The Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) head of data strategy has said the use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques will play an increasing role in improving service delivery, providing a fuller picture of customers' situations so they no longer need to explain their circumstances repeatedly. Giles Pavey outlined the department's plans in an interview with Sue Daley, head of cloud, data and AI at industry association techUK, in the first episode of the techUK podcast. "To deliver the services we want to deliver in an efficient way and as relevant to customers as possible, we definitely believe machine learning has a role to play," Pavey said. While DWP has already been using some machine learning in its fraud detection and cyber security work, and while it uses "to some extent most of the cutting edge techniques," the department is now looking to use natural language processing and image processing. Among the uses for the techniques would be to route incoming letters or understand the sentiment of a question put to the DWP more effectively.