and exceptions.

AI often reshapes roles rather than eliminating them. This creates a premium on adaptability and continuous

learning—teams that can learn to leverage AI quickly tend to gain an edge.

There are undeniable efficiency gains: automation of document review, claims processing, or code analysis can cut turnaround times significantly.

However, I am seeing companies also recognise the human value—trust, empathy, ethics, and nuanced decisionmaking are essential in industries like insurance, where relationships and judgment play a big role.

The trend is toward a hybrid model: AI does the “grunt work,” humans do the “great work.”

q What ethical guidelines have you established for AI use, and how do you enforce them across different teams and projects?

Our Responsible AI approval process is a multi-step governance process all Generative AI use-cases at Liberty must undergo.

A RAI Steering Group exists to ensure strategic direction. Separately, a crossfunctional RAIC exists to advise on risk with experts from across Legal, Privacy, Security etc.

To ensure we follow our “Integrity first” principle, we advocate for a “Responsible AI by Design” process. This means embedding governance in the product development cycle to facilitate an early understanding of the use cases' impact and risks. This streamlines development and deployment by reducing the need for costly corrections or alterations down the road. It also prevents rework as we know that our use of AI will be heavily regulated either by state and federal laws or by our insurance commissioners. Every proposed framework for AI regulations includes a requirement that we have a governance structure and that we document our assessment (and ultimate mitigation) of AI risks.

Sync NI speaks to Danske Bank’s Chief Information Officer Liam Curran about how the bank is developing and deploying technology and what advances in AI mean for its staff and customers

q As Chief Information Officer you lead Danske Bank’s Technology & Digital Development department. Tell us a bit about what the team’s role is?

First and foremost, Danske Bank is a relationship bank, and that hasn’t changed. But banking is a fast-moving, competitive industry with changing customer behaviours and expectations in terms of speed, and our investment in the team reflects that. We now employ over 140 people here in Belfast in a variety of roles across digital development, data and analytics, software engineering, robotics, Project Management, AI, IT and cyber security.

We’re continuing to build our capabilities, complementing a wealth of skills and experience in the team with some recent senior hires in specialist roles such as a Head of Engineering, Head of Automation and a Head of AI. We have also provided retraining and opportunities for colleagues across the bank via our in-house Technology Academy and apprenticeship programmes where colleagues get the opportunity to combine real life experience and gain a degree level qualification.

q What difference does your work make to your customers?

If you look at different journeys a customer will have with the bank, whether it's creating an account, taking out a personal or business loan, getting an overdraft – a lot of that can be digital. A big focus for the team is making that customer journey as quick, seamless and convenient as possible so customers can do these things

Danske Bank: Leveraging to enhance colleague customer experience

themselves, in their own time. And by automating more and more internal processes, we’re freeing up time for our colleagues to spend on the things that add more value to our customers.

q How is Danske Bank using AI? AI is already changing how we live and work, and the potential to transform the economy is enormous. AI itself isn’t new of course, and in banking we’ve been using it to help detect fraud and as part of our anti-money laundering measures for years. What’s changed is the arrival of GenAI. We’ve spent a lot of time across our business experimenting with use cases as we upskill ourselves on the new technologies. We’ve made great strides already in terms of both individual adoption and designing new solutions.

q Can you tell us more about how your employees are using GenAI? Danske Bank Group has developed its own GenAI assistant for everyday tasks, DanskeGPT. It’s similar to ChatGPT but

provided in a secure and compliant way for our business.

We think of it as a co-pilot or assistant to help colleagues with their daily work and many colleagues have become very proficient at using it, for example to automate tasks or generate ideas. As of July this year over three-quarters of our employees had used it, supported by a huge amount of education and upskilling. It genuinely seems to be helping them with their daily work, whether it’s helping with research, with meeting preparation, summarising documents or troubleshooting Excel formulas. Importantly, we have very clear guidelines and mandatory training for all employees on the use of GenAI.

q You mentioned creating new solutions - can you share any examples?

Yes, so another key area has been leveraging our GenAI platform to create a number of smart agents. A good example of this is HR Polly, a GenAI-

Leveraging AI colleague and experience

powered assistant for colleagues. Developed alongside our local HR department and Group colleagues, HR Polly is now the first point of contact for all HR policy and guideline related queries, making it quicker and easier to find information. And there are similar search assistants for IT related queries, governance documents and others, with more in the pipeline.

q How will you judge the success of new technology at Danske?

