- DWP announces four to six year project to implement AI in benefits call centers
- Claimants are on the rise and millions of hours of work have been wasted
- The UK government is set to undergo a much bigger transformation
Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is now seeking a contract to plan to deploy a conversational AI agent to help handle some benefits-related calls in the hope it can improve experiences and reduce costs.
Part of the cost reduction will involve spending up to £23.4m (including VAT) on the project, down from the previous estimate of £10.8m, as the Government aims to drive greater efficiency.
The tender notice calls for a natural language call routing system that allows citizens to speak naturally, allowing the system to identify intent and route calls effectively.
DWP wants to use AI to answer the phone
Key outcomes will include routing callers to the appropriate human agent in the first instance and offering personalized self-service and call forwarding options to reduce the burden on human workers.
Not only must the solution be based in the UK and hosted on a dedicated cloud, but it must also comply with a number of frameworks, including GDPR/DPA and the HMG Security Policy Framework.
The Government is now accepting bids and the project is expected to run between July 6, 2026 and July 5, 2030. Two optional twelve-month extensions could be offered, until July 2032.
The DWP’s AI project comes against a worrying backdrop: over the four years from May 2019 to 2023, the UK recorded an 11.8% increase in the number of benefit claimants, equivalent to around 2.4 million extra people, putting immense pressure on the existing system.
In 2022-2023, up to 31.6 million call minutes could have been avoided, a National Audit Office report for the DWP revealed.
Companies seeking government contracts have until January 16 to make inquiries and until February 2 to request participation. Confirmation of the winning bid is expected on June 1.
More importantly, this comes as the UK government admits its critical failure to secure all systems by 2030, highlighting a much larger technological shift at Downing Street.
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