SARACEN CONSULTANCY LIMITED

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Our Artificial Intelligence (AI) services are designed to help departments, agencies, government bodies and regulated businesses navigate the intricate landscape of AI implementation in the public and private sectors, ensuring that these powerful technologies are harnessed responsibly, ethically, and with full respect for individual rights and freedoms.

Features

• AI Ethics Impact Assessment
• AI Ethics Governance
• Generative AI Risk and Control Framework Assessment
• Auditing
• Policy Development
• AI Advisory
• Use Case Development
• Testing

Benefits

• Assess ethical implications, identify potential biases, and ensure compliance
• Identify and mitigate potential ethical, legal, and societal risks
• Improvements to public services and outcomes
• Improve fair and equitable delivery of justice
• Ensure value for money and return on AI technology investment
• Identify problems in data, models and algorithms for timely adjustments.
• Retain the trust and loyalty of the public and customers
• Avoid bias, ensure user privacy, and mitigate environmental risks
• AI systems don’t perpetuate biases or threaten fundamental human rights

£500 to £1,400 a user a day

• Education pricing available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at lara.oladapo@saracenconsultancy.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

689674830644884

Contact

Lara Oladapo
+44 (0)7887751835
lara.oladapo@saracenconsultancy.com

Planning

• Planning service: Yes
• How the planning service works: Our AI technology experts will assess ethical implications by first understanding your business goals and the specific AI use cases the business plans to deploy. We will evaluate the potential ethical implications of these use cases and consider fundamental factors such as privacy, fairness, transparency, and accountability. Our expert analysis service include analysis of:; ; How the AI system handles user data; The risk of bias in the training data; The explainability of decisions made by the AI to end-users; ; We work closely with your business stakeholders to identify and define ethical guidelines for AI deployment that reflect your values and principles. We conduct an assessment of privacy and the fairness of decision-making and identify and assess risks associated with cloud hosting and AI software services including identifying:; ; Technical risks such as capacity, and performance; AI-specific risks of privacy, bias and unintended consequences ; Security risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities to cyber ; threats; We develop strategies to mitigate or remediate these risks as appropriate.; ; Our AI subject matter experts work with the business to document your AI solution requirements and support your vendor and product selection process. We evaluate vendor commitment to ethical practices such as: Data Governance, Model Explainability and Compliance
• Planning service works with specific services: No

Training

• Training service provided: No

Setup and migration

• Setup or migration service available: Yes
• How the setup or migration service works: Our cloud SMEs work with organisations to identify services, data and workloads that are in scope of the migration project. ; We document and agree on a migration strategy. We identify the network and capacity requirements for the specific migration approach and conduct tests to validate assumptions. ; We work with the business to agree on the migration approach based on the assessment of factors including technology, business impact, cost and time. ; The migration strategy includes: ; Replace services with cloud-native equivalent where possible;; Rehost services using cloud infrastructure; Refactor to take advantage of cloud capabilities. ; ; We take all necessary steps and precautions to ensure that the cloud infrastructure is set up and configured securely. We also ensure that controls are in place to ensure migrations meet requirements for data confidentiality, integrity and availability. Cloud workloads are scanned for vulnerabilities before and after migration and tests are conducted to validate service functionality and performance post migration.; ; Our migration SMEs create migration Runbooks to ensure smooth execution and minimise disruptions to the business.; ; We ensure the security and privacy of data during and after migration events. Our experienced SMEs conduct portability assessments and provide options to avoid overdependence on a single vendor and lock-ins.
• Setup or migration service is for specific cloud services: No

Quality assurance and performance testing

• Quality assurance and performance testing service: Yes
• How the quality assurance and performance testing works: Our specialist teams have domain expertise in evaluating and deploying machine learning models, natural language processing systems, and computer vision applications and, we ensure that AI products meet the highest standards of reliability, accuracy, and efficiency through:; ; Functional Testing: to verify that AI product meets its functional requirements. We test individual components, document end-to-end workflows and ensure proper alignment with business goals.; ; Natural Language Processing Testing: to assess language understanding, context, and linguistic nuances. We validate the accurate transformation of business user requirements into test cases and verify NLP responses.; ; Machine Learning Model Testing includes evaluation of machine learning model performance for accuracy, precision, recall and F1-score. We also test for bias and resilience to noise.; ; Computer Vision Testing includes the analysis and interpretation of visual data to validate the model’s accuracy in identifying objects. We also conduct visual regression testing.; ; Security Testing includes assessing the model for vulnerabilities, data privacy issues, API security and potential for adversarial attacks on ML models.; ; Performance Testing includes evaluating scalability and responsiveness by conducting load testing and user traffic simulation, stress testing to assess load impacts and, scalability testing to ensure performance can be maintained as the user base grows.