Customers are at the heart of our business so ultimately success for us is about how satisfied our customers are, and that we’re continuing to attract and retain new customers.

My team has a key role to play, whether its harnessing data to better understand and communicate with our customers, developing new digital functionality that make everyday banking easier, or reducing colleagues’ admin time so they have more time to spend on customers and new ideas.

q So what’s next in terms of the strategic opportunity for Danske Bank?

We are at a key turning point as the technology is quickly evolving from GenAI smart assistants to Agentic Agents that can perform more complex tasks. No one has really cracked Agentic AI yet at Enterprise level, albeit we are seeing more automation of individual tasks.

Locally we’ve been working on Agentic for six months and it may be another six months before we put anything into production. That’s because we want these AI Agents to perform complex tasks across multiple customer journeys, so it is very important that we go through rigorous governance and testing.

We’re at early stages with Agentic, but the potential could be incredible. We’re collaborating with our colleagues in Group and with partners such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and

Microsoft on proof-of-concept projects - they have told us that we are at the forefront of these developments, so that is very exciting.

q How important are partners like AWS in achieving your ambitions?

Partnerships, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing are all key to unlocking the potential of GenAI, not just in our own business but in society and the economy. We work with a number of tech partners and engage with local organisations including our local universities, Catalyst NI, NI Cyber and Belfast Chamber, to help drive innovation. We have recently partnered with AICON to launch a new series of After-Hours networking events aimed at building stronger community connections and sparking additional opportunities for collaboration.

We believe GenAI can be a powerful enabler and are excited about the opportunities it will create for our business and beyond.

The human touch: How one fintech firm is keeping engineers at the centre of the AI revolution

As artificial intelligence reshapes the financial services industry, Darren Abel, Senior Director of Engineering at Apex Fintech Solutions, still believes it’s the person in the chair that matters most.

"As a fintech company, we always want to push the envelope and be at the front of everything," Darren says. That philosophy has turned Apex's Belfast office into an innovation hub for AI integration, where the focus is on empowering engineers with tools that accelerate delivery and unlock new possibilities.

Recently, AI ambassadors from Apex's US headquarters were in Belfast conducting intensive workshops. "We have teams over from the US who are our AI ambassadors and AI leaders and they're taking the team through various training courses around generative AI" Darren says. It's part of a continuous learning programme that includes boot camps on AI fundamentals and hands-on sessions with specific tools.

The approach is deliberately proactive. "We take a really preemptive approach to roll out AI throughout the organisation," Darren says. "We are hosting workshops and boot camps on

AI fundamentals with specific tools. The generative AI side of things is what everybody knows, more commonly now we're starting to see agentic AI in software."

These aren't one-off training sessions but are embedded components of Apex's culture. For example. the company runs Tech Days twice annually – these are week-long hackathons where innovation takes centre stage.

"We have themes around AI and automation in particular this year," Darren says. "And we have AI champions within different departments to really keep pushing things forward."

What distinguishes Apex's approach is how it combines leadership vision with grassroots innovation. "We listen to the employees as well observing what they're doing," Darren says. "We're trying to foster a culture of AI, as we take it from the bottom up and we see tools that people are talking about, and we can explore those as well."

"Our whole philosophy is to provide frictionless B2B solutions for our clients," Darren says. That mission drives the organisation's enthusiasm for AI whilst maintaining clear

priorities about where human expertise matters most.

Darren is emphatic that the transformation happening in software development doesn't diminish the engineer's role but elevates it. "The key thing is that the person in the chair is still the most important element," he says. "And I don't see that changing in the next few years."

In practical terms, this means AI handles the groundwork whilst engineers apply their expertise to complex architectural decisions and strategic problem-solving. From a software perspective, designing software and analysing software can be done much more rapidly and what might have previously taken months can often be completed in a matter of days, sometimes faster. This shift has fundamentally altered how engineers spend their time, moving them away from repetitive tasks and towards work that demands genuine insight and innovation. What remains constant is problem solving.

Nevertheless, the speed of change is tangible. Tasks that once consumed significant time and resources now happen faster, freeing engineers to focus on higher-level problem-solving. But the engineer's judgement, creativity and critical thinking remain irreplaceable. The technology enhances capability, according to

Darren, it doesn't substitute for expertise.

