The Department for International Trade (DIT) is running a Global Supply Chains Intelligence Pilot (GSCIP) project to increase its data capabilities on the relevant issues.
It has published a trio of pre-procurement notices related to the project, related to work on a knowledge graph, datasets and data analysis and visualisation tools.
The department is leading the cross-government pilot to test the feasibility and value of combining government and private sector datasets to build a better understanding of the relationships between products, businesses and locations in global supply chains.
It has indicated that the knowledge graph would be at the heart of this, stored in its virtual private cloud and containing datasets and machine learning software for their interrogation. It currently has a team of analysts testing specific use cases across departments, and a prototype infrastructure with graph database capabilities, data visualisation software and analysis tools including Spark SQL and Python.
As the next step it is ready to spend up to £2 million over two years from April 2023 for support in the further development and testing of the concept.
Existing datasets
DIT is also looking for support in updating datasets for supply chain mapping, preferably via an API, SFTP or S3 buckets. It said it is not commissioning new research but only interested in existing datasets with a value of up to £2 million.
The third notice is focused on tools to analyse and provide visualisations of the knowledge graph data, and is aimed at companies that have existing software to do the job. This element of the project is valued at £400,000.
“We expect to have a decision on funding for the continuation of the GSCIP in December 2022 and will have limited time to procure the required analytical tools before the current agreements end in March 2023,” the notices say.
“For this reason, we are only engaging with suppliers that already have the tools that we require so that they can be procured in March 2023 and available for use in April 2023.”
