A new AI tool developed by the government as part of its ‘Humphrey’ AI suite has been used for the first time to review public responses to a consultation.
The tool, called ‘Consult’, has been successfully used as part of a live consultation by the Scottish government on the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures.
Using generative AI, the tool reviewed responses to the consultation from over 2,000 members of the public and identified key themes that were then checked and refined by experts in the Scottish Government.
As this was the first time Consult was used on a live consultation, humans also manually reviewed every response, although the government noted that Consult and human reviewers agreed on theme rankings the majority of the time.
Consult is part of a larger suite of AI tools being developed by the government called Humphrey, which is designed to cut down on wasted time and expenses and improve the efficiency of work conducted by civil servants.
Named after the fictional Whitehall official made famous in ‘Yes, Minister’, Humphrey is an important factor in the government’s plan to achieve £45 billion in productivity savings and deliver a more agile, cost-effective state.
How Humphrey will overhaul the government’s “dire” and outdated systems
When it first announced the Humphrey AI suite, the government highlighted the poor state of systems across government departments, which it said were crying out for modernisation.
“The government inherited a dire system which over relies on ways of communicating that should be left in the last century – with HMRC taking 100,000 calls a day and DVLA processing 45,000 letters,” it said.
This outdated and inefficient system would be overhauled through a plan that encompasses, among other measures, the development and implementation of the Humphrey package of AI tools.
“[The plan] will do away with insensitive and antiquated processes that have been holding this country back for too long.”
In addition to Consult, the Humphrey toolset will include:
- Parlex – a tool to help policymakers search through and analyse decades of debate from the Houses of Parliament.
- Minute – a secure AI transcription service for government meetings.
- Redbox – a generative AI tool designed to help civil servants with day-to-day tasks.
- Lex – a tool which helps officials in law research.
“No one should be wasting time on something AI can do quicker and better, let alone wasting millions of taxpayer pounds on outsourcing such work to contractors,” said Technology Secretary Peter Kyle following the successful Consult trial.
“After demonstrating such promising results, Humphrey will help us cut the costs of governing and make it easier to collect and comprehensively review what experts and the public are telling us on a range of crucial issues.”
The government said that across the 500 consultations the government runs each year, Consult could help save officials from around 75,000 days of analysis anually, which costs the government £20 million.
Following this successful first implementation, the Consult tool is now set to be used across departments in a bid to cut down the millions of pounds spent on the current consultation process, including on external contractors.
Consult will soon be used on major consultations without officials manually reviewing every response individually, the government said, although it noted that experts will have access to a dashboard that will allow them to filter results and search for insights.
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