A system created by the Central Digital and Data Office uses a large language model to create idealised career profiles and then map these onto the Whitehall’s existing tech workforce
The government has created a ‘Succession Select’ tool that uses generative artificial intelligence and automation to help identify existing civil servants that could fill top digital jobs open for recruitment.
According to details newly released using the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS), the program was created by the Central Digital and Data Office and “is an internal tool, only available for the talent team” in the unit.
The software, which is currently still in pilot phase, is “an enhanced search assistant powered by a large language model”.
The LLM technology is designed to, initially, search government databases to “generate an ideal career description for the specified digital job vacancy” at senior civil service (SCS) level. This will include details such as “typical previous job titles and a list of exemplar skills”.
This ideal blueprint CV will then be compared against the – anonymised – career outlines of existing senior officials employed in government.
“Finally, the tool returns a list of the best matching anonymised profiles, with the actual candidate names appended for human talent specialists to review,” the transparency release says. “This list of potential candidates is then considered by the human talent acquisition specialists.”
HR teams can then be tasked with contacting the identified potential candidates about the role in question.
The document adds that the AI system brings automation to the work of recruitment experts “who otherwise would have to manually search through a large database of career profile data”. In doing so, a process that would previously have taken as long as four hours can now be completed “in a minute or two”, CDDO claims.
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The tool does not recommend or appointments or draw up definitive long or shortlists but merely provides suggestions to be “reviewed by humans for further consideration and evaluation when making the final selection on candidates”. The AI is used on an ad hoc basis “and only when there are low application numbers for open roles”.
The ATRS release adds: “Succession Select would only be used as one part of an existing human-led process. This is after the user has searched via the system for a particular role vacancy, they can then review the candidate long-list provided by the tool to select suitable candidates and produce an ordered shortlist of appropriate candidates together with the rationale for their inclusion.”
To support the system’s future use, “a data pipeline has been established” allowing users to add or remove the career profiles of senior officials currently working in government. The tool also includes “an automated process to refresh its answers/knowledge after new information has been incorporated”.
Succession Select was developed by data science specialists in CDDO and the program is now “used exclusively by authorised, competent individuals”, who are supported by “an intuitive interface, requiring minimal training [and] an associated user guide and technical documentation”. This includes an instruction to “to use multiple searches per job listing to ensure a thorough search of potential candidates”.
The technology is based on “a retrieval-augmented generation architecture, securely deployed within an Amazon Web Services environment”.
‘Transparency is crucial’
The ATRS record for Succession Select was one of 14 published yesterday – compared with a cumulative total of nine that had been released since the standard was launched in 2022. The transparency initiative, overseen by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, provides a standardised framework which organisations can use to publish information on their use of algorithms.
Government announced earlier this year that, unless a qualifying demonstration can be demonstrated, publication of records was becoming mandatory for Whitehall departments – and would ultimately be required across the wider public sector.
In light of this mandation, more transparency releases are expected to follow in the coming months, with ministers recently claiming that there has been “significant acceleration” of adoption among agencies.
Announcing the job lot of records published yesterday, DSIT secretary of state Peter Kyle said: “Technology has huge potential to transform public services for the better, we will put it to use to cut backlogs, save money and improve outcomes for citizens across the country. Transparency in how and why the public sector is using algorithmic tools is crucial to ensure that they are trusted and effective. That is why we will continue to take bold steps like releasing these records to make sure everyone is clear on how we are applying and trialling technology as we use it to bring public services back from the brink.”
