National AI Tender for frontier AI companies to support agentic AI powered GOV.UK Chat - Pre Market Engagement

Description

The Department for Science Innovation and Technology (“DSIT”) is committed to leveraging frontier Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) technologies to transform how citizens interact with government services. Our vision is for a fully integrated, AI-powered, personalised GOV.UK experience for citizens. DSIT intends to encourage frontier AI companies to collaborate with us in exploring the art of the possible, from enhancing our existing GOV.UK services to developing proofs-of-concept showcasing advanced AI agent capabilities adapted for the public sector context. The “National AI Tender” approach follows the 'Scan, Pilot, Scale' framework outlined in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, with a goal of culminating in national-level procurements to deliver a unified, citizen-centric digital government platform powered by cutting-edge AI solutions. The tender will follow a phased engagement with clear go/no-go gates within and between each stage. The Scan phase has comprised of two-way partnerships with AI vendors to understand current agentic AI technology capabilities as well as future developments. In parallel, the GOV.UK App team has conducted user research into personalised guides, exploring how to reduce complexity for users navigating government services and tasks across departmental boundaries by recognising the nuances of individual life situations and experiences. The Pilot phase, in 2025/26, will focus on testing the value, technical feasibility and deliverability of using Agentic AI powered system for key life transitions such as education pathways, apprenticeship opportunities, and career guidance for 16-34 year old citizens. It aims to showcase AI agents that can provide personalized information, intelligent routing, action taking, and end-to-end support while seamlessly integrating with existing government digital services. The Scale phase, intended for 2026/27, will focus on rolling out a fully integrated, agentic AI powered, GOV.UK Chat service to all user groups. This is with the ambition of offering a unified, national-level service. The provision of this scaled tender will be dependent on the use-case being proved valuable, feasible and deliverable across a series of stage-gates and has been deliberately kept flexible to integrate the learnings of the pilot phase. The intention for this preliminary market engagement exercise is to bring awareness on this programme of work and invite leading frontier agentic AI capability providers to engage with DSIT on creating an AI-powered, personalised GOV.UK experience for citizens. As one of the first uses of National AI Tenders and competitive flexible procedures under the Procurement Act 2023, DSIT will be undergoing a test-and-learn process for the procurement. Throughout this process, DSIT are fully committed to fostering a deep partnership between government and the private sector to co-create the future of digital public services We will be encouraging organisations who are developing frontier agentic AI capabilities with their own bespoke Large Language Models (“LLMs”) to participate in the exercise. In respect to initial tenders in the Pilot Phase, we are highlighting that this early engagement would not be relevant for organisations, unless in partnership with another bidder, in the following areas: AI Consultancies AI Digital Services AI Deployment AI Integration AI Licencing Future procurements in the Pilot and Scale phase may be relevant to these organisations and DSIT intends to collaborate closely with the AI ecosystem. *** This is early market engagement for a potential opportunity. The Department is not obligated to run a procurement following this activity and is not liable for any costs associated with participating in this early engagement. ***

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