Funding competition Fairness Innovation Challenge

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £400,000 for projects resulting in new solutions to address bias and discrimination in AI systems. This funding is from the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI).

This competition is now closed.

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Competition sections

Description

Innovate UK will work with the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI), part of the Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT), to invest up to £400,000 in innovation projects.

The aim of this competition is to drive the development of novel solutions to address bias and discrimination in artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Our objectives are to:

  • encourage the development of socio-technical approaches to fairness
  • test how strategies to address bias and discrimination in AI systems can comply with relevant regulation including the Equality Act 2010, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018
  • provide greater clarity about how different assurance techniques can be applied in practice

Your proposal must address bias and discrimination in one of the following use cases:

  • provided healthcare use case
  • open use case

Your proposed solution must adopt a socio-technical approach to fairness, seeking to address not only statistical but also human and structural biases associated with the AI system in question.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process.

This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

Funding type

Grant

Project size

Your project’s total costs can be up to £130,000.

Who can apply

Your project

Your project must:

  • have total project costs of up to £130,000
  • carry out its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • start by 1 May 2024
  • end by 31 March 2025

Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

You will be made ineligible if you exceed the Minimal Financial Assistance limit. You must submit a complete declaration as part of your application.

Lead organisation

To lead a project your organisation must be a UK registered:

  • business of any size
  • academic institution
  • research and technology organisation (RTO)
  • charity
  • not for profit
  • public sector organisation

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition. We recognise that developing socio-technical solutions to address bias and discrimination in AI systems requires a breadth of knowledge and skills that may require you to work with different organisations as subcontractors.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.

We expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

Number of applications

An eligible organisation can lead on any number of distinct projects.

Previous applications

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

We will not award you funding if you have:

Minimal Financial Assistance (and De minimis where applicable)

Grant funding in this competition is awarded as Minimal Financial assistance (MFA). This allows public bodies to award up to £315,000 to an enterprise in a 3-year rolling financial period.

In your application, you will be asked to declare previous funding received by you. This will form part of the financial checks ahead of Innovate UK making a formal grant offer.

To establish your eligibility, we need to check that our support added to the amount you have previously received does not exceed the limit of £315,000 in the ‘applicable period’.

The applicable period is made up of:

(a) the elapsed part of the current financial year, and

(b) the two financial years immediately preceding the current financial year.

You must include any funding which you have received during the applicable period under:

You do not need to include aid or subsidies which have been granted on a different basis, for example, an aid award granted under the General Block Exemption Regulation.

Further information about the Subsidy Control Act 2022 requirements can be found in the Subsidy Control Act 2022 (legislation.gov.uk).

EU Commission rules now only apply in limited circumstances. Please see our general guidance to check if these rules apply to your organisation.

Further information

If you are unsure about your obligations under the Subsidy Control Act 2022, you should take independent legal advice. We cannot advise on individual eligibility or your legal obligations.

Funding

We have allocated up to £400,000 to fund innovation projects in this competition.

Your total project costs will be 100% funded up to the £130,000 maximum. Your total project costs, detailed within your application, must not exceed this maximum and must match the funding sought.

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the Company accounts guidance.

If you are applying for an award funded under European Commission Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Your proposal

The aim of this competition is to drive the development of novel solutions to address bias and discrimination in artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Our objectives are to:

  • encourage the development of socio-technical approaches to fairness
  • test how strategies to address bias and discrimination in AI systems can comply with relevant regulation including the Equality Act 2010, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018
  • provide greater clarity about how different assurance techniques can be applied in practice

Assurance techniques, include the methods and processes used to verify and ensure that systems and solutions meet certain standards, including those related to fairness.

Despite increased interest in addressing bias and discrimination in AI systems, organisations continue to face numerous challenges, including:

  • a lack of clarity around best practice for the use of fairness metrics and toolkits
  • limitations associated with technical approaches
  • risks of breaching UK legislation

This competition aims to tackle these challenges in practice. You must propose a solution to address bias and discrimination in an AI system in one of the real world use cases:

  • provided healthcare use case
  • open use case

Your proposal must include:

  • a description of the process you would adopt to detect and address bias and discrimination in the selected use case, including potential technical and socio-technical interventions
  • an explanation of why you have selected this particular approach, for example, why you have chosen to use a particular fairness metric or socio-technical intervention
  • an explanation of how you will also ensure broader ethical or legal fairness within the UK context, for example compliance with data protection legislation and equalities law, beyond just looking at technical and mathematical fairness

Your proposed solution must also address at least two of the following stages in the process of addressing bias and discrimination in AI systems:

  • accessing demographic data (for bias detection)
  • bias detection
  • bias mitigation
  • ongoing monitoring and evaluation

Your proposed solution must adopt a socio-technical, rather than purely mathematical or statistical approach to achieving fairness.

