Innovation Exchange challenge: Inconsistent Access to Data

In order to take advantage of a thriving science and technology ecosystem, and the opportunities this presents for national security, the UK Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, are looking for creative, interesting and novel solutions to some current technology challenges.

This experiment is the first of its kind for SIS, starting with a selection of challenges. It is designed to encourage non-traditional suppliers to work in the national security space – especially start-ups and SMEs.

Just as businesses use data to build businesses and customer insights, the UK Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, uses data to build reports that inform decision-making, ensuring the security and prosperity of the UK, its citizens and allies.

To build reports, SIS ingests a wide variety of legally obtained information and data. The data landscape can be large and extremely varied, structured or unstructured. It includes audio-visual information, financial records, travel records, and many more. We have multiple software and analytics tools to pick out insights from the data, coupled with highly trained and skilled teams of data analysts and scientists. However, the outputs from the data tools may be very different and need to be brought together in order to make sense.

We are looking for a solution that brings together disparate information and a wide variety of tools and data. We do not wish to add to the tools used, so one option could be a wraparound software tool integrated with our current systems, allowing smoother and easier access for analysts. Another option could include automating the collation of outputted information and identifying insights, supervised by a human in the loop. Other suggestions are welcome; we are looking for novel options to this challenge.

The challenge holder is keen to hear from a range of sole traders, small and medium size businesses (start-ups, SMEs) and academia.