The Trade Remedies Authority has launched an imports dashboard. It already behaves like an official display that expects every tin, crate and suspiciously confident spreadsheet to introduce itself before entering the country.
The interactive tool uses official HMRC overseas trade statistics. It shows trends in UK imports of goods affected by anti dumping and countervailing measures. The TRA says the imports dashboard will make trade data clearer. That is a noble ambition. It is also how a screen acquires the confidence of a junior minister with a colour palette.
When the imports dashboard wants a profile
The imports dashboard offers a visual way to track patterns over time. Goods can now watch themselves move through history. They may wonder why nobody asked how they feel about becoming a line that rises politely towards the top of a chart.
In the fictional Department of Visible Merchandise, the dashboard has become so welcoming that goods have started requesting profiles of their own. A carton of unnamed components has submitted a headshot, a career summary and three examples of resilience under pressure. It now waits for approval from a drop down menu.
“We want accurate representation,” laughed Priya Ledger, a fictional senior coordinator for Product Recognition. “The system knows we are goods affected by measures. It has not asked whether we are available for monitoring, investigation or a quiet afternoon in a warehouse.”
Data gets a stakeholder category
The TRA says the tool supports ongoing monitoring and investigations. It gives businesses, policymakers and other stakeholders accessible insights into trade remedies. That purpose is clear. The comic extension is that accessibility has reached the point where a pallet can discover its trend line and request a meeting about its personal brand.
Malcolm Sortwell, another fictional official, laughed while demonstrating the dashboard to a group of equally amused boxes. “The data does not make decisions,” he said. “It places every object in a clean visual environment and waits for the objects to become nervous.”
By Friday, the first crate had received a message. Its application was incomplete because it had failed to describe its long term objectives. The crate replied that it hoped to be opened. The dashboard marked this as an encouraging trend. Then it created a stakeholder category and invited the crate to a workshop about becoming more measurable.
The goods once feared being overlooked. Now they fear being displayed incorrectly. Somewhere, a tin is practising its answer to the question of where it sees itself in five years. Meanwhile, the dashboard prepares to tell it that its data profile is strong but not yet investable.
Source: Trade Remedies Authority.
