HMRC has issued 28,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses to staff and is preparing to enable agentic-style features, the department said in an announcement.
The rollout follows a Government Digital Service trial across multiple departments that found participants saved an average 26 minutes per day; over 70% said Copilot reduced time spent searching for information, and 82% said they would not want to return to life without it, the trial report said.
The trial report also warned of "limitations… when dealing with complex, nuanced, or data-heavy aspects of work," and raised concerns about "security and the handling of sensitive data," the report said.
HMRC says earlier automation has delivered around £8 billion in benefits used to close the tax gap, and it is positioning Copilot as a bolt-on to existing systems rather than a system-wide redesign.
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Chief AI officer James Mitton said the deployment gives staff "some fairly potent AI tools that they can safely play with." He added, as part of the long-term vision, that HMRC could become "the most AI-enabled tax authority on the planet," comments made at the Think AI for Government event in London.
The department plans to switch on more agentic features across workflows while managing risks from legacy content and duplicated gov.uk information that has previously fed AI systems outdated or conflicting material, the department said in an announcement.
The recap
- HMRC issued 28,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses to staff.
- Trial participants reported average time savings of 26 minutes daily.
- HMRC plans to enable agentic-style features across workflows.
