‘Serious concerns’ about DWP’s use of AI to read correspondence from benefit claimants
‘Serious concerns’ about DWP’s use of AI to read correspondence from benefit claimants
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White mail system handles ‘highly sensitive personal data’ and people not told it is processing their information. When your mailbag brims with 25,000 letters and emails every day, deciding which to answer first is daunting. When lurking within are pleas for help from some of the country’s most vulnerable people, the stakes only get higher.
![[Robert Booth]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2024/11/14/Robert_Booth.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
That is the challenge facing the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as correspondence floods in from benefit applicants and claimants – of which there are more than 20 million, including pensioners, in the UK. The DWP thinks it may have found a solution in using artificial intelligence to read it all first – including handwritten missives.
Human reading used to take weeks and could leave the most vulnerable people waiting for too long for help. But “white mail” is an AI that can do the same work in a day and supposedly prioritise the most vulnerable cases for officials to get to first.
By implication, it deprioritises other people, so its accuracy and how it reaches its judgments count, but both matters remain opaque. Despite a ministerial mandate, it is one of numerous public sector algorithms yet to be logged on the transparency register for central government AIs.
White mail has been piloted since at least 2023 when the then welfare secretary, Mel Stride, said it meant “those most in need can be more quickly directed to the relevant person who can help them”. But documents released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act show that benefit claimants are not told about its use.
