Microsoft Copilot
Benefits
Staff across departments report significant time savings on tasks such as meeting transcriptions, minutes, document summarization, and administrative support. Procurement processes benefit from Copilot's ability to answer qualifying questions. Legal services leverage document summarization to focus on complex tasks. Finance teams have seen improvements in spreadsheet usage and macro debugging. Social care workers experience a significant reduction in administrative burden, freeing them for direct client care. Usage data shows 70% of users regularly engage with Copilot. The council is measuring ROI through productivity and cost savings metrics, including reductions in agency staffing costs, efficiency gains in administrative tasks, and improved productivity across departments.
Details
- Tool name
- Microsoft Copilot
- Organisation
- Barnsley Council
- Status
- live
- AI method (as recorded)
- generativeAI, Natural Language Processing, Large Language Model
- AI method (normalised tags)
- generativeAI Natural Language Processing Large Language Model
- Usecase
- Workflow Automation
- Origin
- local.gov.uk
- Owning team
- Barnsley Council
- Date added
- 9 January 2025
- Scrape date
- Source note
- Barnsley Council secured a place in Microsoft's early access program (EAP) in September 2023 and implemented a comprehensive governance framework including an ethics board, enhanced information governance, user training workshops, and risk-specific protocols for high-risk areas like children's social care. They also created a 'Copilot Flight Crew' with over 150 staff trained as champions to provide ongoing guidance. [Source]