What will UK government workers do with an extra 26 minutes a day?
- Reference: 1748935994
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/03/uk_government_study_ai_time_savings/
- Source link:
Microsoft 365 Copilot provides generative AI assistance with various Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It allows workers to accomplish some tasks through a natural language chat interface instead of mouse movements and menu clicks.
UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle discussed the results of the study in a presentation at [1]SWSX London .
[2]
"Whether it’s helping draft documents, preparing lesson plans, or cutting down on routine admin, AI tools are saving civil servants time every day. That means we can focus more on delivering faster, more personalised support where it really counts," said Kyle in [3]a statement
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The GDS ran a trial of Microsoft M365 Copilot with 20,000 government employees from September 30, 2024, through December 31, 2024.
Based on self-reported data, the resulting [6]study [PDF] showed fairly consistent time savings across professions and organizational ranks, though precise tool use and benefits varied.
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"Over 70 percent of users agreed that M365 Copilot reduced time spent searching for information, performing mundane tasks, and increased time spent on more strategic activities," the report says.
"Perceived concerns with security and the handling of sensitive data led to reduced benefits in a minority of cases. Limitations were observed when dealing with complex, nuanced, or data-heavy aspects of work."
The report claims if the reported time savings were replicated across a full working year, "users could save 13 days."
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That figure was apparently calculated by using the median values of six reported ranges: No time savings (17 percent); less than 5 minutes saved (5 percent); 5-10 minutes saved (13 percent); 11-30 minutes saved (28 percent); 31-60 minutes saved (23 percent); and more than an hour saved (14 percent).
[9]Odd homage to '2001: A Space Odyssey' sees 'Blue Danube' waltz beamed at Voyager 1
[10]IBM Watson zombie brand shuffles forward with new AI lab in NYC
[11]Musk's smog-belching Colossus datacenter slammed by civil rights group
[12]Best pricing model for AI? Work in progress, says Salesforce
Our calculations differ slightly. If you assume 26 minutes saved per employee per day, on average, and count every one of the 365 days in a non-leap year as a working day, you've saved 9,490 minutes or about 6.59 days. More plausibly, with 253 working days in 2025, the potential time savings would be something like 6,578 minutes or 4.59 days.
The study didn't investigate whether the workers used this extra time to do more work, take extra time for lunch, or head off to the pub early. "Due to experimental constraints it was not possible to identify how time saved was spent," the report says.
Nonetheless, M365 does appear to have the potential to save some time for office workers. And even using the more modest projected time savings of 4.59 days per employee per year, the £19 per employee per month cost of a Microsoft Copilot Pro subscription in the UK appears to be worthwhile.
Other organizations, like the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ Bank), have previously [13]reported productivity gains from AI tool usage.
A separate report issued by the UK's Alan Turing Institute [14]found that about 40 percent of public sector employee time could be supported by generative AI, thereby freeing public sector staff from laborious tasks through automation.
"Our research shows that generative AI has the potential to greatly support the delivery of public sector work, assisting time-pressed staff with the completion of administrative tasks and freeing them up to focus on other elements of their jobs," said Youmna Hashem, research associate in AI for public services at the Alan Turing Institute, in a statement.
"However, it is vital for these technologies to be embedded in ways that are safe, responsible, and which take into account the many complexities of public sector work. If the government introduces generative AI effectively and staff receive the training and assurance they need to confidently use the technology, this could meaningfully transform the way that public sector time is spent." ®
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[1] https://www.sxswlondon.com/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aD7HtQc8t1J129q8gPYI-QAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-government-trial-shows-ai-could-save-civil-servants-nearly-2-weeks-a-year
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aD7HtQc8t1J129q8gPYI-QAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aD7HtQc8t1J129q8gPYI-QAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/683db42bd23a62e5d32680d0/M365_Copilot_Experiment_Findings_Report.pdf
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aD7HtQc8t1J129q8gPYI-QAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aD7HtQc8t1J129q8gPYI-QAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/waltz_into_space_project/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/ibm_acquires_seek_ai/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/naacp_musk_dc/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/salesforce_ai_pricing/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/10/anz_bank_github_copilot/
[14] https://www.turing.ac.uk/news/generative-ai-could-free-valuable-public-sector-time
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
That's your answer, 26 minutes more a day verifying results from Copilot.
Not sure if I believe that.
Self-reported statistics are always going to be problematic as a data source.
Only a very small minority will bother reporting in the first place so don't think it can really be extrapolated against an entire organization.
I was using Copilot last year as part of a company pilot, perhaps I was holding it wrong, but didn't do much for me at all.
