Treasury to deploy AI as part of ‘modern, digital approach to spending review’


Ministers have revealed that ‘HMT-GPT’ technology will be used to help assess funding bids made by agencies, with the aim of enabling the finance department to better understand government spending

HM Treasury is to use an artificial intelligence tool – dubbed HMT-GPT – to help deliver a spending review powered by data and digital technologies, ministers have claimed.

The system will be used to help assess and gather insights from bids made by agencies during the upcoming long-term funding exercise.

Speaking at an event held last week by think tank the Institute for Government, chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said: “We have an AI tool to harvest all of the data from departments’… submissions, enabling us to better analyse spending between departments, and through the lens of places around the country.”

The minister added that, not only will the technology help deliver this funding round, but it “it will set the foundation to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of our spending in the years ahead”.


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Jones told attendees that the HMT-GPT system is part of a wider desire of “running a spending review that uses modern technology and enables ministers to make better decisions”. This will include the use of “shared digital dashboards” to help map spending across Whitehall and a new “preventative model” of assessment in which the Treasury would be “asking departments, for the first time, to look at the long-term wellbeing aspects of spending”.

One of Jones’ ministerial colleagues, exchequer secretary to the Treasury James Murray, said that the tool for assessing spending review submissions is one of a number of uses of AI that now supports the work of the department. This includes technologies helping officials respond to public enquiries, as well as more programs dedicated to analysing data.

“AI has transformative potential, with the ability to drive growth, raise living standards, transform public services, and improve the lives of working people across the UK,” Murray said, in response to a written parliamentary question from Conservative MP John Hayes. “In HM Treasury, we are using AI to build tools that support policymakers, including our bespoke HMT-GPT system and email triaging solution for managing correspondence. The award-winning Hawkeye service enables the Treasury to automatically combine key data on the UK economy and provide valuable insights for analysts. We are also adopting this modern, digital approach for the upcoming Spending Review.”

Sam Trendall

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