GOV.UK Chat is an AI-powered chat system we’ve built at the Government Digital Service (GDS). It’s a new way to interact with government, designed to make it easier for people to find what they need on GOV.UK.
We want people to be able to ask questions as they would in everyday life; for example: “I’ve just had a baby, do you know what help I can get?”. The answer will bring together content from across government: in this example joining up the support offer from HMRC, DWP and the Department for Education, into a single, simple conversational answer.
In GDS’s role, as the digital centre of government, we’re building this for everyone – everybody who uses the existing suite of GOV.UK products and channels, and every team in government working on public-facing guidance and services. It’s a core part of the work GDS is doing to create a new generation of personalised, joined-up public services. It was highlighted as one of 5 ‘kickstarters’ in the blueprint for modern digital government, and in July it was selected as one of the Prime Minister’s AI Exemplars.
Over the last year, we ran two scaled public pilots of GOV.UK Chat – first on the GOV.UK website, and then in the GOV.UK app. Based on the findings of these pilots, we plan to roll out public access to GOV.UK Chat. We’ll start with a release in the GOV.UK app early next year. Beyond that, we intend to make it widely available across the GOV.UK website so it’s accessible wherever users need it.
For many this will offer a much easier way to use GOV.UK. It will provide citizens with an additional choice of how they can access the content and services they need, in a simple natural language interface. As with all our products, we’re taking a user-centred, agile approach – rolling out in stages and making improvements as we go. We’ll continue to invest heavily in measures designed to minimise risks and protect users’ privacy and security. We’re excited for more people to try GOV.UK Chat and give feedback to our teams.
From answers to actions
We know from our research that GOV.UK Chat, in its current form, offers a lot of value to citizens, but we think we’re just at the beginning of the potential opportunities in this space. We’re experimenting with agentic AI, and the idea that GOV.UK Chat can evolve from providing answers to performing actions, helping users get things done with government more easily. We’re currently running product explorations into this next set of features.
The areas of exploration include:
- how we might offer simple transactions with government through GOV.UK Chat (inspired by the pioneering work of Ukraine’s Diia.AI)
- how we can hand users over to departmental customer support where needed, connecting users to the right person or digital service to answer their question when required
- how GOV.UK Chat could be implemented and add value within existing departmentally-developed services
What this means for government departments
We’re building this product to provide a simple way to access all of the guidance published across GOV.UK. This underlines that GOV.UK Chat can only be as good as the content published on GOV.UK by departmental teams. Clear and accurate content will result in better answers, so prioritising good content design is even more important than ever.
We want to keep the experience for users simple. So, for departments, if you’re in the process of building a public-facing chat experience, please reach out to our team early so we can ensure we’re creating a joined-up experience for citizens and avoid duplicated costs. We can envisage use cases where it makes sense to pass GOV.UK Chat users on to a department’s AI agent or service when needed, and we’re carrying out experimental work to build the technology to do this. We want to collaborate with teams to establish common standards for how this works in government, keeping the experience seamless for users.
We’re also looking for departmental partners on the 3 areas of agentic AI experimentation outlined above.
Please email [email protected] if you’re in a government department and you’d be interested in working with us, or to talk to us if your department is building a public-facing chat product.
