Guidance
This page provides answers to common questions about AssureAssist and how it can support your assurance activities.
The FAQs also explain how information is handled and protected within the service, outline user responsibilities, and share details of planned future developments. We recommend reviewing these questions before using AssureAssist to help you get the most value from the service while understanding its capabilities and limitations.
AssureAssist is an AI enhanced workstation designed to support project and programme assurance reviews. It helps reviewers assess project documentation against stage-based questions in the Gate Review Workbooks, help identify key risks and evidence more quickly, and prepare first drafts of findings and reports. Reviewers remain responsible for checking, challenging and validating all outputs before they are used.
AssureAssist does not replace reviewer judgement or make decisions about RAG ratings, findings, recommendations or the final review position. Accountability for the review remains with the assurance professionals invovled.
AssureAssist is expected to be available for GMPP reviews from autumn 2026, with wider departmental use planned for Q2 2027/2028, subject to funding, readiness and rollout decisions.
AssureAssist helps reviwers make better use of their time by supporting faster analysis of review documentation, earlier identification of risk and more consistent drafting of review outputs. This allows reviwers to focus more time on professional judgement, challenge and insight.
AssureAssist is owned and managed by NISTA. NISTA is responsible for governance, development, support, security, service management and the ongoing improvement of the product. Arrangements for wider departmental use will be confirmed as part of future rollout planning.
Assure Assist is purpose-built for government project assurance. Unlike general AI tools, it is designed to support assurance review activity by assessing project documentation against the stage-based questions in the Gate Review Workbooks and helping reviewers prepare structured, evidence-based outputs. Human judgement, review and validation remain central.
Assure Assist analyses project and programme documentation provided for assurance reviews.
Yes. Assure Assist has been developed in line with government security standards and Secure by Design principles. Appropriate security, privacy and governance controls have been put in place to protect information and support the safe use of AI in assurance activity.
Assure Assist outputs must be reviewed and validated by assurance professionals before they are used. The tool supports analysis and drafting, but reviewers remain responsible for deciding what findings, recommendations, RAG ratings and final review positions should be included.
Assure Assist is currently focused on supporting government project and programme assurance reviews. Its underlying capability may have potential for wider project delivery use in future, but this would be subject to further development, testing, governance and business need.
Assure Assist may support some light-touch project health check activity where the approach is based on assessing documentation against stage-based questions in the Gate Review Workbooks. It is not a substitute for deeper, bespoke analysis or targeted reviews of specific delivery challenges.
Users will access AssureAssist through a secure web-based interface. Access is managed through Cabinet Office authentication arrangements, so that only authorised users can access the service and the information relevant to their review. External users will be sent a direct link for access.
AssureAssist processes data in line with government data protection, security and records management requirements. Project documents are used only for the assurance review for which they are provided and are not used to train AI models. Unless otherwise agreed, project data and associated outputs are securely deleted 30 calendar days after the review has completed.
The data is held on the Cabinet Office GRID platform. The GRID platform is secure upto official-sensitive.
AssureAssist is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) within Cabinet Office infrastructure.
AssureAssist is designed to improve project assurance by helping review teams analyse evidence more efficiently, identify risks earlier and produce more consistent assurance outputs. It supports the wider ambition to modernise assurance processes whilst retaining professional judgement.
AssureAssist is available to authorised users involved in government project assurance activity. Access will depend on the review, the user’s role and the agreed onboarding arrangements.
No. Documents provided to Assure Assist are used only for the assurance activity for which they were supplied. Project data and outputs are not used to train AI models.
AssureAssist works with project and programme documentation already prepared for assurance reviews. The quality and completeness of information provided will affect the quality of outputs generated.
No. AssureAssist supports existing assurance processes and ways of working. It assists with analysis and report drafting but does not replace established assurance guidance, governance or decision-making arrangements.