The UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to introduce a conversational AI platform it hopes will steer calls from citizens with queries about their benefits. The contract is worth up to £23 million.
The move is part of the government's ambition to improve efficiency with AI across the public sector and manage costs in one of its highest-spending and politically sensitive departments.
The winning supplier will be asked to build an AI platform capable of so-called natural language call steering and host it in a UK-shored dedicated cloud environment.
The DWP is the UK's biggest public service department, managing the State Pension and working-age and disability benefits for around 20 million citizens. Calls are currently answered by advisors within the authority's contact centers on one of the largest call-handling platforms in Europe. The system is spread across 200 locations and supports 27 DWP business groups.
In its procurement notice, the department says the new conversational AI platform will integrate with this call-handling system, allowing citizens to "speak naturally to the platform so it can determine why our citizens are calling."
The aim is then to guide them to the most effective outcome, "whether that is to the right [human] agent first time or to personalised call deflection and/or self-service offerings."
"This should enhance the citizen experience and produce operational efficiencies," the DWP predicted.
The contract is expected to start in July and is set to end July 2030, but could be extended until July 2032. In a requirement that might be seen as unusual, the department also asks the supplier to obtain fidelity insurance for "the loss, theft or misappropriation of sums appropriate to the contract while such sums are in the possession of the supplier, not less than £1 million per claim."
In an effort to make itself more efficient, the DWP upped the price of the contract compared with a pipeline notice published in June last year. It said the contract would be worth £10.8 million including tax over roughly the same period.
In July 2024, the National Audit Office said [PDF] the DWP was serving a growing number of citizens. Pensions and benefits claimant numbers had risen by 2.4 million since 2019 the spending watchdog said. Meanwhile, calls that could be avoided or reduced if DWP improved its processes or communications were estimated at 31.6 million minutes for 2022-23. Since 2020-21, DWP's in-house telephone lines have not met their performance standard for answering customer calls, although its outsourced providers have performed better, the NAO found.
The UK government has embarked on an ambitious program to improve efficiency with AI. It estimates £45 billion in savings might be up for grabs, a figure that lacks clarity and is based on broad-brush assumptions, experts told MPs last year. ®
Source: The register