I specialise in delivering practical, high-quality AI solutions that solve real problems across Defra and wider government. I focus on building responsible, transparent systems, modernising legacy environments, and introducing new ways of working that help engineering teams move faster with confidence.

A core part of my work is enabling teams to use AI tooling effectively — from hands-on experimentation to operational rollout — reducing barriers and helping engineers build, evaluate, and adopt AI safely. I bring clarity to emerging tools, establish patterns for responsible use, and support teams as they learn, deliver, and evolve.

I work across government to share patterns, frameworks, and learning so we don't reinvent the wheel — enabling teams to adopt AI safely while reducing duplication and increasing impact. Whether designing RAG architectures, shaping platforms, enabling AI agents, or breaking through technical constraints, I deliver solutions that work and help others do the same.

I regularly share updates on how Defra and wider government are adopting AI, modernising legacy systems, and experimenting safely with emerging tooling.

If you're interested in:

• practical AI delivery in government
• real-world lessons from LLMs and RAG systems
• AI agents, orchestration and automation
• cross-government collaboration and reuse
• modern engineering patterns for public services

👉 Follow my LinkedIn posts:

• LinkedIn Profile
• Automating the Routine - How Multi-Agent AI Could Empower Content Designers
• I Didn’t Plan to Build an AI Agent on My Holiday… But It Taught Me Something Important

I’m actively exploring and enabling teams to use AI agents for real workflows — moving beyond simple prompts to multi-step, tool-driven automation. My focus areas include:

• agent tool-use (search, retrieval, analysis, transformation)
• multi-step planning and orchestration
• grounding agents through RAG + structured data
• evaluating agent behaviour and reliability
• enabling developers to build and test agent workflows
• supporting agents as part of legacy modernisation and automation

The goal is to make agentic systems practical, safe, and production-ready for government services.

• Responsible AI Delivery — Transparent, secure and explainable systems for government use.
• RAG & LLM Integration — Domain-specific assistants, retrieval pipelines, production-ready architectures.
• AI Agents & Tooling — Multi-step automated workflows, tool-based reasoning, safe experimentation.
• AI Tooling Enablement — Supporting teams to adopt AI coding assistants, evaluation tools and frameworks.
• Legacy Modernisation — Reducing complexity, improving reliability, enabling future capability.
• Cross-Government Reuse — Sharing learning, patterns and frameworks to prevent reinvention.
• Engineering Leadership — Enabling fast flow, reducing friction, clearing blockers.

• agentic-environmental-intelligence An agentic AI proof-of-concept that monitors environmental data from UK government APIs (DEFRA/Environment Agency), detects anomalies, generates intelligent alerts using LangGraph and OpenAI, and provides an interactive Streamlit dashboard for incident visualization.

• ai-multi-agent Explores how AI agents could act as an intelligent pair-programmer for content designers. It uses a team of specialized agents to review content against style guides (inspired by GDS consistency standards) to ensure clarity and accessibility.

• ai-evaluation-testing-framework A comprehensive framework for testing, evaluating, and securing AI chatbots.

• ai-daily-researcher AI Daily Researcher is an autonomous, local-first tool that digests the flood of daily AI research

• defra-ai-sdlc
  A comprehensive approach to building responsible, production-ready AI systems.
  Focus: governance, engineering patterns, assurance, repeatability.

• defra-ai-legacy-modernisation
  A technical playbook for modernising legacy systems and integrating AI safely.
  Focus: architecture evolution, decision frameworks, future-proofing.

• UK Government AI Playbook
  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-playbook-for-the-uk-government/artificial-intelligence-playbook-for-the-uk-government-html

• Cross-Government AI Use Cases
  https://ai.gov.uk/knowledge-hub/use-cases/?organisation=&governmentBody=&userGroup=&typeOfTechnology=&impact=

• AI Insights: Coding Assistants in HMG
  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-insights/ai-insights-ai-coding-assistants-for-developers-in-hmg-html

• AI Agents & tool-based reasoning
• Advanced LLM orchestration
• Synthetic data generation
• RAG performance optimisation
• Fine-tuning & domain adaptation
• Applying LEGO-style modular thinking to build scalable, resilient systems 🧱

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-dickinson-3b148989/
• GitHub: You’re already here!

Thanks for visiting — let's build something meaningful, one brick and one model at a time 🧱🤖✨