BLC0288 Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Social Media Screening Capabilities

Description

Further to the UK1: Pipeline Notice published on 23rd May by the Mayor's Office for Policing And Crime (ref: 2025/S 000-025700) for vetting social media monitoring, BlueLight Commercial will be taking this procurement forward with the intention to establish a national framework for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) social media screening capabilities for policing. Currently vetting open source checks are performed via manual methods, examples of user cases are; • New joiners, renewals, ad hoc vetting and national security clearance • Members of public to support with intelligence or firearms applications • Internal staff intelligence to support with professional standards investigations This does not always provide a consistent approach, guarantee a full audit trail of checks and is not efficient for in depth or wide scale checks. The intention is that the introduction of a software solution will support forces to automate the process as much as possible and ensure compliance with the Authorised Professional Practice (APP) guidelines issued by College of Policing. Consistency, performance and reliability over a large volume of checks are also key requirements. It is anticipated that policing nationally could generate in excess of 155,000 individual open source checks per annum with the Metropolitan Police currently generating 31,000 of these, which is likely to increase on an introduction of a solution and rolled out to other user departments. BlueLight Commercial are issuing this Preliminary Market Engagement Notice, and invite interested suppliers to attend a market engagement session on 1st September 2025, 10am. During the session we will be providing further details on the establishment of a framework for OSINT social media monitoring, specifically to support the challenges in policing. This session is intended as awareness, communication, and informing the market of the objectives of the framework, the tendering process and key timescales for framework go live. It is not a call for competition and as such potential providers will need to express interest in any future opportunity once a tender notice is published on Find a Tender Service (FTS). This preliminary market engagement notice is not a pre-qualification questionnaire and is not part of any pre-qualification or selection process and is intended as an awareness, communication, and information gathering exercise only to help inform a subsequent procurement exercise. BlueLight Commercial are utilising an electronic tendering portal (In-Tend) to manage this procurement and as such interested individuals and organisations will need to register on the portal to express their interest. Please note that it is free to register on In-Tend, which can be accessed via https://sell2.in-tend.co.uk/blpd/publictenders