This summer, Senior Enterprise Architect Paul Crisp became the first Opencast employee to complete a secondment into government through the Civil Service Digital Secondment Programme – after spending a year at National Savings and Investments (NS&I). He describes his experiences, including the challenges, opportunities and lessons he’s learned.

Agentic AI represents a significant leap beyond traditional automation. These ‘digital coworkers’ are proactive, goal-oriented assistants – and the technology has profound implications across industry, with the potential to transform services by working in real-time, 24/7. The adoption of agentic AI also introduces a new set of challenges – with rapid evolution of the technology outpaces regulatory frameworks, careful consideration is needed of ethical, legal and operational risks. the emerging opportunities, challenges and approaches to best practice in this space? 

In a sector where the ambition to innovate responsibly and improve patient outcomes is already widely shared, the real challenge for UK healthcare lies in making it happen. This means navigating organisational complexity, skills gaps, limited capacity, infrastructure challenges and leadership hurdles. How the healthcare sector can move beyond ideas and into delivery was at the heart of the debate at June’s Opencast discussion for TechNExt 2025.