Procurement specialist Bola Soko brings a buyer’s perspective to AI: how is the data cleaned, and are its definitions clear? Her DigiGov conversation with HIKOMORE gets into the work behind the tools.
A buyer’s view of AI
Bola Soko came to DigiGov to explore what technology providers could offer public sector buyers. Speaking with HIKOMORE’s interviewer Lieske, she describes an interest in IT services, particularly AI and AI governance.
The conversation quickly moves from the available products to the practical questions behind them. How do you help a large organisation clean its data? It is a useful shift in emphasis: a promising tool still needs information that people can understand and work with.
Clear definitions before the tool
Lieske brings HIKOMORE founder Jtan Styla into the conversation to answer Bola’s data questions. Jtan describes an iterative approach involving data ingestion, policies and evaluations, with repeated checks before the results are ready to use.
Bola then asks about taxonomy: how do you make the definitions clear before putting data into an AI tool? Her question brings the discussion back to the categories and meanings that underpin a system.
Jtan’s response describes defining categories in a structured format and working through the data in layers. He uses food safety and allergens as an example. That is HIKOMORE’s implementation perspective; Bola’s contribution is the buyer’s challenge to explain how the underlying information becomes usable.
Hear more from Bola
Bola is the speaker for the free online CIPS webinar Agentic AI: The Challenge Procurement Can’t Ignore, listed for 8 October 2026 at 18:00 BST. Hosted by the CIPS Birmingham & Coventry branch, the session covers procurement’s role in AI governance, emerging risks and contract considerations when buying or building agentic tools.
The people in this story
Bola Soko
Procurement specialist and AI governance specialist
Bola brings a procurement perspective to AI adoption and governance. In this interview, she explores technology options for public sector buyers and asks how organisations prepare data and define its categories.
Jtan Styla
Founder · HIKOMORE
Jtan joins this interview to answer Bola’s questions about data preparation and taxonomy, describing HIKOMORE’s approach to policies, evaluations and structured categories.
Visit HIKOMORE’s website ↗
