The one-day event brought together customers, partners and data professionals around the theme of connection: the ties between organisations and their customers, across technology stacks, and within the wider partner community. Speakers from the NHS Business Services Authority, techUK, financial services and the wine industry each made the same observation: inconsistent data does not just cause reporting problems, it disrupts AI systems, producing outputs that are harder to explain and decisions that are harder to trace.
As AI begins to operate with more autonomy, the problem becomes harder to contain. Organisations are grappling with fragmented data at the same time as they attempt to keep models aligned with their intended behaviours, and the two challenges are not independent. The summit's central argument was one of sequencing: governance tools applied after deployment cannot substitute for data quality established before it.
Stuart Harvey, chief executive of Datactics, put the industry's position plainly. "AI is advancing far quicker than most organisations' data foundations can support it," he said. "Too many people are focusing on how to control their AI systems once it's already up and running, but the real issue is making sure the data feeding those systems is strong enough to make them reliable in the first place."
Harvey also pointed to a structural shift in how data is now consumed. "Data is no longer just accessed, it's continuously interpreted and acted upon by autonomous agents and systems," he said. "Without a clear connection between data governance and model behaviours, organisations start to lose control over how these systems operate."
Connect '26 forms part of Datactics' wider programme to help organisations build data foundations suited to autonomous AI. The Belfast-headquartered company works with the NHS, Thomson Reuters and the Home Office, specialising in data quality, entity resolution and matching for heavily regulated industries.
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