The Cabinet Office has recently published an evaluation report on “The Ecosystem of Trust 2023”.

The Ecosystem of Trust sits alongside the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM) and is a theoretical border model for ‘frictionless’ trade. This report is an evaluation of the pilots, which ran from October 2022 to March 2023.

The pilots tested whether the Ecosystem of Trust could be implemented across the public and private sector to reduce trade frictions and were based on the use of innovative technology capabilities, real time data and trusted relationships to provide border agencies with new ways to assure what moves across the border.

Government partnered with six industry consortia, made up of technology firms, traders, and logistics companies to test the model, which, together with border agencies, included tests of new ways of sharing data.

The pilots showed that industry can make a broader range of higher quality data available to the government than that available today which can be provided in various formats that adapt to border agencies’ needs.

This all suggests that supply-chain data can provide 80% of the minimum risking requirements for customs purposes and 60% of trade statistics requirements. Supply chain data improved frontline targeting teams’ confidence in their decision-making and analysis suggests it might be possible to decrease the time taken to make those decisions by 17%.

However, the pilots also showed that new models are not yet ready to replace traditional mechanisms of border control. The UK government cannot take full advantage of new data because industry has yet to be incentivised to develop the appropriate technical infrastructure to make it available in the right (machine readable) format at scale, and government has not yet adequately determined the most effective ways to use or collect it.

But most importantly, the pilots have shown that industry and government can collaborate quickly and usefully to unlock solutions and overcome interoperability issues around the use of data. There is an appetite on both sides to drive trade digitisation and facilitate the adoption of supply chain data into government for mutual benefit.

Read the report in full here