MATRIX Report Northern Ireland

Why it matters for Northern Ireland

Dual‑market access, global competition. NI’s position enables cross‑border collaboration and export, but also raises the bar: peers are investing in AI‑enabled productivity now.
Back‑office concentration. The very strengths that attracted FDI (process‑heavy roles) are those most exposed to automation. The path forward is upskilling + role redesign, not attrition.
SME backbone. Most firms are small; they need lightweight adoption kits (pre‑built connectors, secure data patterns, and managed evaluations) to capture value quickly.

What leaders should do this quarter

1) Stand up an adoption “cell.” A cross‑functional tiger team (ops, data, security, and a frontline “domain owner”) that ships two agentic pilots in 90 days:

• Support triage agent grounded in ticket history + KB.
• Finance ops agent that reconciles transactions and flags anomalies with signed, auditable outputs.

2) Build the rails once. Identity (verifiable IDs for users/agents), consent (purpose‑bound scopes with revocation), provenance (signed inputs/outputs), and evaluation (risk‑based tests) become reusable platforms—not one‑off project work.

3) Workforce plan from the inside out. Inventory task cohorts within roles; target the repetitive 60–80% for automation; design career paths toward oversight and quality. Tie training budgets to real pilots (so skills land in production).

4) Partner smartly. Use universities and innovation centres to de‑risk pilots; look at KTPs and BridgeAI opportunities to co‑fund applied work (see references).

Avoid these mistakes

• Big‑bang rewrite. AI adoption succeeds as a series of small, measured wins.
• Tool before governance. If you skip identity/consent/provenance now, you’ll pay for it at audit—and in production incidents.
• No KPI discipline. Pick four numbers that matter (accuracy‑with‑citations, time saved, authorized actions vs blocks, privacy incidents = 0) and publish them internally.

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