A socio-technical approach considers the broader historical, social and cultural context in which an AI system is embedded and seeks to address both statistical and structural biases associated with the use of AI systems.

Possible socio-technical interventions include but are not limited to:

  • participatory forms of data collection, audit or mitigation
  • governance interventions addressing organisational biases
  • intersectional bias analysis
  • custom context-specific bias metrics
  • engagement with subject matter experts
  • investigating bias in human decision making processes surrounding the system

You can access information about socio-technical approaches to fairness, in this paper and page 10 of this guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

If successful, on completion of your funded project you will be required to attend a show case event to present evidence of your outcomes.

You will also be required to share the outputs and outcomes of your project, this will include, at a minimum:

  • a White Paper explaining the solution you developed, its impact, and lessons others can learn from your project
  • if a method or tool is developed as part of the challenge, the code or description must be made available and open source
  • if a proprietary method or tool is used as part of the challenge, a transparency record must be filled out and made publicly available for example, the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS) or a model cards

Portfolio approach

We want to fund a variety of projects across different use cases, types of interventions, markets, technologies, technology maturities and location.

We call this a portfolio approach.

Use cases

Your project must focus on one of the following use cases.

Healthcare use case:

This use case asks participants to submit fairness solutions to address bias and discrimination in the CogStack Foresight model developed by Kings Health Partners and Health Data Research UK, with the support of NHS AI Lab. This is a generative AI model for predicting patient outcomes based on Electronic Health Records.

CogStack is a platform that has been deployed in several NHS Hospitals. The platform includes tools for unstructured (text) health data centralisation, natural language processing for curation as well as generative AI for longitudinal data analytics, forecasting and generation.

This generative AI, Foresight, is a Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) model. Foresight can forecast next diagnostic codes and any other standardised medical codes including medications and symptoms, based on their source dataset. Foresight can also generate synthetic longitudinal health records that match the probability distributions of the source data, allowing pilots on synthetic data without direct access to private data.

As these AI models have been trained on real-world data, they contain biases of their historical datasets, including demographic biases, styles of historical practice and biased missingness from data capture.

Open use case

For this option, you can propose your own use case. This includes AI models, systems and solutions at different stages of prototyping or deployment that are believed to be at risk of bias and discrimination.

If you are proposing your own use case, you must provide additional information in your application about:

  • background or context: what are you using an AI enabled system for, what is the model, why is it being used, what problem does it solve
  • potential risks to fairness: what are the fairness challenges associated with this system for this specific use case or context, why is it difficult to make this system fairer
  • technical details: describe the data set, including the size of the data set and any variables, as well as the learning algorithms used to train the models

Your use case and proposed solutions will need to be published or shareable. This challenge is only open to use cases that are transparent about their models, tools and data, as well as the challenges and potential solutions to fairness.

Technical briefing document

You can access more information and guidance about the healthcare and open use case in the attached technical briefing document.

Projects we will not fund

We are not funding projects that:

  • do not adopt a socio-technical approach to fairness
  • do not address at least two of the stages in the process of addressing bias and discrimination in AI systems
  • do not evidence the potential for the proposed innovation to generate positive economic or societal impact

If you are proposing your own use cases, we will not accept projects that are not transparent and open about the models, data and risks to fairness that your use case presents.

We cannot fund projects that are:

  • not allowed under De minimis regulation restrictions
  • not eligible to receive Minimal Financial Assistance
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving an award to a baker on the condition that they export a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example if we give an award to a baker on the condition that they use 50% UK flour in their product
16 October 2023
Competition opens
19 October 2023
Launch Event
24 October 2023
Online briefing and networking event: register to attend
13 December 2023 11:00am
Competition closes
1 February 2024 9:01am
Applicants notified

Before you start

Text update 07/12/2023: We have updated the finance section to include the link to the Je-S form for Academic Instiitutions.