Security testing

• Security services: Yes
• Security services type:
  • Security strategy
  • Security risk management
  • Security design
  • Cyber security consultancy
  • Security testing
  • Security incident management
  • Security audit services
  • Other
• Other security services:
  • Security Architecture & Design
  • Cybersecurity Strategy
  • Security Risk Assessment & Management
  • AI Security & Ethics
  • Data Privacy and Data Governance Design
  • Threat & Vulnerability Management
  • Security Operations
  • Security Testing
  • Identity and Access Management
  • Cyber Security Program Management
• Certified security testers: Yes
• Security testing certifications: CHECK

Ongoing support

• Ongoing support service: Yes
• Types of service supported: Buyer hosting or software
• How the support service works: We provide 24/7 Monitoring and Incident Response that covers Continuous Monitoring of server health, resource utilization, and network performance. We use cloud native and best in class tools to detect anomalies or potential issues.; We respond immediately to incidents by quickly addressing disruptions or server failures. We use automation to generate alerts for quick detection and response with security and critical events having the highest priorities. ; We assist clients with resource optimization and scaling based on demand and advice on resource allocation to avoid overprovisioning and unnecessary expenses.; We provide specialist security services to cover multi layered access controls covering identity, data and networks, cryptographic controls and solutions, malware protection, threat and vulnerability management, logging, monitoring and security audit solutions.; ; We design data backup and recovery solutions that align with your business continuity and disaster recovery requirements.

Service scope

• Service constraints: None

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support response times: We respond to urgent queries within four business hours.; We respond to regular queries within one business day.; Our ability to provide support at the weekend is subject to prior agreement.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: No
• Web chat support: Yes, at an extra cost
• Web chat support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AAA
• Web chat accessibility testing: We have not conducted tests with assistive technology users.
• Support levels: We provide the following levels of support: Documentation: This includes documenting the design, procedures and ways of working Service Level Driven Support. This involves agreed levels of support and performance measures. This improves the consistency and effectiveness of the support agreement. Active Management and Governance. This would require collaborative working with the client where the client's representative oversees the process to ensure consistent outcomes. We can provide technical account managers and service support managers at the client's request. We can integrate with clients' centralised ITIL support processes with defined service level agreements and integrated toolset.

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • Certificate in the Ethical Build of AI
  • Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional
  • ISO 42001
  • ISO 9001

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Tackling economic inequality

  As a SME, we aim to reduce economic inequality through several approaches. We will promote equal opportunities in hiring based on the merit of applicants' demonstrated ability to do the job; encourage diversity by actively promoting vacancies on platforms that are open to everyone; ensure that different perspectives are represented at every level of our organisation and staff feel valued and included. We currently provide mentoring and training to young people in the local community and will expand into apprenticeship programs and offer work placements to college and university students. This will increase the opportunities for hands-on training and mentorship to young people from diverse backgrounds who may not necessarily have these same opportunities at bigger firms. We believe that we can make a difference by reaching young adults and those returning to work after time out by our positioning and links to communities that are underserved by bigger firms

  Equal opportunity

  As a small organisation, we are well aware of the impact of our recruitment practices on the local community. We have mandatory training on Saracen Consultancy Equality, Anti-Discrimination and Diversity policies and code of conduct. ; We are committed to expanding opportunities to career returnees and groups that are historically underrepresented in the workplace. We do this by valuing, encouraging and rewarding behaviours that benefit the individual, our clients and our business. ; We recruit and reward staff based on experience and their ability to contribute. We ensure our recruitment practices reflect our values of merit, inclusion and diversity without biases. ; We offer work experience placements and apprenticeships to young people to encourage an interest in IT and, positively impact communities.; We pay equal remuneration for equal work and do not support any form of discrimination in our workforce. We are fully committed to fairness and equity and have an inclusive policy that is race, gender and age blind. We use neutral job descriptions in job advertisements to prevent the exclusion or discrimination of applicants with protected characteristics.; We have a process to investigate situations that do not meet our equal opportunities, diversity and equality and anti-discrimination policies.; Employees are supported if they wish to join, advocate for, support or share their experiences of any of the inclusion networks and support groups.

  Wellbeing

  We understand our people, both staff and clients, are the key to the success of our organisation and work hard to promote the well-being of our workforce. We work hard to establish a work environment where everyone feels included and valued and promote this culture in our client engagements. We respect every individual and encourage an open mindset where any interaction is seen as an opportunity to learn and broaden experiences. We work to identify and remove biases anywhere it is encountered and have a zero tolerance for workplace bullying. Being a SME, we take employee wellbeing seriously and encourage our staff to take their paid time off and support time off for personal development and family commitments.

Pricing

• Price: £500 to £1,400 a user a day
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at lara.oladapo@saracenconsultancy.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.