Day 1 at the Charity Commission - artificial intelligence is on its way

It’s always Day 1 at Amazon, where they stay on their toes and ahead of the curve by treating each day like it’s the first day of their new start-up, and where they have the massive advantage of a business powered by artificial intelligence.

While we may all hate queuing up in a supermarket to do our own checking-out and resent the interruption of waiting for a human to confirm we look over 25 years of age (although I welcome anyone doubting, even for one nanosecond, that I might not), AI is here to stay and we had better embrace it.

This week the Charity Commission has updated its business plan for 2021-2022. The regulator's four priorities for 2022 are to:

• help charities support the country in its recovery from the pandemic;
• continue to deliver a step change in its robust approach to regulation;
• improve how it uses data and create the right environment to enable its people to be more effective; and
• help make the Commission a great place to work.

Key outcomes against these priorities include:

• designing and delivering the initial phase of a charity trustee portal, as the first step in building a more one-to-one relationship with charity trustees;
• completing the discovery phase for a digital-first registration system and exploring opportunities for further automation in other processes;
• redesigning more of its guidance and delivering a programme of charity trustee-facing campaigns on key areas of charity governance; and
• delivering further improvements to the register of charities, informed by its policy framework for transparency and accountability.

There is no shortage of guidance on the Commission’s website: the issue has always been how to effectively navigate it, and this approach of concentrating on the consumer (here, trustee) experience is already evident in this year’s series of helpful five-minute guides for charity trustees, which we covered in a couple of short webinars back in April: Charity Trustees legal and governance webinar update series (shoosmiths.co.uk)

And hopefully digital-first registration of charities will help ease the burden on Commission staff who have been dealing with Covid-related issues as well as business as usual for the last 20 months or so, noting that the Commission will aim to assess and provide an initial response to applications for registration, permissions, and requests for advice within 10 working days, and decide registration, permission, and advice requests within 30 working days.

People + AI = The Future. The cyberpeople really are on their way...