Operating in financial services demands rigorous safeguards and given the unprecedented scale of hacking in recent times the stakes have never been higher. It's precisely these risks that make Apex's governance framework essential. Every AI tool must clear multiple hurdles before staff can use it, ensuring that the drive for innovation doesn't compromise security or regulatory compliance.

For Darren, "Security is paramount at Apex and ensuring that our customers' data is safe and secure is our main priority, so every new AI tool has to go through a very rigorous process before we will accept that into the organisation. And that's a fundamental foundation of our company culture."

Working closely with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and regulatory bodies, Apex balances innovation with compliance.

This careful approach hasn't slowed progress. On the contrary, it's enabled sustainable growth. "For us, the acceleration of the speed of delivery is very important". We try to provide frictionless solutions to our customers, so getting new solutions out there to the customers is really important and AI is helping to accelerate that, both in the development side and also the testing side and other parts in between."

The company has also been exploring opportunities to integrate AI directly into its products. “For example, as part of our Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, we’ve been experimenting with incorporating AI as part of our Anti-Money Laundering (AML) processes,” says Darren.

Even as AI handles more routine tasks, Darren hasn't reduced investment in what makes engineers exceptional. "From our side of things, nothing has changed as we've always invested in people and the skills that people need in terms of critical thinking and emotional intelligence," he says.

The company uses DISC personality profiles to help staff understand different working styles and collaborate more effectively. The twice-yearly Tech Days hackathons focus not just on technical innovation but on creativity and teamwork. Staff are encouraged to speak at conferences and industry events, developing the communication skills that no algorithm can replicate.

"The softer skills are critical," Darren insists. "Without them, we're not a company."

It's an acknowledgement that as AI handles more routine tasks, the uniquely human capabilities such as judgement, creativity, emotional intelligence and ethical reasoning become more valuable, not less. The question isn't whether humans will remain relevant

in an AI-augmented workplace, but rather which human skills will prove most essential.

As the AI revolution continues to reshape the financial services sector, Apex's experience suggests a path forward that neither embraces technology uncritically nor resists it futilely. The company is moving fast, but with guardrails. It's automating aggressively but keeping humans in control. It's innovating constantly, but within a robust governance framework.

Looking forward, Darren sees tremendous potential in embracing new technologies and ways of working. The combination of AI acceleration, rigorous governance and continued investment in human talent positions Apex to deliver solutions faster and more effectively than ever before. The technology enables engineers to work at speeds previously impossible whilst the human expertise ensures quality, security and innovation.

The transformation Darren describes isn't about technology displacing people. It's about empowering exceptional engineers with exceptional tools. The AI simply helps them build tomorrow faster but human judgement, creativity and the ability to confidently spot when the AI is wrong remains indispensable. The person in the chair remains the most important.

The impact of AI on the cybersecurity industry in NI

With a robust tech ecosystem and cutting-edge research institutions, Northern Ireland is positioned to advance both AI for cybersecurity and cybersecurity for AI – two interdependent domains critical to safeguarding digital infrastructure.

Northern Ireland’s cybersecurity sector generates over £237 million in Gross Value Added (GVA) and supports more than 2,750 jobs. The region has become a hub for innovation, anchored by institutions like Queen’s University Belfast’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT).

The launch of the UK’s first CyberAI Hub, hosted by CSIT, marks a significant milestone by integrating AI into cyber-defence strategies. This will develop a talent pipeline of AI-cyber professionals and encourage further sectoral development.

AI as a cybersecurity enabler

From startups to global enterprises, Northern Ireland-based companies are leveraging AI to counter increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

AI enhances cybersecurity by automating threat detection, analysing anomalies, and accelerating incident response. Machine learning algorithms can process vast datasets to identify patterns that signal potential breaches more efficiently than traditional methods.

AI systems can detect malicious code, prevent fraud, monitor network behaviour, and generate reports for stakeholders. These capabilities are already being deployed across Northern Ireland’s finance, healthcare, and public service sectors, helping protect critical infrastructure.

Securing AI systems

As AI becomes more embedded

in infrastructure, securing AI itself is paramount. AI systems are vulnerable to emerging threats such as Prompt Injection (malicious prompts that manipulate AI behaviour) and Data Poisoning (corrupted training data that skews outputs).

