Initiative overview
In 2023, the Government Communication Service (GCS) identified "lack of time" as a key barrier to innovation for its 6,500-strong communications profession, with members spending large portions of their working day on routine tasks such as producing first drafts of content.
Assist is a secure, generative AI tool built by government communicators, for government communicators. It supports users to brainstorm ideas, produce first drafts, and review work through communications-specific pre-built prompts spanning all seven GCS disciplines. Outputs are grounded in GCS policies, frameworks, and best practice guidance. Responsible use and human oversight are central to its design: Assist produces suggested drafts that communicators develop further, applying their own critical thinking and judgement.
Assist saves the average user around three hours per week, contributing to projected annual efficiency savings of £5.5 million. More than 90% of the 6,500-strong GCS profession are now using Assist, across 210 government organisations. Over 30% of users log in each week, with both users and usage growing weekly, 98% of surveyed users find it useful in their role, and 88% report applying its outputs in their work. Finally, over 70% of all potential users have completed the bespoke 'AI for Communicators' training course, which is mandatory to gain access to the tool. After completing the course, users report a 23% improvement in confidence using AI at work.
Lessons Learned
- Build for your users, not just for technology: Assist was designed around the real daily tasks of government communicators, with discipline-specific prompts shaped by user research. Relevance drives adoption.
- Make responsible use structural, not optional: mandatory training, ethical frameworks, and human oversight were built into the tool from the outset, not added afterwards.
- Scale with a people-centred approach: GCS published "The People Factor" guide and the Mitigating Hidden AI Risks Toolkit, drawing on its own rollout experience to help other organisations scale AI tools safely.
Overall, government communicators spend less time on routine drafting and more time on strategic, creative, and high-impact work. By embedding GCS standards directly into its outputs, Assist also improves the consistency and quality of government communications at scale, whilst building AI capability and confidence across the profession.
