Scottish government trials AI tool in live consultation

The Scottish government has trialled an AI tool to summarise responses to a live consultation for the first time.

It was used when the government was seeking views on how to regulate non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as lip fillers and laser hair removal following the rise of their use.

The tool, called Consult, provided nearly identical results to those from officials.

Reviewing comments from over 2,000 consultation responses using generative AI, the government said Consult identified key themes that feedback fell into across each of six qualitative questions.

These themes were checked and refined by experts in the Scottish government, with the AI tool then sorting individual responses into themes, giving officials more time to look into the detail and evaluate the policy implications of feedback received.

As this was the first time Consult was used on a live consultation, the government said experts manually reviewed every response.

Consult is part of Humphrey, a bundle of AI tools designed to speed up the work of civil servants and cut back time spent on admin, and money spent on contractors.

Humphrey is part of the government’s plan to make better use of technology across public services, in a move that the government claims could result in as much as £45 billion in productivity savings.

The government said the tool now set to be used across departments in a bid to cut down the millions of pounds spent on the current process, which often includes outsourcing analysis to expensive contractors.

Across the 500 consultations the government runs annually, the government said the tool could help save officials from around 75,000 days of analysis every year, which costs the government £20 million in staffing costs.

Officials from the Scottish government who worked with Consult on this first live test said that they were “pleasantly surprised” that AI analysis provided a “useful starting point” in its initial analysis, with others noting that it ultimately “saved [them] a heck of a lot of time” and allowed them to “get to the analysis and draw out what’s needed next”.

They also added that the use of Consult “takes away the bias and makes it more consistent”, by removing opportunities for individual analysts to “project their own preconceived ideas”.

Technology secretary Peter Kyle said that no one should be wasting time on something AI can do quicker and better or spend money on outsourcing such work to contractors.

“After demonstrating such promising results, Humphrey will help us cut the costs of governing and make it easier to collect and comprehensively review what experts and the public are telling us on a range of crucial issues,” he added. “Very soon, I’ll be using Consult, within Humphrey, in my own department and others in Whitehall will be using it too – speeding up our work to deliver the Plan for Change.”