The UK government’s AI tool, Consult, was used to help speed up the government’s decision to abolish the water regulator, Ofwat.

The government said that its AI tool made the task of sorting over 50,000 responses into key themes more efficient and effective for the Independent Water Commission’s analysis.

The AI tool took around 2 hours to sort these responses into categories, costing £240, with experts only need 22 hours to check the results.

The AI tool was also found to have agreed with one or both groups of experts it was compared with almost 83% of the time, while the two expert groups only agreed with each other 55% of the time.

The speed meant that policy experts could focus on using themes and categorised responses to inform recommendations for their independent report, rather than sorting tens of thousands of individual responses.

Earlier in the year the tool successfully supported the analysis of the Scottish government’s consultation on non-surgical cosmetics. It has been confirmed that it was also used to sort responses to the Digital Inclusion Action Plan. With 800 people responding to the ‘call for evidence’, the technology was deemed accurate and sped up the government’s ability to find initial results.

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The technology, part of ‘Humphrey’, will analyse other consultations responses in a bid to save officials from 75,000 days of manual analysis every year, which costs £20 million in staffing costs.

“This shows the huge potential for technology and AI to deliver better and more efficient public services for the public and provide better value for the taxpayer,” digital government minister Ian Murray said.

“By taking on the basic admin, Consult is giving staff time to focus on what matters – taking action to fix public services. In the process, it could save the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.”