Beyond build vs buy: Why UK Government needs open foundations for AI
I’ve watched UK organisations pour millions into AI initiatives that deliver far less than expected. Not because the technology doesn’t work, but because we’re making a fundamental strategic error.
We’re treating AI procurement as a binary choice between build it ourselves or buy it from a vendor. But there’s a third option hiding in plain sight, one that could determine whether Britain becomes an AI powerhouse or just another customer.
Recent research shows that UK organisations plan to increase AI investment by 32% by 2026. Yet nearly 90% report they’re not delivering customer value from their AI efforts. Meanwhile, 62% cite an urgent AI skills gap, with agentic AI capabilities most in demand.
Think about what that means. We’re investing heavily in technology we can’t fully control, with skills we don’t have, to solve problems we’re still defining.
The symptom that worries me most is that 83% of UK organisations report “shadow AI”. That’s British employees bypassing official channels to use tools that actually work. When your official path is too slow or too locked down, people find another way. They always do.
But here’s the question nobody’s asking: Why isn’t our official AI delivering what the shadow version offers?
I understand the appeal of proprietary AI platforms. One vendor, one throat to choke, predictable support. It’s an IT tale as old as time. Simple.
Until it isn’t.
The pattern is familiar, where initial promises sound great, then walls appear. Features move to higher tiers. Integrations get deprecated. Prices change, sometimes by 1000% after an acquisition. Your data lives somewhere you can’t inspect it, processed by algorithms you can’t examine, behind terms that shift whenever convenient for someone else.
You thought you bought a solution. You actually bought a dependency beyond your control.
For government, this isn’t just expensive, it’s strategically dangerous. When operational control and autonomy are top cloud sovereignty priorities (cited by 72% of UK respondents in the same research) it’s important to recognise that you can’t build digital sovereignty on rented foundations.
Building everything in-house sounds empowering, but it’s a trap of a different kind.
Every department reinventing authentication. Every agency building its own document processing. Every council creating bespoke chatbots from scratch.
This isn’t innovation. It’s sprawl. It’s waste. And most of all, it’s bad for taxpayers.
British tech talent, which we are told we don’t have enough of, gets consumed rebuilding commodity capabilities that already exist. Meanwhile, the truly differentiated work that could set UK government apart never happens because our best people are stuck reinventing wheels.
Government should be asking “What are the common, underlying foundations that everyone needs, and how do we make those a shared utility?”
Authentication. Document processing. Natural language understanding. Computer vision. These are becoming commodity capabilities. They need to work reliably, but they’re not where government creates unique value.
The differentiated value, the work that truly serves citizens, comes from applying these foundations to uniquely governmental challenges. Better service delivery. Faster benefit processing. More responsive emergency services.
Enterprise open source provides the bridge.
This isn’t the “open source” that people interpret as “download it and figure it out for yourself.” Enterprise open source means professionally supported, fully integrated platforms built on open foundations. You get the stability and support of a commercial relationship, and you retain flexibility and choice.
The code is inspectable. The community improves it globally. Security vulnerabilities get caught because thousands of eyes are watching, not just one vendor’s security team. And if you ever need to, you can take it in-house, fork it, or switch providers.
That optionality rebalances the equation. Vendors must earn your business annually, not just lock you in and extract value.
When researchers optimised the Linux kernel and cut data centre energy use by 30%, every Linux user benefited. Not just premium customers. Everyone. That’s how innovation compounds.
Enterprise open source foundations already underpin critical national infrastructure around the world, including the UK’s Ministry of Defence and National Energy System Operator. Linux. Kubernetes. The tools powering the internet. They’re proven, working, and reliable, but they are not getting the strategic attention they deserve in AI discussions.
France and Germany built La Suite, an open source alternative to Microsoft 365, not due to vendor hostility, but from understanding that digital sovereignty requires controllable foundations.
China is investing heavily in open source AI, and many would say that it’s not purely due to community spirit, but because whoever controls the foundations controls the future.
Make enterprise open source foundations the default for government AI. Not because it’s cheaper (though it often is), but because it’s smarter. When something breaks, you can inspect and fix it. When you need to pivot, you can. When you need someone to call for help at 3am, experts are waiting at the end of the line.
Invest in talent differently. Train civil servants on technologies they’ll own, not just operate. Skills built on open foundations transfer everywhere. Skills built on proprietary platforms trap people and waste the talent pool we have.
Contribute to global communities. Join and shape the open source projects that matter. Help set tomorrow’s standards before they’re set for us.
Think in layers. Commoditise the common infrastructure. Let hundreds of departments collaborate in a consistent way and stop rebuilding authentication or cloud platforms. Liberate them to focus on the differentiated services that only government can provide.
Of the UK respondents surveyed, 83% believe the UK is or could become a global AI powerhouse within three years. That’s a smaller proportion than in Spain (99%), Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands (all 98%).
Our lower confidence isn’t just British cynicism. It reflects a real constraint. We’re building on someone else’s foundations, with someone else’s rules, at someone else’s prices.
The AI revolution isn’t just about models and compute. It’s about who gets to use it, how it works, and who decides what happens next.
The question isn’t whether to build or buy. It’s whether to depend on proprietary foundations that can shift beneath us, or invest in open ones we can control, improve, and build upon. Especially when this means enterprise support is readily available.
The UK doesn’t need to reinvent AI. We need to commoditise the common parts and unleash our talent on the problems that matter.
That’s not a technology decision. It’s a sovereignty decision.
And, the window to make it is still open – for now.