Let it do long mail trail summaries then verified a couple of them, had missed important points.
Handy for Teams summaries and what have I missed since I joined the meeting late type things but that's about it.
If we assume the time savings measurement is precise (and we probably shouldn't), it doesn't seem that much. But also, it doesn't necessarily mean an increase in productivity. Experiments on reducing work time, like 4-days week, often show counterintuitive results that the overall productivity does not change significantly; and people working twice more hours are not twice more productive either.
This is a discussion I've been having as well - how do you quantify the saving?
I'm quite prepared to believe that users saved in the region of half an hour a day. Some of the documents which have to be produced by civil servants in all organisations are prime for automation of some kind in my opinion. However from an organisational point of view, how are you quantifying that saving? More importantly how do you bank that saving? The organisation I work for has 500 ish people in it, so the current yearly cost of copilot for all would be north of £100k. Taking average salaries, that's between 3 and 4 FTE employees. I can tell you right now I don't have an extra £100k floating around in my budget just waiting to be used, and it's a big enough number that getting sign off for it as an IT project will be next to impossible (we don't like spending money on IT here apparently), without the ability to demonstrate a monetary saving elsewhere.
So simply put, which 4 (or more) people are being let go from the organisation to pay for this? Or how else are you documenting any return on investment for this project?
Indicative of a better way?
If Copilot eliminates 26 minutes of work a day, another way of looking at the problem is to ask: was the work necessary in the first place?
Re: Indicative of a better way?
Also, how bad is the software they are using that you have to ask AI how to format a paragraph or align some cells in a spreadsheet?
Re: Indicative of a better way?
It's made by Microsoft, why do you ask?
Mountains of AI-generated corporate BS!
If I were cynical, I might wonder whether this is simply a case of AI being used to generate greater volumes of the kind of corporate BS that blights the lives of the people who do the real work. I think readers of El Reg will know what I mean: emails, reports and presentations from HR, senior management and consultants, full of buzzwords but oddly devoid of any actual meaning. On the plus side, if I can toss these into Copilot and ask it for a one-line summary in language that a 7-year-old can understand, I'll save myself actually having to read all of the tedious crap and save myself a lot more than 26 minutes each day.
Re: Mountains of AI-generated corporate BS!
"Copilot, please summarise this week-long email thread "
"It's just corporate bullshit, ignore it"
Now, that could be useful.
Obvious answer
"What will UK government workers do with an extra 26 minutes a day?"
More meetings? Longer lunch and cofee breaks?
It depends on who you ask, their bosses or the workers themselves.
26 mins per person, per day?
For #deity's sake, don't let Farage know. He'll only use that as cast-iron proof that public departments are over staffed!
Personally, I think they need to measure productivity not time-per-task. As pointed out above, there's actually money wasted if a task has to be redone if the 'help' turns out to have provided woefully inaccurate/wrong data.
Re: 26 mins per person, per day?
cast-iron proof that public departments are over staffed!
Do we need more proof? Just look at what they cost, and how few useful results most of them produce. Doesn't take AI to determine that.
Talking about "time savings" in bureaucracy-related jobs is a tough topic.
I'm guessing that behind that average figure is a lot more for slide-deck-craftsmen and a lot less for, say, wader-wearers at the Environment Agency.
I have access to CoPilot and GPT. CoPilot is really awful in comparison and GPT isn't great.
Not sure about adding stardust but it can be used cobble together the bulk of something that you could do yourself but probably wouldn't bother about otherwise.
So a bit of value added but little that is actually insightful.
And you do need to go through everything the little bastard spits out as it likes to throw in the odd subtle bit of disinformation or complete bollocks when you're not looking closely at it.
I've used copilot to write the odd excel macro which is handy I suppose but not worth handing over a dossier on your entierly life to get.
Personally, I always spend extra time double checking anything AI tries to tell me.
Using Copilot takes a small amount of time, but they then have to do virtually the same amount of work that would be necessary to do it without Copilot, to be able to properly verify the output (which absolutely needs to be done because, as we are well aware, there are frequently major errors in the output from these things).
I would have thought it would actually increase the amount of time needed, not reduce it?. Or are they not doing the verification?
Think I know the answer to that one :/
Shorter delivery times
> access to Microsoft 365 Copilot saved them an average 26 minutes per day
So they just make their cockups faster?
It may well have saved them time, but did anyone verify the accuracy of the results? There's no point in getting an answer twice as quickly if it's the wrong answer, and far too many people will simply use what they get without even basic verification.