UK government to test AI admin helpers to boost convenience for citizens
The UK government plans to trial AI agents that perform “boring” admin tasks on behalf of busy citizens, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has said.
In its latest bid to modernise the state, the government will use agentic AI – which can make decisions without human involvement based on specific prompts – to complete “basic admin tasks for people as well as provide tailored support”, it said.
Tasks could include form-filling, applications and appointment bookings, while personalised guidance could help people to pick careers or find jobs.
In its announcement on 16 August, the government said it would call for frontier AI companies to help it test the tech, progressing what it called a “world-first plan” to use AI agents for national government services as soon as 2027.
The project will be the UK’s first national AI tender since the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan was launched in January, and will follow the action plan’s recommended ‘Scan, Pilot, Scale’ approach.
The ‘scale’ phase, which has already been completed, included user research to identify where agentic AI could be most helpful, and early prototyping and exploration of what data is available to make further development possible.
The tender marks the start of the ‘pilot’ phase, in which the government will “work with leading AI labs to see whether the technology available is ready to reliably deliver” on its ambition.
It said the technology would be built in small and iterative stages, “consistently evaluated and rigorously tested” to ensure it is “reliable and accurate enough to be used by people across the country when it’s ready”.
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Peter Kyle, the UK’s technology secretary, said the aim of the plan was to “rethink and reshape how public services help people through crucial life moments using the power of emerging AI technology”.
“Using agentic AI to its full potential, we could provide a level of service to citizens across the country that was previously unimaginable – helping people to find better career opportunities, avoid wasting their time on government admin and more.”
He added that “at each step, we’ll only progress if the technology can be used in a safe and reliable way”.
Future uses could cover life milestones such as helping residents who have moved home to update their address on their digital driving licence, register with a new GP, register in a new constituency to vote, and more.
The government has asked frontier AI labs to share their expertise and assign AI specialists to create a prototype of the technology over the next six months to a year.
A “hybrid team” of private sector and government AI experts would work together to demonstrate “what’s possible in applying this new technology to public services”, the government said. It added that it would maintain ownership of the product.
The AI agent project “builds on the early success” of GOV.UK Chat, an experimental AI tool trained on 700,000 pages of the government website and provided by Amazon-backed AI firm Anthropic. Kyle said the chatbot would give citizens reliable answers to “any question you like about government services”.
Read more: UK prime minister reveals plan for AI to ‘turbocharge every single element’ of government
AI exemplars
The day after the plan to trial AI admin helpers was announcement, prime minister Keir Starmer unveiled a wider set of projects under the government’s AI Exemplars Programme.
These are designed to “explore new ways to make best use of emerging technology as part of a modern digital government”, the government said. Exemplars have been selected as the “most promising opportunities for rapidly using AI to make public services more efficient and easier to use”.
It said it was testing multiple AI solutions on different use cases “in order to learn quickly from both successes and failures while delivering real improvements”.
One project announced at the launch was developed at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust, where a large language model has been used to extract key information from medical records so that doctors can draft documents and discharge hospital patients more quickly.
Other use cases include speeding up planning decisions to improve consistency and reduce bureaucracy for homeowners, and saving teachers time on lesson plans and marking.
Speaking at the launch, Kyle stressed the role of AI in building “a smarter, more efficient state”, and said AI tools could unlock up to £45bn (US$60.7bn) in productivity gains for the country.
Trials within the AI Exemplars Programme will continue over the coming months before rollouts are confirmed.
The government said the AI Exemplars Programme “doesn’t promise that every project will succeed. Instead, it promises something more valuable: that we will learn quickly, adapt accordingly, and progressively build our collective ability to harness AI for public good”.
Read more: UK government issues AI playbook to repair ‘broken public services’
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
