IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Description

The Authority is seeking to establish a call-off framework agreement with one supplier to provide support to produce and maintain its existing and future product offerings. The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (The Authority) is a Trading Fund of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Its primary role is to meet national, defence and civil requirements for navigational and other hydrographic information in the most efficient manner. It delivers ‘value’ to the taxpayer in two key ways: i) Providing crucial operational support to the Royal Navy, and providing key services to other public sector bodies; and ii) Generating increased financial value from trading profitably in international commercial markets. After 200 years of market stability, the Authority finds itself in the middle of a market transformation most obviously characterised by the transition from paper to digital products. The Authority is seeking to establish a call-off framework agreement with one supplier to provide support to produce and maintain its existing and future product offerings. Interested parties are advised that this opportunity includes four (4) mandatory sample tasks, which must be completed as they form a large part of the evaluation and award process. These will help evaluate the capability of the interested party to perform the work, but will also be priced tasks under the contract on award. Other work, as yet undefined, that the Authority may require relating to the production and maintenance of its' products and services may be trialled and pricing agreed during the course of the contract. Interested parties are advised that, due to the confidential nature of some information that will need to be disclosed by the UKHO during this award procedure and, later, to the successful tenderer, all economic operators invited to participate in the award procedure will be required to enter into confidentiality agreements with the Secretary of State prior to such disclosure. For the same reason, direct competitors of the UKHO and any economic operators affiliated to such direct competitors will be excluded from this award procedure. The UKHO reserves the right to determine, in its sole discretion, whether an economic operator falls into this excluded category of economic operators. Data which may need processing includes, but is not limited to: source material from foreign government charts, notices to mariners, bathymetric surveys, mapping, imagery, textual documents, magnetic and tidal models, geodetic and tidal data and it may include ingest or processing into the Authority's Source Data Receipt and Assessment (SDRA) and Hydrographic Database (HDB) systems. Possible requirements include, but are not limited to the following: maintenance of data and metadata in existing forms and formats; improvement, harmonisation and/or migration of data and metadata to different or future formats or platforms (such as metrication and change of projections); the storage, upkeep and extraction of data in ways that allow the best use of data in value added services to users/consumers of data. Currently the Authority's principal data storage and processing systems are SDRA and HDB systems, but the activities listed would apply to both these systems and any other of future systems. The Authority requires third party capability to assess and reuse incoming source data in compilation, verification & validation, production and enhancement of its existing and future products and services (including supporting processes). This will include a range of ongoing services and one-off tasks of varying size and covers all aspects of the current and future cartographic production process. Currently the Authority produces a range of products and publications including Notices to Mariners (NMs), paper nautical charts, electronic nautical charts (ENCs), Additional Military Layers (AML), Admiralty Vector Chart Service (AVCS), Sailing Directions, Admiralty List of Lights and Radio Signals, Port Approach Guides (PAGs); however the scope of this lot encompasses all of the above and any future products, services, layers or overlays. Capability is sought in the production and maintenance of the above and any future products and services the Authority may develop. The scope of this contract also includes advice and support services relating to any of the above. Suppliers will be expected to work with the Authority and any third party supplier the Authority may appoint during the course of the framework agreement.