HMRC Launches Largest Government Copilot Rollout

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has started the largest Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout in UK Government, beginning with 32,000 licences this year, rising to 50,000 in 2026.

The move follows a pilot that projected a two million hours personal productivity saving annually, said HMRC.

Timed to coincide with the launch of the civil service 2025 One Big Thing, AI for All training, staff are required to complete a 90-minute Copilot essential training course before enabling licences.

More than 2,000 people completed the training within the first 24 hours in advance of the launch on Thursday. Training is designed to instill responsible AI principles and to reinforce the need for human oversight and judgement everywhere that AI is used in HMRC, said HMRC’s director of insight, AI and innovation, Simon Price, in a LinkedIn post.

Unlike the bundled Copilot Chat that comes as standard with M365, this version is embedded in Word, Excel, Outlook and the other M365 apps. It also has access to your documents, spreadsheets, calendars, transcripts and all the OneDrive files you have access to, he said.

“This is far removed from and way more powerful than the free-tier AI tools we’ve all tried from home,” said Price. “For a start off, our data remains securely within our tenant and is not used to train models. However, the big win is the ability to ask questions of and manipulate all the internal information you have access to (note it does not widen your access at all). Responses are grounded in our own data. Citations are given.

“We’ve already had some wonderfully imaginative examples of how to use Copilot in very specific roles. The excitement is there and the desire to do work better, faster is self-evident. A network of champions in each business area is there to support and promote best practice. Our digital academy is curating training and guiding learners. We have live support through a dedicated Copilot team in IT and we’re geared up to capture good ideas for taking our AI to the next level with Agents.”

At the same time, Price said some colleagues have objected to the concept of AI philosophically or based on media or citing examples of where it has been used for tasks where it is ill suited. He described some of the examples as “hilarious” and “scary” but they could have been avoided by following responsible AI principles.

“The point I’ve made many times in these discussions is that Copilot is a tool and a skill. Skills take time to learn. Tools are only fit for certain tasks, not for all,” he said.

“We’re empowering our colleagues to be creative and to rethink how they do their work in light of this new tool. We have agency to decide when, where and how to use this tool. The prize is improved personal productivity and acceleration of the low-value parts of our work, leaving more time to improve customer service, close the tax gap and transform our ways of working.”