Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2021-07-02
Buyer: Health Service Executive (HSE)
Country: IE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 50324000 | 71356300 | 72250000: System and support services | 72253000: Helpdesk and support services | 72253200: Computer systems support services
Estimated value: 145320 EUR
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: Various contingency services required throughout cyber attack. Including training, support, incidence response and security assistance.
This included provisioning of email to 60 000 HSE staff. Assistance included a technical solution to gather data across the service in the form of an email registration service.
Assistance to re-establish the printing from the PAS application in Acute Hospitals (Naas, Columcille and NRH) and 26 Community Health Long Stay Hospitals (East & Midwest).
Need for relocation due to major cyber attack and the fitout of the room – kitout both with office furniture and ICT comms equipment.
Need for relocation due to major Cyber Attack and the fitout of the room – kitout both with office furniture and ICT comms equipment.
In the early hours of Friday 14 May 2021, the HSE became aware of a major cyber-attack which severely impacted ICT services across the HSE. Healthcare services across the country were severely disrupted with real and immediate consequences for the thousands of people who require health services every day. The HSE engaged with a number of vendors:
Ek.co: Request for assistance in server recovery was made by Hospitals.Ek.co were deployed to two sites.
MJ Flood Limited: Request to support rapid migration of all users of O365 email including a technical solution to gather data across the service.
DCB Group and Farrells: urgent requirement to move was escalated by the major cyber attack and the fitout of the room – both with office furniture and ICT comms equipment.
Open Sky: were tasked with the urgent verification and restoration of HSE servers and systems being brought back online in the aftermath of the ransomware attack and ensuring that systems were returned to an operational state and ready to resume normal usage.
There was an urgent requirement for training on new email ystem for sizeable cohort of HSE users to expedite return to proper functioning in daily roles for 15 k staff.
HSE used the negotiated procedure without prior publication in accordance with Article 32(2)(c) of Directive 2014/24/EU to award this contract. The HSE is satisfied the tests permitting use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication (Article 32(2)(c)) were met, as set out below.
The Authority was responding to the cyber-attack immediately because of public health risks presenting a genuine emergency.
The extent of the Conti Ransomware attack is thought to be the most serious cyber-attack on the country’s critical infrastructure. The level of impairment on hospitals, and other health institutions to provide treatment, could, certainly, not be foreseen and planned in advance, and thus constitute an unforeseeable event for the contracting authorities.
It cannot be doubted that the immediate needs of the hospitals and health institutions to have their ICT systems effectively restored had to be met with all possible speed. It was judged to be a situation of extreme urgency making compliance with general deadlines impossible. Procurement following the usual timescales under Directive 2014/24/EU, including accelerated options, was impossible in this case as these timescales would not meet the public health needs and would put lives at risk.


Winner: MJ Flood Technology
Award value: 145320
Number of bids: 1