The UK Cabinet Office trialled Microsoft 365 Copilot with 20,000+ civil servants across departments including Companies House and the DWP, reporting self-reported average savings of 26 minutes a day — but the methodology relied on self-report, not independent measurement.
20,000+
Trial participants
26 minutes
Self-reported average daily time saved
~1,130 FTE-years
Extrapolated capacity freed
7.7 /10
User satisfaction score
72%
Agreed it saved time on routine tasks
71%
Agreed it freed time for strategic work
Details
Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Government Digital Service (GDS), Cabinet Office, UK Government, with Microsoft
Period
2024–2025 (three-month trial; results published June 2025)
Keywords
generative AI, Microsoft 365 Copilot, civil service productivity, cross-government pilot
Context
The UK Government Digital Service (Cabinet Office), with Microsoft, ran a three-month cross-government trial (late 2024-mid 2025) giving 20,000+ civil servants across departments including Companies House and DWP access to Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Results
Participants self-reported average daily time savings of 26 minutes, extrapolated to ~1,130 FTE-years of capacity freed across the cohort; average satisfaction was 7.7/10, with 72% agreeing it saved time on routine tasks and 71% agreeing it freed time for strategic work.
Implementation
Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.
Data sources
Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.
Hong Kong's Digital Policy Office and the HKGAI research centre built HKPilot (document drafting/translation) and HKMeeting (AI minute-taking) for civil …
