A week after the UK government announced a sweeping plan to invest heavily in artificial intelligence, it is laying out more details on how it will take shape in the public sector. On the agenda: AI assistants to speed up public services. cross-departmental data-sharing agreements and a new set of artificial intelligence tools – named “Humphrey” after a character in an old UK TV political sitcom – to speed up the work of civil servants.
The plans will be formally unveiled at a press conference on Tuesday led by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), along with two other departments, Work and Pensions and Health/Social Care.
Per the UK Government AI websiteprogress on the projects appears to be in very early stages. For example, a plan to introduce more AI services to the customer-facing side of the NHS is only at the stage of a “charter” commitment to the idea. Other projects include links to Github repositories to see some of the work to date.
It is not clear how many people in total are working on these projects nor what third-party tools, such as LLMs, are being used. (We’ve asked these questions and will update readers when we learn more.)
At their heart, projects are about efficiency. The government, DSIT said, currently spends around £23 billion a year on technology and the idea will be to reallocate that money in a more modern way.
“Slow technology has hampered our public services for far too long, costing us all a fortune in time and money… Not to mention the headaches and stress we’re left with after being put on hold or forced to make a trip to fill out a form,” Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for DSIT, said in a statement. “My Department will put artificial intelligence to work… We will use technology to crack down on the public sector’s irrational approach to sharing information and working together to help the people it serves.”
The plans include a new team within DSIT to lead the projects, a bit like DOGE in the US, but designed and run by government people rather than tech tycoons.
DSIT initially develops in three areas:
1. The work of civil servants. Humphrey, named after rabid, intelligent assistant played by the late Nigel Hawthorne in “Yes, Minister” and then “Yes, Premier,” is a suite of applications aimed at reducing the typical day-to-day workload of civil servants, much of it centered around massive amounts of data required . for reading and editing.
“Consult” is designed to read and summarize “thousands” of consultation responses in hours. (Responses, which can be lengthy and numerous, are central to how the government considers feedback from stakeholders and the public.) “Parlex” will allow government employees to ask and read conversations in Parliament related to bills or other policy documents they are working on. Minute is a secure transcription service for taking meeting notes. “Redbox” helps prepare updates and policy documents. And “Lex” is focused on helping government employees find relevant legal data.
2. Another strand of the drive for efficiency will be speeding up public-facing services. The idea here is to target old-fashioned red tape, of which there is plenty in the UK, such as the 100,000 calls the tax authorities receive every day, or the need for people to appear in person to register a death, or, oddly enough, posting advertisements in local newspapers as part of the truck driving license process.
DSIT’s thinking is that overhauling processes like these with more AI-powered automation could save £45bn a year. It is unclear whether this estimate is before or after subtracting the costs of building and running AI services.
3. A final area will focus on more collaboration between departments to enhance data sharing to speed up how services are procured and then run.
Taken together, the various projects are a signal that the government wants to do business in its new AI push. But they also raise a number of questions.
For example, in the case of data sharing, DSIT says the operating idea here will be “a common sense approach to sharing information”. Central government agencies such as HMRC (Revenue and Customs) and the Department for Business and Trade could, for example, share data with each other and with local councils in fraud investigations. But what happens to data protection for individuals when data is shared unintentionally?
Another potential question surrounds Humphrey: right now, DSIT said some of the early applications are only in testing phases, but the big question will be how far the government will go to trust some of the AI’s conclusions . There will also be more people challenges. As a former civil servant who now works for an AI company notesprevious attempts to create cross-departmental programs have not always worked. Collaboration, money and power are ultimately the levers that will make or break any of these plans.
