In a distinctly sceptical missive, the head of the parliamentary committee has warned top officials that recent research raises ‘bigger questions’, not least given government’s ‘poor track record’ on digital

The Public Accounts Committee has taken senior officials to task over “curiously specific” claims about the benefits of artificial intelligence – which MPs claim raise “bigger questions about… [the] benefits to the public sector”.

A three-month pilot exercise in which 20,000 civil servants across 12 departments trialled Microsoft’s Copilot system found that users saved, on average, 26 minutes per day, government announced last year. These findings were cited by Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little, in a letter sent to PAC in January about “AI efficiencies” across Whitehall.

In response to the missive, which was sent as part of an ongoing enquiry into government’s use of external consultants, committee chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown requested more info on the research the that quantified the benefits of AI use – the findings of which raise “further questions”, he said.

“Not least, how was the curiously specific ‘26 minutes saved per person per day’ calculated?,” Clifton-Brown wrote. “Given well understood limitations in the government’s information systems, these data are presumably self-reported, and an average figure based on the distribution in the sample. They may therefore not be representative of the actual time saved, or likely to be saved. We would be grateful for further detail on the methodology and conclusions, including clearer information over which tasks were analysed and whether any groups or tasks were excluded.”

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The PAC chair went to suggest that, irrespective of the findings of the Copilot trial, the overall benefits of new technology – and whether or not they outweigh the drawbacks – remains unclear.

“Leaving aside the specifics of these estimates, there are bigger questions about how any projected time savings might be translated into benefits to the public sector, and whether these benefits would outweigh the associated costs of implementation, such as new roles or infrastructure associated with cybersecurity and maintenance, licences and subscription fees, training time and so on,” Clifton-Brown said. “How have you taken into account projected associated costs?”

He concluded: “As the committee has explored countless times, government has a poor track record of implementing digital change successfully, and must overcome some enduring and fundamental barriers such as poor data, a lack of skills and legacy IT systems. I would welcome a response that explains how you will address these barriers to securing the potential benefits of AI to the public sector through an integrated implementation plan… The recent roadmap for modern digital government describes a number of initiatives, but is short on detail as to precisely how and by when these will deliver the expected productivity gains.”

Cabinet Office chief Little is asked to respond to the committee by 23 March.