You must read the guidance on applying for a competition on the Innovation Funding Service before you start.

Before submitting, it is the lead applicant’s responsibility to make sure:

  • that all the information provided in the application is correct
  • your proposal meets the eligibility and scope criteria
  • all sections of the application are marked as complete

You can reopen your application once submitted, up until the competition deadline. You must resubmit the application before the competition deadline.

What we ask you

The application is split into three sections:

  1. Project details.
  2. Application questions.
  3. Finances.

Accessibility and inclusion

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes providing support, in the form of reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us.

You must contact us as early as possible in the application process. We recommend contacting us at least 15 working days before the competition closing date to ensure we can provide you with the most suitable support possible.

You can contact us by emailing support@iuk.ukri.org or calling 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

1. Project details

This section provides background for your application and is not scored.

Application team

Decide which people from your organisation will work with you on the project and invite those people to help complete the application.

Application details

Give your project’s title, start date and duration.

Project summary

Describe your project briefly and be clear about what makes it innovative. We use this section to assign experts to assess your application.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

Public description

Describe your project in detail, and in a way that you are happy to see published. Do not include any commercially sensitive information. If we award your project funding, we will publish this description. This could happen before you start your project.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

Scope

Describe how your project fits the scope of the competition. If your project is not in scope it will not be sent for assessment. We will tell you the reason why.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

2. Application questions

The assessors will score all your answers apart from questions 1, 2 and 3. You will receive feedback for each scored question. Find out more about how our assessors assess and how we select applications for funding.

You must answer all questions.

Do not include any website addresses (URLs) in your answers.

Question 1. Applicant location (not scored)

You must state the name and full registered address of your organisation and any subcontractors working on your project.

We are collecting this information to understand the geographical location of all applicants.

Your answer to this question can be up to 400 words long.

Question 2. Minimal Financial Assistance declaration (not scored)

You must download the declaration template. You must complete this, declaring any funding received under Minimal Financial Assistance (previously referred to as Special Drawing Rights) or De minimis awards, (from any source of public funding) in the applicable period.

You must complete all the fields on your form before uploading.

You must write “declaration attached” in the question text box.

You must upload the completed declaration as an appendix. It must be a PDF and the font must be legible at 100% zoom.

You must keep all documentation relating to Minimal Financial Assistance (previously referred to as Special Drawing Rights) and other De minimis awards for a period of 6 years and be prepared to release it to any public funding body which requests it.

Your answer to this question can be up to 2 words long.

Question 3. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (not scored)

How have you incorporated equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) into your project delivery and project outcomes?

Describe any challenges or opportunities relating to equality, diversity and inclusion arising from your project and the methods and approaches used to address them:

  • during project delivery
  • for governance
  • for project team and advisory boards
  • for stakeholder and end-user engagement
  • for design thinking

This question is not scored. Your answers to this question will not be included in the assessment and will not form part of the funding decision. We will use the information to:

  • identify opportunities to support businesses in developing EDI strategies
  • develop activities that support innovative businesses to fully understand the value of EDI, for example, networking and information sessions

Your answer to this question can be up to 400 words long.

Question 4. Need or challenge

What is the need for and market opportunity behind your innovation?

You must indicate whether your project is focusing on either the:

  • provided healthcare use case
  • open use case

Describe:

  • the main motivation for the project
  • the market opportunity behind your solution
  • whether you have identified any similar innovation and its current limitations, including those close to market or in development
  • any work you have already done to respond to this need, for example, if the project focuses on developing an existing capability or building a new one
  • the wider impacts, for example, regulatory, economic, social, environmental, cultural or political challenges which are influential in creating this market opportunity

If your chosen use case is the “open use case” option, you must submit the appendix for this question. If you chose the provided healthcare use case no appendix is required.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

The answer to this question will represent 12% of the overall proposal score.

If you are proposing an open use case, you must submit an appendix.

This must detail the:

  • background or context: what are you using an AI-enabled system for, what is the model and why is it being used or what problem does it solve
  • potential risks to fairness: what are the fairness challenges associated with this system for this specific use case or context, why is it difficult to make this system fairer
  • technical details: a description of the data set, including the size of the data set and any variables and a description of the learning algorithms used to train the models

It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 5. Approach and innovation

What approach will you take and where will the focus of the innovation be?

