DemoFest 2018: Bringing Research to Life

This blog was written by Steven Kendrick, Executive Officer for the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA), which represents all 14 Scottish HE Computing Schools/Departments. Steven is responsible for all aspects of the management of the Research Pool.

As the warm summer continues, we are already looking ahead to our main knowledge exchange event of the year “DemoFest: Bringing Research to Life”, which takes place at Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh, on the evening of 6th November.

The event is aimed at showcasing some of the leading Computing and technology research taking place within universities in Scotland; and it is aimed principally at businesses and the public sector.

DemoFest brings together research talent, businesses, the public sector and Government for an evening of avant-garde technology demo’s; engaging talks and networking. This year we expect over 250 industry delegates; with over 50 research and tech’ exhibits and two great keynote talks (Dr Jamie Graves, CEO of Zonefox and Ali Shah, Head of Technology Direction at the BBC.

Because of the breadth of research and technology under the roof, DemoFest is aimed at businesses of any size, operating in many sectors ”“ including but not limited to Finance, Telecommunications, Cybersecurity, Big Data, Robotics and AI, Space Technology, Gaming, Energy, and Health & Wellbeing.

The event is now in its 11th year and the benefits of attending are far-reaching. It can be an opportunity to sow the seeds for innovative collaboration between universities and businesses. It can spark the commercialisation of a brilliant idea and begin the path to establishing a successful business. It also puts employers into contact with some of the brightest people working in technology in the country and vice-versa. For researchers and academics it provides a platform to discuss their research and demonstrate technology working in real-time.

Scaling up to meet Pension Dashboard demand

This blog has been written by Anthony Rafferty, Managing Director at Origo.

As the fintech tasked with improving the financial services industry’s operating efficiencies, Origo has been involved in Pensions Dashboard developments since 2014. During this time, as well as developing prototypes, we have also been working on delivering a systems architecture that is scalable to meet the anticipated launch and future usage levels by consumers.

The Pensions Dashboard will be both a brand new and free service pertinent to millions of people in the UK, which means there is a high likelihood that it will receive significant volumes of requests when it goes live.

Indeed, our analysis* shows that Pensions Dashboard must be ready to support at least 15 million consumers accessing their pensions data. This figure of 15 million is also closely aligned with discussions that we have held with providers/banks who operate consumer-facing platforms.

Therefore, the infrastructure underpinning the Pensions Dashboard must be built from the outset to support significant volumes of consumers from day one, cope with peaks and troughs in usage, and scale to the target of 15 million consumers.

Not surprisingly, one of the main concerns of those responsible for delivery of this critical project has been the sheer complexity in scaling up the central IT infrastructure to deal with this anticipated volume of consumers. It is vital that this is achieved securely, efficiently and at acceptable cost to Government and industry stakeholders.

So, a vital part of the work we have been doing in developing the find’ service ”“ the process of the Dashboard which, with consumer consent, orchestrates the calls to all pension providers to check if they have a matching policy for the consumer ”“ has been to successfully scale test for that anticipated usage by 15 million active consumers all wanting to find their pensions.

We have benchmarked our solution against example test scenarios and factors, including:
● A 15 million user population;
● 80% of these users active onPensions Dashboard(s) on a given day;
● Invoking an additional find’ request every 30 days;
● 200 pension provider systems (or end points’) in the ecosystem.

As Kenneth May, Chief Architect at Origo, explains this required analysis of the performance and stability of the ‘find’ process at high volume. “Averaged out over a day, this testing requires a throughput of just over 1,000 transactions per second to deal with incoming traffic from the Dashboard(s) and to collate responses from pension providers.

“We have tested at more than double this rate to ensure that we can cope with typical usage patterns which have significant peaks during the working day. Our test results give us confidence that we can reliably achieve, exceed and sustain the required throughput and provide a robust low-latency service.”

Needless to say, we are delighted with the progress we’re making on behalf of consumers, with our recent testing proving that the solution scales.

The offering also provides centralised authorisation services to enable Dashboard access to the pensions which are found and includes advanced features such as Delegated Authority (access) for advisers, guidance bodies and other trusted parties

We have not achieved this alone. It has been done working in collaboration with providers and industry bodies over the years, as well as with the support from our strategic technology partners ”“ MuleSoft and ForgeRock. But now, having successfully tested the plumbing of the Pensions Dashboard, for us the technology is ready for 15 million consumers.

