Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 20
18th Report - Use of AI in Government
Published 26 Mar 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Use of AI in Government All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
We questioned DSIT on how it is evaluating and sharing learning from AI pilot activity across government to avoid reinventing the wheel and to support AI adoption at scale. It told us that it was taking a range of approaches including developing guidance and identifying good practice case studies, establishing communities of AI practitioners, and adopting an ‘open build’ approach to developing AI tools, publishing their results to make them available to others in the public and private sectors.47 41 C&AG’s Report, para 12 42 C&AG’s Report, para 12 and Figure 7 43 Qq 17, 24 44 Q 3 45 Q 3 46 C&AG’s Report, para 3.5 47 Q 21 15 A witness from the Department said that “you want to run pilots, work out what works and then scale them”.48 It also confirmed that the AI Knowledge Hub that it is piloting is intended to bring together advice and guidance in one place and make it accessible and user–friendly.49 On the issue of robust evaluation of AI pilots, the Cabinet Office told us that the Evaluation Taskforce had recently published guidance for evaluating the impact of AI tools. It also told us there is a lot of guidance on evaluating programmes from a financial, commercial and technological perspective, but the next challenge was to ensure that these techniques were understood and people knew where to go for support.50 AI procurement
From: Public Accounts Committee, 18th Report - Use of AI in Government (HC 356), 26 March 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Eighteenth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Eighteenth report from Session 2024-26
Published 18 September 2025.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Eighteenth report from Session 2024-25
Published 10 July 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it agrees with each of the Committee's recommendations, setting target implementation dates between October 2025 and June 2026.
- On legacy technology, it agrees and says GDS will define "consistent metrics and methods" to measure the ongoing costs of legacy systems and the estimated cost of failing to remediate or replace them, with a target date of January 2026.
- On transparency, it is "aiming to publish" Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard records for all currently identified in-scope tools in government departments (not including arm's-length bodies) "by the end of 2025".
- On digital skills, it agrees and says all executive committees will be required to include digital leaders and boards to appoint digital non-executive directors "by 2026", with further detail in the forthcoming Government Digital and AI Roadmap.
- On scaling AI pilots, it agrees and says a proposal is "currently being developed" in the Public Sector AI Adoption programme, with a target implementation date of May 2026.