UK government uses AI 'Humphrey' tool to review consultation responses
Fans of the 1980s British sitcom 'Yes Minister' will know the character Sir Humphrey -- a senior civil servant whose main role seemed to be to prevent ministers from implementing their policies. You may also know that Humphrey is the name of the Dowing Street cat.
With its tongue firmly in its cheek then, the UK government is introducing 'Humphrey', a bundle of AI tools designed to speed up the work of civil servants and cut back time spent on admin, and money spent on contractors.
It forms part of the Government's plan to make better use of technology across public services, in a bid to target the £45 billion in productivity savings that it offers while creating a more agile state that can more effectively deliver the Plan for Change.
Part of the Humphrey suite 'Consult', has been used to speed up analysis of what the public and experts told the Scottish government in a recent consultation seeking views on how to regulate non-surgical cosmetic procedures.
Reviewing comments from over 2,000 consultation responses using generative AI, Consult identified key themes that feedback fell into across each of six qualitative questions. These themes were checked and refined by experts in the Scottish government, the AI tool then sorted individual responses into themes and gave officials more time to delve into the detail and evaluate the policy implications of feedback received.
Consult was used in parallel with human reviews and found to deliver near identical results. More evaluation covering the accuracy and efficiency of the tool will take place to ensure it's working properly ahead of final rollout decisions.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle says:
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.
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 Scottish Government has taken a bold first step. Very soon, I'll be using Consult, within Humphrey, in my own department and others in Whitehall will be using it too -- speeding up our work to deliver the Plan for Change.
With some consultations receiving tens or hundreds of thousands of responses, and given the strong levels of accuracy demonstrated in early tests, Consult will soon be used on major consultations without officials manually reviewing every response individually.
You can find out more about Consult on the government website.
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