Scotland, Ireland and fintech ”“ the importance of working together

This blog has been written by David Clarke, Policy Director and Founder at Scottish-Irish Finance Initiative.

Fintech is a strategically important industry and can contribute hugely to the development of our native industrial and business environment. Most promising is the development of new companies and most importantly new high value jobs. It is also vital to remember that fintech can be a disrupter and can, and should, create efficiencies that may make some existing roles redundant. With this in mind it’s very important to create the right public policy for the development of the sector.

In order to ensure that the balance of new roles and specialisations works in our favour we need to be certain that we have first mover advantage and scale. The Scottish Government has quite rightly taken a proactive step in encouraging the growth of fintech, most notably with the establishment of Fintech Scotland, to coordinate the activities of the policy makers and the industry to ensure we take maximum advantage at this pivotal growth time for the sector.

But why stop at Scotland’s borders? Those of us that support the Scottish Irish Finance Initiative (our raison d’être couldn’t be more clear ”“ to encourage job and industry growth through cooperation) believe there are huge advantages from sharing expertise and effectively doubling the industry hinterland by encouraging the fintech sectors in both locations to work more closely together.

The combination of expertise, which can be led by both universities and businesses, can of itself helps spawn the development of new technologies and new solutions. We are also strongly of the opinion that by businesses looking further afield (but not that far ”“ a 40 minute flight that’s shorter and easier than any trip down to London!) they can tap potential clients and resources that otherwise would not be available.

Ireland’s existing expertise as one of Europe’s top two fund administration and servicing centres, home to many of the world’s largest banks and financial institutions, offers a wealth of opportunity for Scottish fintech companies. Likewise the significant fund management and administration in Scotland extends the potential for Irish businesses.

And at a time when others are putting up trade borders, we reckon that this kind of cooperation sends out a very positive message to the rest of the world and to the large financial institutions that we need to engage with in order to grow our domestic industries.

Artificial Intelligence and Professional Expertise

Accountancy, law, insurance”¦ these professions usually conjure images of spreadsheets, glass and steel offices, jargon-filled sentences, square eyes and grey suits. Perhaps this is part of the reason why we willingly pay high fees for such services: passing the burden to highly intelligent individuals who will perform those laborious tasks for us. But all this might be about to change.

It’s not about replacement

Machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions are already better at performing many tasks than the professionals: beating human lawyers in reviewing contracts and predicting the outcomes of legal cases[1].

But it is not about replacing lawyers, accountants and insurance managers with machines. Instead, it is about building data solutions that enrich their practice: automating repetitive tasks to free up time for strategic thinking and managing the client relationship; lowering costs to offer services to a wider audience, including legal help for those who most need it; improving detection of insurance fraud to lower premiums for all; accessing and using data to deliver a better more personalised service.

The potential for AI in professional services is clearly considerable: for those who use and depend upon them, and those working in these industries.

The UK in a great position

Furthermore, the UK is in the perfect position to make it happen. With its world-leading centres of AI research, it has been described as first in the world for AI readiness’[2]. It also has a justifiably renowned heritage in providing professional services, with the biggest legal and insurance sectors in Europe, and ranked as the leading exporter of financial and related professional services across the world in 2017.

Those working in the industry must play a central role in the development of these new technologies for them to succeed. They are the knowledge domain experts who are indispensable in designing the machines of the future: framing the challenges, producing data requirements, identifying potential risks and articulating the social and ethical issues.

As Professor Richard Susskind, author of the Future of the Professions says:

“Professionals should become directly involved in the development of the systems that handle and deliver practical expertise.”

A need for increased collaboration

A collaborative approach between professionals, academic researchers and technologists across the professional services industry will ensure that the solutions are best in class from a technical, user and social perspective.

It is such an approach that is being encouraged by the forthcoming £20m Next Generation Services Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). The challenge is set to support the development of data and AI solutions in the sectors of accountancy, legal and insurance services. It will include an initial CR&D call of up to £12m and an initial Research Programme call of up to £3m.