Explain how you will respond to the challenge identified in your selected use case, including:

  • what stage of the process of addressing bias and discrimination your solution will focus on within your chosen AI system, you must include at least two stages from, accessing demographic data (for bias detection), bias detection, bias mitigation, ongoing monitoring and evaluation
  • an explanation of how you will also ensure broader ethical or legal fairness within the UK context, for example, compliance with data protection legislation and equalities law, beyond just looking at technical or mathematical fairness

Explain your solution, the process you will undertake to address bias and discrimination in the AI system and the specific interventions including:

  • why you have chosen this approach and these interventions
  • how your proposed solution adopts a socio-technical approach to fairness
  • how you will improve on any similar innovations that you have identified, for example, whether your innovation will focus on applying existing technologies in new areas, the development of new technologies for existing areas, or a totally disruptive approach

Your answer can be up to 750 words long.

The answer to this question will represent 20% of the overall proposal score.

You can submit one appendix to support your answer. It can include diagrams and charts. It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 6. Team and resources

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Explain:

  • the roles, skills and experience of all members of the project team that are relevant to the approach you will be taking
  • the resources, equipment and facilities needed for the project and how you will access them
  • the details of any vital external parties, including subcontractors, who you will need to work with to successfully carry out the project
  • any roles you will need to recruit

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

The answer to this question will represent 12% of the overall proposal score.

You can submit one appendix with a short summary of the main people working on the project to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 4 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 7. Wider impacts

What wider impact might this project have?

Explain:

  • how you will disseminate the outputs of the project
  • how you expect to use the results generated from the project in your own further research activities

Describe, and where possible, measure:

  • any expected impact on government priorities
  • any expected environmental impacts, either positive or negative
  • any expected regional impacts of the project
  • any expected economic impacts of the project
  • any expected social impacts either positive or negative on, quality of life, social inclusion or exclusion, jobs, regulations, diversity

Your answer can be up to 600 words long.

The answer to this question will represent 20% of the overall proposal score.

Question 8. Project management

How will you manage the project effectively?

Explain:

  • the main work packages of the project, indicating the lead partner assigned to each and the total cost of each one
  • your approach to project management, identifying any major tools and mechanisms you will use to get a successful and innovative project outcome
  • the management reporting lines
  • your project plan in enough detail to identify any links or dependencies between work packages or milestones

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

The answer to this question will represent 12% of the overall proposal score.

You must submit a project plan or Gantt chart as an appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 9. Risks

What are the main risks for this project?

Describe:

  • the main risks and uncertainties of the project, including the technical, commercial, managerial and environmental risks
  • how you will mitigate these risks
  • any project inputs that are critical to completion, such as resources, expertise, data sets
  • any output likely to be subject to regulatory requirements, certification, ethical issues and so on, and how you will manage this

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

The answer to this question will represent 12% of the overall proposal score.

You must submit a risk register as an appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 A4 pages long and no larger than 10MB in size. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 10. Costs and value for money

How much will the project cost and how does it represent value for money for the team and the taxpayer?

In terms of the project goals, explain:

  • the total eligible project costs
  • any subcontractor costs and why they are critical to the project
  • how this project represents value for money for you and the taxpayer
  • what advantages public funding would offer your project, for example, appeal to investors, more partners, reduced risk or a faster route to market
  • what your project would look like without public funding

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

The answer to this question will represent 12% of the overall proposal score.

3. Finances

You must complete your own project costs, organisation details and funding details in the application. Academic institutions must complete and upload a Je-S form.

Your projects total costs and grant funding request must not exceed the maximum of £130,000.

For full details on what costs you can claim see our project costs guidance. You can also view our Application Finances video.

Background and further information

Fairness in the context of AI systems has received increasing attention within government, academic and practitioner communities in recent years.

A range of different fairness metrics and toolkits are now available on the market, with bias audits becoming an increasingly commonplace practice.

Despite increased interest in addressing bias and discrimination in AI systems, organisations continue to face numerous challenges in practice, including:

  • lacking access to the demographic data they need to identify and mitigate unfair bias and discrimination in their systems
  • determining what ‘fair’ outcomes look like for any given AI system, and how different metrics, assurance tools and techniques, and other interventions can be applied to achieve these in practice
  • ensuring that strategies to address bias and discrimination in AI systems comply with relevant regulatory frameworks, including the Equality Act 2010, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018

Data sharing

This competition is jointly operated by Innovate UK, and Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI).

