Since 2023, Defra has been running targeted trials and rollouts of Microsoft Copilot - a personal AI assistant integrated within Microsoft apps. These pilots highlighted the meaningful ways it can benefit colleagues who are neurodivergent and/or have a disability or other access need and, as such, we made full licenses available as a reasonable adjustment. In this blog, Ray Ede from the livestock information transformation programme explains how it supports him day-to-day.
I’ve just started as a delivery manager on the livestock information transformation programme. This, alongside previous roles and apprenticeship studies, involves bringing together complex information, shaping it into something useful, and helping people make sense of it. That can mean drafting documents, reviewing feedback, preparing briefings, and turning messy thinking into something structured and clear.
I’m also neurodivergent, and I process information in my own way. I can need more time to absorb verbal information, hold ideas in mind, and turn them into something I can confidently share. With clear structure, written information, and a little extra time, I can do my best work.
This is where Copilot comes in. I first used the full license as a form of assistive technology during a departmental trial and now use it regularly across Word, Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 applications.
For me, Copilot is much more than a productivity tool; it reduces cognitive load by holding and organising all the moving parts otherwise in my head. This eases a lot of the friction that can sit between having ideas and translating them into a usable form. It’s a practical tool that reduces some of the invisible barriers I experience day-to-day.
Bearing the load
Copilot does not remove the need for thinking. If anything, it gives me more time to think by allowing me to direct my energy away from formatting, sequencing or getting the first draft down, and towards more important work. It helps by first giving me a structure.
For example, I can ask it to turn rough notes into a draft outline, summarise a long document, pull out key actions from a meeting or help me test whether a message is clear. I still review everything, check the facts and decide what to use, but it reduces the cognitive load at the start of the task. That means I can spend more of my effort on judgement, quality and context, rather than wrestling with the blank page.
One of the biggest benefits for me is in writing. I often know what I want to say, but the first version can come out too long, too detailed or not quite in the right order.
Copilot helps me reshape that material into something more readable. I use it to make drafts clearer, shorten text, improve flow and adapt tone depending on whether I am writing a formal document, a Teams update, a briefing or an email. That support helps me communicate with more confidence.
Copilot also supports my memory and organisation. When work involves meetings, long threads, multiple versions of documents and lots of small actions, it is easy for important points to get buried. Being able to ask Copilot to summarise a thread, identify key points or help me produce a cleaner version of an output makes work feel more manageable. It gives me a way back into the detail without having to reread everything from scratch.
Copilot has helped me be more reflective. I have used it to test whether my writing is clear, whether my recommendations are practical and whether I may be over-emphasising one perspective. In that sense, it can act a bit like a thinking partner. Not a decision maker and not a substitute for people, but a useful prompt that helps me pause, check and improve.
My Copilot top tip
My advice to anyone new to Copilot is simple: start small. You do not need the perfect prompt. Like any tool, the more you use it, the more value you discover. Through this experimentation I have learnt to produce prompts that prioritise clarity. I get better results when I explain the audience, the purpose, the tone and the format I want.
For example, I might ask for something to be made more concise, written in plain language, turned into clear bullet points or softened so it sounds more conversational. Those small instructions make a big difference.
Copilot has not changed who I am or how I think. What it has done is given me a more supportive way to work with how I think. It helps me turn complexity into structure, ideas into words, and long tasks into manageable steps. It achieves exactly what assistive technology should: to not make everyone work in the same way but to adapt to individual needs to help people work at their best.
More information
Ray Ede is a Delivery Manager in the Livestock Information Transformation Programme in Defra. If you're interested in finding out more about what we do in Defra Digital Data Technology and Security check out our LinkedIn page for all the latest news, stories and job openings. While you're there, why not give us a follow?
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