Kainos Secures £3million Data and AI Food Safety contract with the FSA
We’re delighted to have been selected by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to help ensure the safety of food production and consumption in the UK. Having won this £3 million contract through a highly competitive tendering process, we have added to our own team of AI experts by partnering with Faculty to further transform the FSA’s data and AI-led Strategic Surveillance service.
The FSA’s Strategic Surveillance service enables the proactive management of food risk to UK consumers through best-practice data science, AI, and data engineering. The service is provided by a data science team who were established in 2017 to strengthen the FSA’s capability and support its food safety mission. The team develops the tools and techniques that turn data into actionable intelligence, using machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps them and their external users to act faster and make better informed decisions in protecting consumers.
This includes using data to improve risk-informed decision-making to ensure the safety of food products, including in meat production chains and food preparation environments. Strategic surveillance will incorporate the identification and prioritisation both of direct threats to food safety, such as microbiological risks, and indirect threats, such as food crime, changes in consumer attitudes and consumption patterns, and technical advances in food production.
Last December, the FSA started looking for a supplier to support the delivery and operationalisation of new use cases, and the maintenance and continuous improvement of existing ones. Kainos were appointed as the prime supplier and will work collaboratively with the existing FSA team for the next two years, delivering a mix of data strategy and new AI services.
Kainos and Faculty’s combination of Data Engineering and Data Science skills and expertise make us ideal partners for the FSA. It’s an exciting time for the FSA as they build on the foundations of their Strategic Surveillance service, and we will provide the best-of-breed data science, AI and innovative engineering capability that brings their ambitions to life.
Kainos and Faculty have been working in partnership from 2020 on several high-profile projects within Government spanning the National Crime Agency (NCA), Dstl within the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.
Faculty is one of the fastest growing Artificial Intelligence companies in the UK applying AI that helps to turn data into deeper insights, better strategies, and smarter decisions. Their decision intelligence technology, Frontier, bolsters decision-making across public and private sector customers.
Our teams at Kainos continue to lead the way in AI, both in practical terms by carrying out critical data/AI work in government and for citizens, and by developing the insight that continues to shape the sector. For example, we recently published a report in partnership with Tortoise Media and more than 20 leading AI experts that explores the future of trust in Artificial Intelligence.