Imagine having a co-pilot alongside you as you navigate your day-to-day tasks; a helping hand to speed up long-winded jobs and reclaim time for the things that can make a difference.
Microsoft’s new Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution, Copilot, aims to do exactly that, and Shropshire Council has been approved as an early adopter for a project to learn how it can add value and save time in selected areas across the organisation.
For customer services advisors, this could mean reducing the time it takes to find the information the customer needs, giving them the answer that they are looking for first time around. For anybody who works with data and insight, this might mean drastically reducing the time that it takes to analyse the findings from surveys. For communications, this may help to produce draft content, ready to be refined, rather than starting with a blank page.
In the first instance, we will have 300 licenses and have listened to managers, personal assistants and service areas to decide where these will be trialled.
The first areas this technology will be tested in include:
- Customer Service Centre
- Data and Insight
- Freedom of Information Requests
- Communications
- Shropshire Local
- ICT
David Baker, head of ICT and sponsor of the project said:
“When we all took part in the Time to Change survey this summer, many of you told us that we needed to have more effective ICT systems in place.
“One of the most exciting ways that we can enhance our use of technology is to explore how AI can speed up processes and free up the people in the organisation to use their skills more effectively.
“We often talk about removing the administrative ‘treacle’ from the organisation, and this project is a promising way to achieve this. It is important to see this as an assistant helping hand, helping you to reclaim time and eliminating the drudgery, and not as a replacement for any of the valuable work that only people can do. Like an assistant, it has a deep understanding of you, your job, your priorities. Copilot is not an autopilot, it is a tool that we can learn how to master.
"On Thursday 19 October I had an exclusive invite to a leadership briefing with Satya Nadella (Global CEO of Microsoft) on exploring the potential of AI in Public Sector. We spoke about harnessing the power of collaborative instinct in the public sector and using this to embrace the responsible adoption of AI in the UK and take a step change forward in productivity for public services.
“By adopting and embracing new technology to make a difference to the enhance our work we do, we can lead the way to becoming a modern and more efficient council.”
Look out for more updates as the project begins to roll out in the next few weeks. You can read more about Copilot on the Microsoft website