Cybersecurity must be integrated throughout the AI lifecycle, from design and development to deployment and maintenance. The Cyber-AI Hub is leading research in this area, developing secure data analytics pipelines, robust training paradigms and monitoring systems to ensure AI technologies remain secure, robust and resilient.

Encouraging strategic partnerships

AI developments in the cybersecurity sector have resulted in strategic partnerships, especially between industry, public sector, and academia.

Initiatives like Invest NI’s Grant for R&D Programme and the City & Growth Deal projects, such as Momentum One Zero, the Cognitive Analytics Research Laboratory, and the Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre, empower businesses to integrate AI into their cybersecurity while safeguarding from emerging vulnerabilities.

Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 partnered with CSIT to advance cloud security using AI and machine learning. Their joint research focuses on identifying active threats in cloud environments, particularly the

exposure of sensitive data.

CSIT embedded researchers within Rapid7 to co-develop solutions that enhance threat detection. Raj Samani, Rapid7’s Chief Scientist, noted:

“This partnership comes at a time when there is a defender advantage surrounding AI. That window will close, so industry-academia collaboration is critical to expedite security advancements.”

Building a future-ready workforce

Northern Ireland aims to expand its cybersecurity workforce to 5,000 professionals by 2030, and AI will play a central role in this. Educational programmes, industry partnerships, and government initiatives are aligning to equip talent with skills to tackle both AI-driven threats and protection of AI systems.

Recent investments such as Allstate’s £16 million commitment to reskill its workforce in Northern Ireland in areas like cybersecurity, AI, and cloud computing highlight how public-private collaboration is fuelling innovation across the region.

Defining the future of digital trust

AI is transforming cybersecurity in Northern Ireland by accelerating threat detection, improving resilience, and opening new frontiers for innovation. At the same time, cybersecurity is essential to protect AI systems driving this change.

By embracing both AI for cybersecurity and cybersecurity for AI, Northern Ireland is not just defending against future threats, it’s helping define the future of digital trust.

With continued investment, ethical oversight, and a strong talent pipeline, the region is poised to lead in building a secure, AI-powered digital future.

Innovation at Pivotal SecPlus Shaping the future of cash management

In a sector often seen as traditional, innovation has always been the heartbeat of Pivotal SecPlus (PSP). As a leader in cash-in-transit, cash management and ATM services, we believe technology isn’t just a tool, it’s a catalyst for resilience, security and smarter decisionmaking.

Our success depends not only on operational excellence, but on continually reimagining how technology can strengthen security, improve efficiency and deliver greater value to our clients. In an era defined by rapid digital transformation, we see innovation not as an optional pursuit but as a responsibility to our customers, our partners and the communities we serve.

The role of artificial intelligence and data analytics in our sector cannot be overstated. At PSP, we are using these tools to create smarter, safer and more efficient systems across the cash cycle. By applying predictive analytics, we can anticipate customer needs, from optimising cash replenishment for ATMs, to streamlining secure cashin-transit routes. These insights also help us identify operational bottlenecks before they occur, improving efficiency across the entire cash cycle.

AI also strengthens our risk management capabilities. Machine learning models help detect anomalies and suspicious patterns, protecting against fraud and security breaches. This proactive approach means we don’t just respond to risks but actively prevent them. It is an essential step in safeguarding customer trust, the integrity of our services and regulatory compliance.

Digital transformation within PSP is not about replacing human expertise, it is about enhancing it. The movement of physical cash will always require the precision, discipline, traceability and trust that comes from people but the systems that support those movements are ripe for digital innovation.

We are investing in our platforms that integrate cash logistics with real-time data insights, enabling customers to see the full picture of their cash flow. By digitising legacy processes, we are

removing friction from the supply chain and creating seamless experiences for banks, retailers and society in general. Digital transformation enables us to deliver not just services but actionable intelligence that empowers our customers to make smarter business decisions.

The cash industry is often perceived as traditional, but the pace of technological change is accelerating. We’re seeing several key trends reshape the cash management landscape, each presenting new opportunities for innovation:

q Smart ATMs and IoT connectivity - ATMs are evolving into multifunctional terminals, equipped with IoT sensors that enable predictive maintenance and reduce downtime.

q Contactless and hybrid payment ecosystems - Even as digital payments grow, cash remains essential. We are investing in solutions that blend digital

convenience with physical reliability (PSP Banking Hubs).

q Blockchain and secure ledgers - These technologies are opening new opportunities in transparency and traceability, which are crucial factors in high-value logistics.

q Cybersecurity as a differentiator - With increased digitisation comes heightened cyber risk. At PSP, resilience and protection are core to every innovation we introduce.

