Brexit-Related Firm Wins Government Contracts Related to AI and Data Mining

An Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm with connections to the 2016 Vote Leave campaign has been awarded seven government contracts in the last 18 months.

According to the Guardian, Faculty, which traded under the name Advanced Skills Initiative during the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, has won seven contracts totaling around £280,000 of government work.

Faculty chief executive Marc Warren also attended Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) meetings, whilst his brother, data scientist Ben Warner, was recruited to Downing Street last year for the Conservative Party’s general election campaign, and also attended SAGE meetings to provide advice to ministers on COVID-19.

Faculty is also working at the heart of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, processing large volumes of confidential UK patient information alongside US firm Palantir.

One tender was a £250,000 cross-government review on the adoption of AI, issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Government Digital Service (GDS), a body which promotes the use of digital technology to improve public services, in 2019. Cabinet Office minister Theodore Agnew also reportedly has a £90,000 shareholding in Faculty.

The contract was intended “to identify the most significant o ..

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