What was the challenge?

As part of Carmarthenshire County Council’s shift to a digital first operating model, the organisation sought to reduce administrative overheads in frontline services while maintaining professional standards and citizen centred outcomes. In social care, practitioners faced significant time pressures associated with notetaking, assessments and record completion, contributing to additional stress and reduced capacity for direct work with citizens. 

Who would benefit and how?

The primary intended beneficiaries were frontline social workers, who stood to benefit from reduced time spent on documentation and improved work / life balance. Secondary benefits included improved continuity of care for service users, faster completion of records. In addition, the ability to trial different tools at the same time created an opportunity to develop better organisational understanding of which AI tools offered the most appropriate balance between usability, scalability and cost.  

What was the solution?

Carmarthenshire County Council piloted and evaluated Magic Notes, a transcription tool designed by technology specialists Beam specifically for social care use, supporting effective transcription and recording of case notes and assessments. The pilot reported significant time savings of 7-10 hours per week per social worker, alongside improved work / life balance and positive practitioner feedback. These outcomes led to the service area funding a 12month subscription and moving from pilot into live use of Magic Notes. 

At the same time Sgript, an enterprise scale transcription and automation tool developed by Cardiff-based Stable was piloted across multiple departments. With Sgript potentially offered broader organisational scalability, with native integration with Microsoft Teams and the ability to auto-populate complex forms from transcriptions, the parallel pilot allowed the council to assess a general, lower per user cost solution alongside a more specialist tool.  

Who was involved?

The work was led by the central digital team, working closely with digital ‘champions’ within social care teams to help build and run an effective pilot and evaluation journey. Engineers from Beam helped to establish the tool and associated templates, based on a blended model of inhouse and supplier support to ensure relevant delivery. Upon completion of the pilot, further roll-out decisions were informed by practitioner feedback, service level funding considerations and corporate oversight of digital and AI adoption.

What was achieved?

The Magic Notes pilot demonstrated clear benefits for social care practitioners, including: 

• Reported time savings of 7-10 hours per week per social worker 

• Improved work / life balance 

• Positive user feedback sufficient to justify service funded continuation 

The Sgript pilot enabled Carmarthenshire County Council to compare these outcomes with a more scalable, enterprise level solution. While still under evaluation, Sgript has demonstrated particular strengths in cost efficiency, integration with existing Microsoft environments and applicability across a wide range of service functions, which will help to shape future decisions about standardisation and value for money. 

How was the Welsh language considered?

Adoption was considered within the wider context of Carmarthenshire’s commitment to bilingual service delivery, which is seen as a non-negotiable in AI service development, and its increasing use of Welsh language AI capabilities. 

As such, Welsh language performance of Magic Notes was deemed to be below the expected and accepted standards and as such has not been deployed pending further development and improvement. Sgript, however, was seen to be much more viable, achieving acceptable standards of Welsh language transcription and output into forms and workflows across a wide variety of council services.

What were the key governance steps taken?

AI scribe tools were evaluated within Carmarthenshire’s updated AI governance framework, which includes due processes for procurement, data governance and security and is supported by clear communications to ensure compliance and prevent unauthorised tool usage. A corporate approach to piloting provides central funding to support trials before individual service areas then take on ownership and responsibility for ongoing costs where tools have demonstrated enough value to be viable for rollout.  

The piloting and further adoption of AI scribe tools was supported by a combination of e-learning and the use of digital ‘champions’ within services. Training focused not only on how to use specific tools but also on building general competence in prompting and how to interact effectively, confidently and safely with AI systems, reflecting the council’s view of AI literacy as a core workforce skill.  

What lessons have been learned?

Key lessons included the value of simultaneously piloting specialist and enterprise scale tools to understand trade-offs between usability, depth of functionality, scalability and cost. It also became clear that it is vitally important to frame AI benefits in terms of practitioner wellbeing and service-user benefits, rather than simple efficiencies alone. Finally, as AI functionality is continuously bolted on to existing tools and services, it is important to maintain vigilant central oversight of tool usage to avoid fragmented or unauthorised tool adoption across services. 

Supporting information