These trends signal not the decline of cash, but its reinvention in a connected, data-driven world.

As the founder of Pivotal SecPlus, I’ve always believed that innovation must be both purposeful and resilient. This year, I was honoured to be shortlisted as a finalist in the 2025 EY Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) programme — a recognition that reflects not just our technological journey, but the leadership required to navigate and transform a sector often seen as traditional. Being recognised within the EOY community underscores the importance of longterm vision, agility and innovation. Just as EY celebrates entrepreneurs who reshape industries, we are determined to challenge the status quo in ours.

AI in action: From hype to real-world results

Michelle Sherrard, Director of Consulting Services, CGI, reflects on recent discussions around the role of AI in Northern Ireland’s public services and what it could mean for the future of delivery.

The Belfast team, already working closely with the Department of Justice and the Northern Ireland Courts & Tribunal Service to revolutionise service delivery, is well placed to connect with the wider public sector to gain direct insight into the real challenges they face - not only with AI but also with broader digital transformation.

“At last month’s Chief Executives’ Forum briefing event, AI in Action: From Hype to Real-World Results, supported by CGI, senior leaders from across Northern Ireland’s public sector came together to explore the transformative potential of AI in Northern Ireland’s public sector and how it is beginning to deliver tangible, real-world impact.

Keynote speaker Dr. Diane Gutiw, Vice-President and Global AI Research Lead at CGI, emphasised the importance of moving beyond theoretical discussions of AI and demonstrating its value in practice. There was a real sense of momentum in the room around the drive to turn ideas into tangible outcomes

and the audience was engaged throughout, eager to explore how AI could be applied in practice.

Dr. Gutiw reminded attendees that AI is not new and that neural networks have been accessible to data scientists and statisticians since the 1950s. Its recent momentum comes from the convergence of several powerful enablers. Natural language interfaces have made AI easier to use, access to large datasets has grown dramatically, computing power has surged, and cloud platforms have placed advanced tools within reach of almost every organisation. She highlighted that while we frequently hear about the latest breakthroughs, ethical dilemmas, and potential threats, far less attention is given to the real-world problems AI can help solve.

Hearing firsthand how CGI is supporting the Hywel Dda University Health Board in Wales, with its journey to become a fully digitally enabled organisation, reinforced Dr Gutiw’s message that ‘the time has come to move beyond talking about AI and focus on real, complex challenges facing

public service delivery and explore opportunities for how AI can genuinely improve our lives’.

In January 2025, CGI embarked on a £75 million, 10-year partnership with Hywel Dda University Health Board to transform healthcare services across Mid and West Wales. The initiative aims to elevate patient care, streamline operations, and support community-driven health and social care. Through this collaboration, CGI will help Hywel Dda improve patient outcomes and operational efficiencies by driving the strategic modernisation of health and social care, with digital transformation as a key enabler. This includes upgrading systems and facilities for healthcare professionals, exploring innovative solutions such as AI integration, and fostering closer collaboration between health and social care teams.

Anthony Tracey, Director of Digital at Hywel Dda University Health Board, added significant value to the briefing event, sharing his experience of AI deployment within his organisation. He highlighted several key use cases, including AI-driven support for faster and more accurate interpretation of CT, MRI, and X-Ray images, enhanced realtime analysis of clinical data such as observations and wearables to enable early detection of patient deterioration, and the optimisation of patient flow, staff rostering and overall productivity. Notably, he shared that an ambient AI scribe has the potential to reduce GP documentation time by 25-35%, a statistic that drew keen interest from CEF members from the healthcare sector.

Expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to share his knowledge, Anthony hoped that he could support Northern Ireland public sector leaders in embracing AI, not just as a technology but as a catalyst, for meaningful service improvement and citizen impact.

Marking a new chapter for the Chief Executives’ Forum, the briefing session was the first official event chaired by the new CEF Chair, Judith Gillespie CBE, who reminded attendees of the vital importance of understanding AI’s transformative potential, ensuring that public services are designed to meet the needs of all our citizens. She added that it is equally important for users to understand how these technologies are being applied, ensuring trust is built into every deployment.

