February 5, 2024: The UK Government’s Department for Business & Trade (DBT) has chosen to expand the scope of the Global Supply Chain Intelligence Programme (GSCIP) with Altana, giving the UK Government an unparalleled capability to generate policy-informing insights as well as operational programmes to support UK national interests. During the new multi-year contract, Altana’s AI platform will be used as the basis of the GSCIP data model, combining HMG data and private sector data with big data analytics to further scale the connected and intelligent global supply chain map in a secure government cloud infrastructure.

Altana provides the UK government with the dynamic, intelligent map of the global supply chain, the Altana Atlas. Using the Atlas, programme member departments are able to make recommendations and develop public policies based on the latest changes to the supply chain, allowing departments to get in front of issues before they disrupt national interests. For the past two years, Altana has worked with the GSCIP to pilot the programme, which saw a rapid increase in results early in the partnership. Initially, a supply chain inquiry would take months from start to finish. But with Altana's AI-powered platform, the DBT has significantly reduced the time it takes for a department to initiate a supply chain inquiry and disseminate the data's actionable findings.

“The UK GSCIP is a visionary initiative to build supply chain resilience through a common operating picture between and among UK government agencies and the private sector,” said Evan Smith, CEO and co-founder of Altana. “It is also a groundbreaking use of Altana’s supply chain data and AI platform, with both technical and non-technical users across the government working from and building on our supply chain map. We’re proud to provide the single source of truth for the global supply chain to His Majesty’s Government, unlocking economic security, procurement efficiencies, and business resilience for critical industries across the UK.”

To gain supply chain insights quickly enough and with the depth required for a wide-reaching and cross-governmental collaboration, DBT partnered with Altana as part of the Global Supply Chains Intelligence Programme. The ability to collaborate on a common operating picture of the global supply chain has allowed the consortium of seven UK Government departments to use Altana’s proprietary platform and visualisation tools to investigate companies, products, trade lanes, and acute risks permeating the global supply chain. The technical infrastructure for GSCIP comprises Altana’s secure digital environment platform and UK Government datasets, all held on UK Government cloud infrastructure. 

As a public entity, DBT deals with large amounts of disparate and sensitive data. GSCIP is benefiting from Altana’s unique federated learning platform, the Altana Atlas, that utilises AI and federated data architecture to learn from both public and non-public data, which otherwise cannot be directly pooled. This creates unprecedented visibility across the supply chain that was previously impossible because of data sovereignty, privacy, and intellectual property protections. Now, sensitive UK government data can securely inform the supply chain map that departments across the UK government can work within to shape policy and support operations.

Altana’s suite of tools has greatly benefited GSCIP participants by reducing operational costs and providing rapid insights from the Altana Atlas that are verifiable, citable, and sourced from a repeatable repository of information for informing public policy, such as the recent, Critical Imports and Supply Chain Strategy.

Altana will continue to provide the GSCIP with a common operating picture of the global supply chain, facilitating proactive supply chain resilience planning and decision making. Evolving from reactive national supply chain risk management will also allow the UK Government to identify vulnerabilities in national supply chains and business networks of interest, streamlining quicker routes toward creating alternative pathways to overcome these vulnerabilities.

As DBT continues to see the benefits of Altana’s AI technology in GSCIP, it will expand Altana adoption through testing further application of the platform across the UK Government. This growing network will only widen the UK Government’s vision and interoperability, all utilising the smart and dynamic supply chain view that only the Altana Atlas can provide. 

For more details, reach out to press@altana.ai