Intelligence investigators in the Home Office have deployed a new digital approach to identifying potentially suspicious companies shipping freight into the UK.
They have been working with the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) – the government body that works on public safety and security challenges in the digital space – on a method of risk analysis that makes it possible to assess more companies and maximise the insights from the operation.
In contrast with the established method of filtering and analysing spreadsheets and desk research, it can increase the number of firms referred for special inspections and the hit rate of those found to be importing contraband.
Home Office Intelligence and Border Force worked with ACE and tech company Faculty over 12 weeks to develop a rules based proof of concept risk model that could develop intelligence packages.
By allowing intelligence officers to upload raw HM Revenue and Customs data and combining this with automated retrieval of Companies House data, it reduces the time for the risk analysis process from around one week in the manual process to minutes.
The risk model scores companies on their likelihood of being an importer of contraband according to 11 weighted rules. ACE said it can be used by the current operational team and presents results immediately.
Positive results
An operational trial identified hundreds of new companies for investigation out of which there were a number of successful stops.
Initial forecasting shows the tool has the potential to almost double the seizures of contraband from suspicious shipments over the coming months by increasing both volume and hit rate.
Additionally, data captured during this time is expected to enable machine learning approaches to be added to increase accuracy even further.
ACE added that a roadmap and recommendations for how this risk model could be moved into wider operation has been developed, and further commissions for ongoing refinement and development are underway.
