Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps they are taking to use (a) artificial intelligence and (b) data to help increase their Department's productivity.

DESNZ is committed to improving its productivity, including through the use of artificial intelligence and effective use of data.

All DESNZ staff have access to Copilot for the web, a work-safe generative AI tool that helps summarise and draft text. In addition, as part of a large-scale, cross-government experiment led by the CDDO, around a third of all DESNZ staff have been given a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, which allows them to utilise generative AI within tools such as Word, Excel and Outlook, and can base responses on their own data (documents, emails, and messages). The experiment began on 30 September and runs through to 29 December and will conclude with a report from the CDDO to set out the case for adopting a tool like M365 Copilot in the longer-term.

We are also building our inhouse capability to develop AI tools at DESNZ. For example, our Advanced Analytics team are currently exploring multiple use cases that allow DESNZ staff to retrieve key information needed for their work more efficiently, including information from past impact assessments, lessons learnt logs and statistics from our Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) publications.

DESNZ has an internal adoption of AI working group which leads on supporting the development of departmental use-cases for Artificial Intelligence, as well as the guardrails, rules and playbooks that govern the safe, secure and ethical use of this technology, ensuring alignment to the Central Digital and Data Office’ Generative AI Framework for Government.

DESNZ's Data Strategy and Governance team are currently developing a data strategy for DESNZ that sets out our strategic ambition for how we collect, manage and use data as a Department. This includes time-saving measures around making it easier for DESNZ staff to locate and access data, making it easier for data to be shared across organisational boundaries, reducing the time taken to ingest, process and cleanse it, and introducing standards that make it easier to aggregate and compare across policies and programmes.

We will continue to regularly review our usage of AI and data to maximise productivity benefits.