How UK CIOs are governing AI without killing innovation

Banking, retail, and academia are three sectors of the UK economy that remain largely successful and globally competitive. They are not without their challenges, both at home and on the global stage. Technology and digital working methods are both an opportunity and a disruption to all three sectors. Digital leaders from the three took part in a trio of panels in central London recently for the annual CIO UK&I conference.

All three sectors and their digital leaders report a significant demand for digital change, and at pace. Unsurprisingly, much of this is coming from interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI). At the same time, the world economy is fragile, and CEOs are demanding both innovation and careful budget management. A trio of digital leaders from our network discussed this, with Louise Leavey stating it is central to the CIO role to find ways to free up cash for that innovation. Ian Golding, Chief Digital, Information and AI Officer for professional services firm TC Group, added that it is also the CIO’s role to identify the right innovations:

The rate of rejection is really high, so innovations need to be low-friction to apply. We use Alpha and Beta testing to make sure the innovations become sticky.

Leavey agreed and made an interesting point about how we are now in a post-transformation era for the digitization of the organization:

Transformation should be evolution, and we are taking the business on a journey of evolution.

In the early decades of this century, it became popular for CIOs to dub themselves as transformational, inspired by a flurry of CIO powerlists. However, as Leavey and Golding point out, technology always evolves the processes of an organization, and perhaps more importantly, the people working at or using the services of that organization.

That evolution, just as in nature, has to reflect the environment around it. Richard Michel, CIDO at the University of London, says academia is highly innovative. Innovation must marry cost-effectively and successfully with the existing architecture of the organisation; microservices, Michel says, are ideal for meeting these two demands. Emma Smith, CDIO of the University of Bristol, agreed and added that in her experience, decoupling services both improves decommissioning of legacy systems but also enables the microservices estate to grow.

Across all three sectors, the digital leaders said having a clear vision and communicating that vision was central to their roles. That communication encompasses both a vision for a future state of operations or the risks of not evolving. Alexandra Vujcich, Director of IT at the University of Northampton, said backing for a new student records system required articulating what would happen if the legacy system fell over during clearing, the vital student recruitment period every summer.

She added that the implementation of the new student records system was as much about the organization adapting and her team enabling that, as it was the installation of new technology. She and peers in the sector said that hackathons and champions networks were helping both communicate the vision, deliver the change, but also manage the expectations of what technologies like Microsoft Copilot can actually achieve. A digital vision for the university is still important in order to prevent technology and data silos from building up in various faculties, which are naturally a form of silo.

On communication methods, Golding suggested that being able to break topics down is a useful exercise. It helps the digital leader and those they are working with understand where the success will come from. Key to this is connecting technology change to business outcomes, something all three sectors discussed. Even in academia, the CIOs were discussing using the business value streams language that I so often hear in consumer goods, manufacturing or other commercial sectors. Michel added:

Anybody in a complex organization should think about whether they are enabling or leading. You enable through a coalition of the willing.

He added that the value is often enabled by leadership peers, such as the Dean, and he says the academic sector has become very collaborative:

We are helping them achieve an outcome, and we collaborate across the sector too.

Smith said that collaboration is so important in an era of rapid technological change, where everyone is struggling to keep up with the pace:

We have two different types of AI, we are using it, and we are building AI, and that means we have to facilitate the journey to invent the next roles as well as the guardrails for AI.

Trust in AI

Guardrails, governance, and trust in AI were a central theme to all three vertical markets. In retail, AI has the power to amplify personalization, but also damage the trust between the merchant and the buyer. Sherry Fazal, Director of Technology & Innovation at Saville Row women’s tailors Knatchbull, said the VIP status of her firm’s customers meant governance protected the customer and therefore the business.

Personalization has been a holy grail of online retail for over a decade now, and as AI enters into the sector the digital leaders are both embracing the technology and concerned that it could erode trust in personalization. Asheeka Hyde, Technology Director: Data, Analytics & AI at SSP, which sells food and drink via outlets in airports and train stations, said is already in a difficult position:

Personalization was a really great idea in the beginning, as it was curation rather than pushing people down a path, but you see emails now where people are forcing you down a path for a price towards a high-margin product. The original idea was to think of an empty chair in the room that represented the customer. Now we are at risk of losing the promise of perzonalisation as it is too transactional and choice has been taken away.

The data leader makes a great point. With AI making it so easy to create and deliver a campaign, the creative, personal, caring, and thoughtful processes of working with a customer base can be rushed and then trashed. 

Fazal added that organizations need to design the convenience they offer as retailers based on the trust they have won. The same issue arose in the financial service discussion, with Leavey saying that success is trust, not speed. Golding added that leaders need to ensure their teams move away from task management and use the new technologies to spend more time with the customer and analyzing their customer journey.

A guarantor of trust is to ensure the organization is secure, and following the well-reported attacks on retailers and other sectors in 2025, it was not surprising to hear the retail digital leaders say cybersecurity is a regular board-level issue. Fazal said:

We are not as big as a bank, but we have to have the same level of rigor.

In academia, digital leaders are balancing enabling a creative and experimental culture with good cybersecurity. Ben Hine, CIO of UCL in London, said:

Academics are good at embracing new technology; they are not good at governance, cost efficiency, and security.

UCL and peers on the panel have done a great deal of work around their technical architecture. That architecture is coupled to a culture of openness, so the academics and innovative vendors they want to work with know they can connect to and collaborate with IT.

My take

No matter the sector, being a digital leader is about embracing and leading change, but in a way that protects the customers, the organization, and its people. This was a trio of discussions that exemplified the focus of the role: people, process, and then technology.