A particularly valuable contribution came from Professor Helen McCarthy, the NI Executive’s Scientific and Technology Adviser, who provided insight into the early stages of developing a Northern Ireland AI Strategy and Action Plan. Her presentation highlighted the potential for AI to drive innovation and efficiency across public services, representing a significant step toward building a future-ready public sector that is responsive, digitally enabled, and capable of meeting the evolving needs of the population. Professor McCarthy was clear that ‘AI is not about replacing any of the workers, this is about making their lives easier so that we can upskill or get them on to other tasks’.

As expected, the discussion emphasised how data and evidence can enable the public sector to make better decisions. This aligns closely with CGI’s blog, ‘Data enablement: The foundation for AI and transformation’, which highlights that making data reliable, accessible, and actionable is essential for driving sustainable change and achieving tangible outcomes in public services: ‘Data enablement goes far beyond building analytics or applying AI. It is about bringing data to the surface, understanding its whereabouts and journey, where it holds value or creates friction, and how it can be made reliable and usable. It is about seeing data as a core enabler of every decision, every service, and every outcome we care about’.

Building on this, growing data maturity isn’t about collecting more or adding complexity – it’s about making better use of the data we already have. The discussion also highlighted that the simplest way to know whether a public sector policy is effective is to look at the data and let it tell the story.

There’s no doubt that digital transformation and AI in our public services can seem daunting, but when you bring together experts like Dr. Gutiw, practitioners like Anthony who’ve implemented it successfully, and those shaping the strategies and action plans like Professor McCarthy, it becomes clear that it isn’t so scary after all.

I have every confidence that attendees left the CEF event with a clearer sense of how AI can move from theory to practice in the public sector. The discussions reinforced the importance of strong data foundations, collaboration across sectors, and learning from real-world examples to drive transformation. Most importantly, the event showed that while AI can feel daunting, with the right expertise, strategies, and evidence in place, it becomes a powerful tool to improve services and decision-making.”

About Dr. Diane Gutiw

In addition to leading the CGI AI Research Centre, Dr. Gutiw develops strategies for AI ethics, policy and governance, and designs frameworks that establish guardrails for the responsible use of AI. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Canadian Government AI Council and has recently been appointed to the Government of Canada’s AI Strategy Task Force, helping shape Canada’s refreshed AI strategy.

About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world. With 93,000 consultants and professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from strategic IT and business consulting to systems integration, managed IT and business process services and intellectual property solutions. CGI works with clients through a local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network that helps clients digitally transform their organisations and accelerate results.

How Northern Ireland can harness AI to unlock productivity and drive sustainable economic growth

Northern Ireland has long been recognised for its resilience, creativity, and ability to adapt in the face of change. Today, another shift is underwayone driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

Done well, AI innovation has the potential to tackle one of our most persistent economic challenges: low productivity. This was a subject that was explored in-depth at the recent Productivity Summit, hosted by Belfast Chamber in collaboration with Queen’s University Belfast, Danske Bank and Sumer Northern Ireland, at which Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald outlined that some of Northern Ireland’s strongest sectors are "at the cutting edge of the AI revolution".

Productivity here is, on average, 12% lower than the UK, and nearly 20% below the Republic of Ireland. Compared to the EU27, we lag 11%, and against the G7, 15%. These gaps are not new; they have stubbornly persisted over the past decade. Yet, history shows that significant leaps in productivity often coincide with the adoption of new ideas and technologies.

AI offers us a chance to take that leap - if we approach it with focus, responsibility, and ambition.

The debate around AI is often too focused on the technology itself, whether it’s the latest language model or the pace of machine learning breakthroughs. However, business

leaders should perhaps simply ask “how can AI help bring efficiencies?” and “is the company ready to embed it?”

AI is already reshaping industries across Northern Ireland, and globally. In financial services, AI-driven fraud detection and risk modelling are reducing losses and building consumer confidence. In healthcare, diagnostic AI tools are helping clinicians analyse scans faster and more accurately, freeing time for patient care. In manufacturing, predictive maintenance and smart robotics are reducing downtime and boosting efficiency. Retailers are also using AI to personalise customer journeys, while, in the public sector, AI can streamline services, reduce waiting times, and improve engagement.

