{"id":208242,"date":"2025-10-18T06:30:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T06:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208242\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T06:30:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T06:30:16","slug":"dsit-says-ai-tool-could-free-up-75000-civil-servant-days-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208242\/","title":{"rendered":"DSIT says AI tool could free up 75,000 civil servant days a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has said that a new artificial intelligence\u00a0tool\u00a0for civil servants has the potential\u00a0to save\u00a075,000 days\u00a0of staff time every year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It said that the \u201cConsult\u201d\u00a0application, which is part of\u00a0the civil service\u2019s Humphrey\u00a0package\u00a0of AI\u00a0assistance\u00a0for officials, had successfully\u00a0analysed\u00a0more than 50,000 responses to\u00a0Sir Jon Cunliffe\u2019s\u00a0Independent Water\u00a0Commission\u00a0in just two hours, and did so at a cost of \u00a3240.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DSIT said experts had only needed 22 hours to check\u00a0Consult\u2019s work of\u00a0categorising\u00a0responses into themes, allowing for more time to focus on using responses to inform recommendations for their independent report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The department said that using Consult had \u201chelped to speed up the government\u2019s decision to abolish Ofwat<\/a>\u201d,\u00a0which was\u00a0one of the recommendations in Cunliffe\u2019s final\u00a0report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Digital government minister Ian Murray said the AI tool\u2019s successful deployment\u00a0on the Cunliffe review was\u00a0an indication\u00a0of its future cost-saving promise.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shows the\u00a0huge potential\u00a0for technology and AI to deliver better and more efficient public services for the public and provide better value for the taxpayer,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBy taking on the basic admin, Consult is giving staff time to focus on what matters \u2013\u00a0taking action to fix\u00a0public services. In the process, it could save the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to DSIT, the government spends around \u00a320m a year\u00a0on the manual analysis of consultation responses. It gave a figure of\u00a075,000 days\u00a0of work for officials that are dedicated to the task.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the department noted that manually analysing responses to individual consultations could take months<\/a>, and sometimes saw work outsourced to consultants\u00a0at around \u00a3100,000 a time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Consult supported the analysis of the Scottish Government\u2019s consultation on non-surgical cosmetics. It was also used to sort responses to the Digital Inclusion Action Plan, which saw\u00a0800 people responding to the call for evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DSIT said the checking process for Consult\u2019s work on the Cunliffe review consultation responses saw\u00a0its crunch put side-by-side with\u00a0detailed manual reviews of responses from stakeholders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The department said Consult\u2019s findings were compared with those of two groups of experts, and that Consult\u00a0agreed with one or both groups\u00a0nearly 83%\u00a0of the time, while the two expert\u00a0groups only agreed with each other 55% of the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has said that a new artificial intelligence\u00a0tool\u00a0for civil servants has the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-208242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}