After budget indicated that DSIT was set to play a key role in directing tech investment plans for the long term, minster reveals engagement has already helped create funding framework

Ahead of the long-term spending review to take place next year, government’s core expert digital unit has advised HM Treasury on how to assess potential investments in artificial intelligence.

In the budget delivered last month – alongside a one-year spending round, which set departments’ funding for 2025/26 – the government suggested that Whitehall digital experts would play a key role in helping direct digital investments during the second phase spending review, which will take place in the spring. As part of that process, which will map out departments’ spending plans until at least 2029, the newly established ‘digital centre of government’ will work with the Treasury to “inform a centralised and coherent approach to digital investment at phase two of the spending review”, the budget red book said.

Digital government minister Feryal Clark revealed that this engagement between the finance department and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has already born fruit, in the shape of a framework created to help review plans for spending on a key area of technology.

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“The Central Digital and Data Office has worked with HM Treasury to develop assessment criteria for the spending review,” she said. “The criteria focus on generating value for the taxpayer and ensuring investment in AI technology provides a significant return on investment.”

Clark, whose comments were made in response to a written parliamentary question from Reform MP Rupert Lowe, added that the digital centre of government – which, alongside CDDO, also contains the Government Digital Service and Incubator for Artificial Intelligence, all of which have been relocated to DSIT – also continues to examine how AI could be deployed to support government’s specialist functions.

“There is ongoing work to analyse the potential cost and value of AI for civil service functions, the outcomes of which are yet to be determined,” she said. “Public sector adoption is a key part of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, which will detail how we can reimagine our public services by ensuring the public sector takes advantage of the best emerging use-cases and tools.”

The creation of that action plan is being led by tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford. The strategic document will be published shortly, and will set out ways in which new technology could help support innovation and improve citizens’ lives across the UK.

CDDO’s role in the upcoming spending review comes after the tech unit also advised the Treasury ahead of the previous long-term funding exercise, which took place in 2021.