Any relevant information submitted and produced during the application process concerning your application can be shared by one agency with the other, for its individual storage, processing and use.

This means that any information given to or generated by Innovate UK in respect of your application may be passed on to CDEI and vice versa. This would include, but is not restricted to:

  • the information stated on the application, including the personal details of all applicants
  • scoring and feedback on the application
  • information received during the management and administration of the grant, such as Monitoring Officer reports and Independent Accountant Reports

Innovate UK and CDEI are directly accountable to you for their holding and processing of your information, including any personal data and confidential information. Data is held in accordance with their own policies. Accordingly, Innovate UK, and CDEI will be data controllers for personal data submitted during the application. Innovate UK’s Privacy Policy is accessible here.

Innovate UK complies with the requirements of UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and is committed to upholding data protection legislation, and protecting your information in accordance with data protection principles. The Information Commissioner’s Office also has a useful guide for organisations, which outlines the data protection principles.

Find a project partner

If you want help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK KTN.

Support for SMEs from Innovate UK EDGE

If you receive an award, you will be contacted about working with an innovation and growth specialist at Innovate UK EDGE. This service forms part of our funded offer to you.

These specialists focus on growing innovative businesses and ensuring that projects contribute to their growth. Working one-to-one, they can help you to identify your best strategy and harness world-class resources to grow and achieve scale.

We encourage you to engage with EDGE, delivered by a knowledgeable and objective specialist near you.

Assessment

Your application will be reviewed by up to 5 independent assessors based on the content of your application and their skills or expertise relevant to your project. All of the scores awarded will count towards the total score used to make the funding decision unless you are notified otherwise.

You can find out more about our assessment process in the General Guidance.

Your submitted application will be assessed against these criteria.

Next steps

If you are successful with this application, you will be asked to set up your project.

You must follow the unique link embedded in your email notification. This takes you to your Innovation Funding Service (IFS) Set Up portal, the tool that Innovate UK uses to gather necessary information before we can allow your project to begin.

You will need to provide:

  • the name and contact details of your project manager and project finance lead
  • a redacted copy of your bank details
  • an exploitation plan

In order for us to process your claims, you must make sure you have a valid UK bank account. It is possible that it can take several weeks for a new account to be created. We would recommend starting this process as early as possible to avoid any delays to you project start date.

The bank account which grant is to be paid into must:

  • be a business account in the same name as the organisation listed in IFS
  • be from a UK bank regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA)
  • have a cheque and credit clearing facility

Online accounts are eligible as long as they meet the above criteria.

Innovate UK will accept most banking societies apart from:

  • Viva Wallet
  • Intesa Sanpaolo
  • Equals Money UK Limited

If you have any doubts that your bank account will not meet Innovate UK's funding criteria, you can use the sort code checker. If you input the sort code and find a tick next to the ‘BACS Direct Credit payments can be sent to this sort code’, this will give you an indication that the bank account you hold is acceptable.

Finance checks

We will carry out checks to make sure you are an established company with access to the funds necessary to complete the project.

You must check your IFS portal regularly and respond to any requests we have sent for additional information to avoid any delays.

Failure to complete project setup may result in your grant offer being withdrawn.

Your Grant offer letter (GOL)

Once you have successfully completed project setup, we will issue your GOL.

The GOL will be made available on your IFS portal. You will need to sign and upload this for us to approve. Once approved we will send you an email with permission to start your project on your confirmed start date.

You must not start your project before the date stated on your email and GOL. Any costs incurred before your agreed start date cannot be claimed as part of your grant.

If your GOL is approved on or before the fifteenth of the month it will be dated from the first of that month. If your GOL is approved after the fifteenth, it will be dated the first of the next month.

If your application is unsuccessful

If you are unsuccessful with your application this time, you can view feedback from the assessors. This will be available to you on your IFS portal following notification.

Your application may score well and receive positive feedback from the assessors but be unsuccessful. This can be because your average score has not reached the funding threshold for this competition, or your project has not been selected under the portfolio approach if applied to this competition.

Contact us

If you need more information about how to apply or you want to submit your application in Welsh, email support@iuk.ukri.org or call 0300 321 4357.
Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Need help with this service? Contact us