Challenge 11.5

How can technology help us better understand the potential impacts of government decisions?

Challenge Sponsor: Office of the Chief Social Policy Adviser and the Scottish Government Policy Profession

ODS

Mull gives policymakers the headspace to do impact assessments well. It uses AI to ask the right questions, find evidence, and flag what's been missed — not to automate policy.

Instead of losing skilled time to process and guidance, teams can think carefully, early enough to matter.

Across government, Mull spots patterns you wouldn't see from a single assessment — how multiple policies affect the same groups, sectors or the environment — so that decisions made in silos pull in the same direction.

ODS responded to CivTech Challenge 11.5

The Opportunity

Impact assessments are a statutory requirement across the UK and beyond, but nearly 2,900 public bodies have no purpose-built tool for the job, relying on templates, fragmented guidance, and manual search. As governments invest in AI, Mull is the first platform built for this work, and anywhere evidence-based thinking matters.

Next Steps

We’ll be working with the Scottish Government to reform their impact assessment system and implement it using Mull. We’ll be turning Mull into a secure, trusted and mature product and rolling out to other public sector organisations in 2027.

The Team

ODS is a worker cooperative of 22 data, technology and policy specialists. For a decade we've helped experts use data, evidence and systems-thinking to take on complex policy challenges — from rolling out high-speed internet and clean energy, to protecting communities from climate risk, and tackling anonymous company ownership.