UK government’s AI system ‘Humphrey’ set to review thousands of public consultations to improve civil service efficiency
The UK government has launched its own artificial intelligence system to review thousands of public consultations.
The multi-tool suite ‘Humphrey’ was named after a fictional bureaucrat written into the 1980’s British sitcom Yes Minister.
The Scottish Government has already applied the ‘Consult’ tool that forms part of the Humphrey suite to a consultation on the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic treatments, including laser hair removal and lip fillers. This first live deployment was used to see how well Consult sped up analysis of the consultation.
Consult reviewed more than two thousand responses and was able to pinpoint and organise themes within these data using six qualitative questions.
“No one should be wasting time on something AI can do quicker and better,” said Peter Kyle, the UK government’s technology secretary.
“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.”
Further similar uses are expected to save officials the equivalent of 75,000 days of manual analysis every year. The staffing cost savings from this meanwhile could reach £20m (US$26.7m).
The initial live deployment produced other comparative results with a team of human analysts. In addition to saving time, Consult was shown to have delivered “nearly identical results” to the team of people when it came to ranking the importance of key themes.
Officials involved in the trial acknowledged Consult’s time-saving advantages, as well as its reduction in the “bias” they said human analysts can introduce to results.
Read more: Yes, civil servant: Meet Humphrey, the UK government’s AI package for officials
The UK’s growing AI toolkit
The UK government has announced its development and deployment of a range of AI tools this year.
Setting out the tools that make up Humphrey in January, technology secretary Peter Kyle said consult would works 1,000 times faster and 400 times cheaper than a human being does.
He explained: “We do thousands of consultations in government, and it takes an enormous amount of time. Why? Because there’s hundreds of years of legislation and regulation that you need to consult with, to see what advice to put to ministers about what is possible, what is impossible and the like.
“That is the technology that we are bringing into government and deploying on behalf of the citizens, the people of this country.”
Other elements that make up the Humphrey package are: Parlex, to help policymakers search through and analyse decades of debate from the Houses of Parliament; Minute, a secure transcription service for meetings, producing customisable summaries in the formats that public servants need; Lex, which helps officials research the law by providing analysis and summaries of relevant laws for specific, complex issues; and Redbox, a generative AI tool designed to help civil servants with day-to-day tasks like summarising policy and preparing briefings.
In April, it was also announced that its Incubator for AI had begun working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)’s Digital Planning Programme to develop a tool to help councils make better and faster planning decisions.
Known as ‘Extract’, this tool is expected to make planning data more accessible through digitisation, converting at record speed “blurry maps and handwritten notes” into “machine-readable, shareable data”, according to the government. This could help the government reach its target of building 1.5 million new homes over the next five years.
Notably, the government said Extract is expected to be able to achieve in 40 seconds what typically takes “1-2 hours of [a] planner’s time to complete”.
In the same month, the government also announced the establishment of a new directorate tasked with finding ways to optimally scale AI in local government services.
Also under MHCLG, this unit is expected to improve service delivery as well as remove blockers to innovation and mass adoption of AI. It will focus on the development and promotion of better data standards, the improvement of data mobility and integration, and supplier engagement and market analysis.
Read more: UK government develops AI tool to help meet housebuilding target
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.
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