Session 1 - AI readiness of UK local authorities: What it means for risk, governance and delivery

10.10am – 11am GMT, 9 March 2026 ‐ 50 mins

Session

AI is already reshaping local public services - but readiness to adopt and scale it safely is highly uneven. Drawing on an 18-month, data-driven assessment of 208 UK councils (56% of all authorities), this session distils what “AI readiness”  looks like across data maturity, AI maturity and organisational culture and why leadership, governance discipline and data foundations matter more than organisation size alone.

The session will also provide an opportunity to discuss the research with Dr Luciana Blaha (Heriot-Watt University) and Daniel Shorr (CEO, GoLLM), aimed at translating it into useful insights for ALARM practitioners and a look at how GoLLM’s D.A.V.E. turns feedback into decision-grade insight for councils and other organisations.

Speakers

Luciana Blaha

Assistant Professor in Business Management and Intelligent Automation, Heriot-Watt University

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Daniel Shorr

CEO, GoLLM

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Chunche Lee

Researcher, GoLLM

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Luciana Blaha

Assistant Professor in Business Management and Intelligent Automation, Heriot-Watt University

Dr. Luciana Blaha leads the Intelligent Automation Systems (IAS) Lab at Heriot-Watt University and is a part of the Human Factors Team in Transit, the UK's Digital Twin for Transport Decarbonisation Hub. She has worked in the public, private and third sector for 12 years before moving to academia. She has been an editor of the first AI Playbook of the Scottish AI Alliance, committee member for the Edinburgh BCS-Chartered Institute for IT and is currently a member of the Scottish Parliament Academia Network. Her work looks at how AI and intelligent automation are made sense of and integrated into organisations.

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Daniel Shorr

CEO, GoLLM

Daniel Shorr is the Founder and CEO of GoLLM an Edinburgh-based AI company offering a feedback-to-insights platform, D.A.V.E. (Dynamic Analytics Visualisation Engine). He has worked in partnerships and product development across Tier 1 banking, government, frontier AI in academia, and the third sector in the UK, US, and Asia. For organisations, D.A.V.E. standardises and accelerates insight production across customer, people, and research teams - reducing analyst time and informing smarter decisions. It digests diverse feedback data such as surveys, images, interviews, time-series, and produces consistent, executive-ready reporting at scale with auditability and governance in mind.

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Chunche Lee

Researcher, GoLLM

Chunche Lee is a researcher trained in anthropology and linguistics, currently based in Edinburgh and originally from Taiwan. His work mainly involves qualitative document and discourse analysis, supported by quantitative analysis. He has research experience in both academic and industry settings and has collaborated on projects addressing issues of cultural translation and contact. He is particularly interested in mixed-methods research that translates into meaningful impact.