As DSIT’s digital hub announces two significant tech tools to support both officials and users, minister Feryal Clark tells PublicTechnology about the new administration’s desire to ‘completely transform digital government’
Within a few days of the general election on 4 July, the incoming Labour administration had announced perhaps the most significant revamp of the Whitehall tech scene since the Government Digital Service was launched 13 years ago.
GDS and its sister agency the Central Digital and Data Office – as well as the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence – were all moved from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, to create a new ‘digital centre of government’.
Supporting this new hub is an advisory board of 12 academic and tech sector leaders. Another external expert, tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford, has also been tasked with creating a national AI Opportunities Action Plan, which will be published by government soon, and will set out ways in which new technology could help support innovation and improve citizens’ lives.
Government’s internal appointments, meanwhile, have seen tech advocate Peter Kyle named DSIT secretary of state, supported by a ministerial team that includes Enfield North MP Feryal Clark in the dedicated post of minister for digital government and AI.
PublicTechnology caught up with Clark this week to hear more about the Labour administration’s plans for the use of technology in public services and, in particular, via two significant new tools to be rolled out across departments in the coming months.
GOV.UK Forms is a design system built by GDS to enable non-technical staff to build digital forms to help fulfil online government services – while also cutting back on the number of PDF or paper forms currently in use. The aim is to enable teams to respond quickly to policy and programme imperatives and the product has already been used to support the creation of the online services for registering an XL Bully dog and making a claim to the compensation scheme for victims of the Horizon scandal. These are two of 87 forms that have so far been created by a cumulative total of 1,200 civil service users. GOV.UK Forms will now be implemented across government.
“We want to completely transform the way that public services interact with citizens – because it’s just not acceptable that our citizens are spending, on average, a week and a half dealing with government services online”
Also announced this week was an expanded trial of GOV.UK Chat – an AI-powered chatbot based on the technology behind ChatGPT. The platform was, again, developed by GDS and is designed to field the questions of visitors to the government website, and provide them with “human-like responses”. Early experiments with the system showed promise, but identified potential issues of accuracy and inappropriate responses.
But, after further testing, the tool has been greenlit to be trialled in supporting visitors to 30 GOV.UK pages related to government’s services for business. If this new stage of testing goes well, it is hoped that the chatbot could potentially be rolled out throughout the 700,000 pages that comprise government’s online presence. This could then, government hopes, help reduce the current tally of 56 hours each year – equating to eight full working days – that citizens spend on average doing government-related admin, according to research cited by DSIT.
Here’s what Clark had to say about the latest digital developments, and what the new government has in store for the future.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
PublicTechnology: What is the significance of the GOV.UK Forms announcement?
Feryal Clark: This announcement is around usable, accessible, secure forms that any service can use to put forms online by using templates. It means that you don’t have to have coding expertise, and you can be really responsive to service needs. For example, when the announcement around [the need to register] XL Bully dogs was made, the service was able to create a form really, really quickly. So, it just means services are a lot faster in responding. And it means that any department can use it to create digital forms for any government service. It was also used during the Horizon compensation [scheme]; as soon as the announcement was made, the form was put together really quickly, so there isn’t the need for expertise. It’s the speed with which we can respond to changes.
Also, if you look at government websites, you’ve got numerous sites where you have to download a form, fill it in and send it back. This tool now saves huge amounts of time for our civil servants, so they can actually spend that valuable time doing other jobs that don’t require them to just be sitting there processing forms. This was being trialled in beta stage and I think across the 1,200 [civil service] users, the forms that were created have saved around two years of processing time, which I think is incredible.
There are still quite a few PDF or manual forms in use by government. Do you think you can eradicate those entirely?
We have an aspiration to completely transform digital government and make it easier for our citizens to engage and where there isn’t a need – no legal need – for a form, we will look at all those services and make sure that we tackle that. A citizen shouldn’t be spending hours trying to locate a form and then download it, and sign it. We should be looking at where it’s doable, and we should absolutely be trying to digitise those forms. There’s a long way to go, but we’re very excited about it.
What about GOV.UK Chat – what kind of impact do you expect that to have?
If Forms is about making our civil service more productive, then the chatbot is about supporting users. Because, again, when you go on government websites and are trying to find the exact information you want, it can take a very long time. So the chatbot will enable people to go on and put in their prompts, and it should draw down the information they need from various government pages and documents, and it should make life much easier for our businesses. Some of the businesses that have already been making use of it have fed back some really, really positive comments. Again, I think it’s about giving people’s time back to them.
700,000
Number of individual webpages that comprise GOV.UK
56 hours
Amount of time citizens spend each year on government-related admin, according to research cited by DSIT
11 million
Number of users to GOV.UK per week
Two years
Amount of potential form-processing time saved so far by the 87 digital forms created using GOV.UK Forms
In the early trials of this technology there were issues with the AI saying inappropriate or inaccurate things. Are we still having those kinds of issues, and what are the security or safety concerns you have about this technology?
It’s been red-teamed and tested by the AI Safety Institute, and it’s also gone through the jailbreak systems, so this has been tested very, very intensely. But, of course, it is still a trial, so if errors do pop-up, we will be monitoring that to make sure that we correct it. But, so far, the response from the users has been [positive] – especially with accountants doing returns for their clients, who are finding it very, very helpful.
The Labour government has made some pretty big changes to the digital government landscape. Do you see government’s digital agencies – CDDO and GDS – playing the same role, and having the same remit? How are things going to pan out from here under this administration?
We want to completely transform digital government and DSIT will be the digital centre for government. And we have announced the transformation board, who will be supporting us in putting together a 10-year vision for our digital services. But, ultimately, we want to completely transform the way that public services interact with citizens – because it’s just not acceptable that our citizens are spending, on average, a week and a half dealing with government services online. So I’m really, really excited, and we’ll be [working] with the board, and we’ll be putting together a vision for how and what we’re going to do. We also have Matt Clifford’s AI Opportunities Action Plan as well that will be coming out soon, looking at how we can use AI to not only kick start an era of growth, but also how we use AI to transform our public services as well. So lots of exciting things are coming down the line, and we are very, very lucky to have an amazing set of civil servants who are supporting us to put together our plans for the for the future.
