Oxfordshire County Council wants to become a digitally-led local government and an employer of choice, so it chose to make Microsoft Copilot available to its entire 5,000+ workforce instead of a few specialist teams. Leaders see generative AI as a key enabler to: - Rethink how services are delivered - Make the organisation leaner and more efficient - Free people up to focus on higher‑value work Everyone has access to Copilot Chat, and around 4,500 office and knowledge workers use Microsoft 365 Copilot directly in their everyday tools. The council deliberately avoided a siloed approach. During the pilot, it grouped people by common skillsets (for example, knowledge workers, managers, business support) rather than by department. This helped ensure that: - Different roles and perspectives were represented - Training and change programmes could run across services - Every employee had a role in shaping how AI is used As Caroline French, Head of Transformation and Digital, describes it, this is organisational change enabled by technology. The aim is to embed new ways of working across the whole council, not just in isolated pockets.

The council has already seen clear, measurable benefits from its Copilot programme, both in time savings and financial impact. Key results from the pilot and early rollout include: - 25,200 hours saved for managers and practitioners by reducing the time needed to write supervision notes. - 30,000 hours saved annually for managers through Copilot support with meeting notes and follow‑ups. - 8,000 hours saved annually in hiring processes, with Copilot helping to create job descriptions, interview structures, and offer letters. - A net present value of £3.3 million identified during the pilot, which gave leadership confidence to invest in a full rollout. Beyond the pilot, after six months of wider use: - Approximately 174,000 hours of officer capacity have been released. - If fully realised, this equates to around £2.2 million in capacity that can be redirected to higher‑value work. There are also qualitative benefits: - Public communications can be made more accessible and inclusive with Copilot’s help. - Staff report using Copilot for brainstorming, research, and even debugging code directly within Microsoft 365 and Power BI, without leaving their normal workflow. Together, these outcomes show how Copilot is helping the council reshape everyday work, reduce low‑value admin, and focus more time on services that matter to residents.

The council treated Copilot as both a technology and a change programme, putting equal emphasis on people, culture, and security. 1. Inclusive and engaging change approach - Pilot with 500 users across all services, using role‑based personas (e.g., managers, knowledge workers, business support) to capture a wide range of needs. - Directors helped identify both champions and more cautious users so that different viewpoints shaped the rollout. - Copilot Ambassadors in different areas showed practical, day‑to‑day use cases and helped colleagues learn in context. - “The Hangar” (a Teams channel) and “The Flight School” (training programme) provided resources, guidance, and ongoing learning. - AI‑themed “AIscape rooms” brought gamified, team‑based experiences into council buildings to demystify AI and build confidence. - A Copilot Hackathon brought together over 80 people in 11 cross‑functional teams to design AI agents that solve real operational problems, such as handling invoices, guiding procurement, or tracking HR candidate progress. 2. Focus on skills and prompt literacy - Training covered not just how to use Copilot, but also terminology, prompting skills, and good practices. - The council emphasised “see it to believe it” moments, where staff could watch peers solve real problems with Copilot and then adapt those ideas to their own work. 3. Strong security and governance foundations - The council upgraded from Microsoft 365 E3 to E5 licences to unlock advanced security and compliance features. - This enabled capabilities such as data loss prevention and sensitivity labelling, which were considered essential for AI‑assisted workflows. - Data is kept within the Microsoft ecosystem, and the council restricts unauthorised external AI tools like public ChatGPT to reduce the risk of organisational data being used to train external models. - Policies, governance frameworks, and data management have been updated, including a migration from shared drives to SharePoint to improve data labelling and retention. By combining inclusive engagement, practical training, and a stronger security posture, Oxfordshire County Council is reimagining how AI fits into everyday work while keeping trust, safety, and staff experience at the centre.