It is important to remember that AI is a tool to unlock value, not the end goal. Real gains appear only when applied to real bottlenecks, simply replicating what others are doing rarely translates to competitive advantage.

Organisations in Northern Ireland should start by examining their unique workflows and goals, before applying AI as a catalyst for redesigning processes, not just automating tasks.

Of course, innovation comes with responsibility. Trust is the currency of the digital economy and, without it, adoption falters. AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data

brings benefits but also raises critical questions about ethics, privacy, and accountability. It’s also important to only analyse the specific data sets required to make AI deployment itsel

For Northern Ireland businesses, especially SMEs, the challenge is twofold: first, to understand and navigate the evolving regulatory environment –from the EU’s AI Act to UK frameworks – and, secondly, to embed ethical practices into how AI is designed and deployed. That means being transparent with customers and staff about when and how AI is used, ensuring fairness by guarding against bias that could entrench inequality, and maintaining accountability so that ultimate responsibility always lies with human decision-makers.

The prize for getting this right is significant. Firms that can demonstrate responsible AI can successfully build stronger customer trust, secure investment, and open doors to cross-border trade where compliance is key.

Northern Ireland is well placed to seize the AI opportunity. We already have an innovation ecosystem that punches above its weight, anchored by worldclass universities, specialist research centres, and a growing tech sector.

Belfast has been recognised as one of Europe’s most vibrant tech hubs, with global firms establishing AI

and big data teams here. Indigenous companies are also carving out niches in sectors from cyber security to health tech. The combination of academic expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and supportive business networks creates an optimum environment for AI innovation.

Crucially, Northern Ireland’s relatively compact economy can be an advantage. The ability for academia, business, and government to collaborate quickly and at scale makes us an ideal testbed for AI solutions. By positioning ourselves as a trusted region for ethical and impactful AI, we can attract investment, create high-value jobs, and bridge the productivity gap with our neighbours.

Many businesses may be somewhat daunted at the prospect of AI integration, with employees expressing concerns about their roles being filled by ‘robots’. However, it is crucial to bear in mind that technology on its own does not transform economies – people do. AI can certainly remove the “drudgery” in business processes.

To truly harness AI, Northern Ireland must prepare its workforce for change.

This begins with reskilling and upskilling. Many tasks will be automated, but far more roles will be augmented by AI. Employees will need to learn how to work alongside these tools, interpreting outputs,

providing oversight, and using freed-up time for higher-value activities. Our education and training systems will be pivotal. Universities and colleges should seize the opportunity to integrate AI literacy across disciplines – not just in computer science, but in business, healthcare, engineering, and the creative industries. Employers, meanwhile, must invest in continuous learning, ensuring that teams remain adaptable.

Equally important is rethinking how we measure productivity. Traditional metrics may miss the value created when AI enables employees to focus on innovation, problem-solving, and customer relationships.

Business leaders should resist the temptation to see AI purely as a headcount reduction tool. The greatest long-term gains will come when AI augments human creativity and judgment, rather than replacing it. The human is very much required to be “in the loop”.

So how can Northern Ireland make the most of this opportunity? Success will depend on three strategic shifts. First, businesses must be willing to redesign workflows and processes. It is not enough to automate inefficient systems; we must reimagine them. That means asking where value is lost – whether in paperwork, bottlenecks, or poor data flows – and using AI to unlock new ways of working.

Secondly, adoption must go hand-in-hand with investment in people. Reskilling teams and rethinking what productivity means in the age of AI is essential. Productivity should not be viewed solely in terms of output per hour but in the quality, creativity, and impact of the work delivered.

And, thirdly, AI should be seen as a catalyst, not just a tool. The firms that thrive will be those that treat AI as a spark for broader transformation – helping to redefine business models, customer experiences, and even whole sectors.

Northern Ireland has faced the productivity challenge for decades. But with AI, we have a genuine chance to change the story. This will require leadership, investment, and collaboration across business, government, and academia.

We should aim not only to adopt AI, but to shape how it is used by placing ethics, trust, and human potential at the heart of innovation. By doing so, we can close the productivity gap with the rest of the UK, match the dynamism of our European neighbours, and build a more sustainable and inclusive economy.

The question for every leader today is not whether AI will reshape our industries, because it already is. The real question is: will Northern Ireland seize the opportunity to harness it, or will we let others take the lead?