Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2016-06-25
Buyer: Helse Sør-Øst RHF (South Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority)
Country: NO
Region: NORGE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 48810000: Information systems | 48822000: Computer servers | 72310000: Data processing services
Estimated value: 5625000 NOK

Technical requirements: The services that are produced by TSD system (Services for Sensitive Data) at UiO is used by publicly supported research projects where there must be data storage and manipulation that is particularly secure in order to fulfil the Health Register Act and the Personal Protection Act. HSØ will enter into a direct contract with UiO/Usit with a value of 1 500 000 NOK per annum, excluding VAT, for the procurement of the operation of a part of the TSD system's services.
About the project: The TSD system has a solid firewall around a system that internally ensures powerful separation between different research projects. The system runs on separate machines in a separate rack in USIT's machine room, where only operational personnel from USIT have access. 2-factor authentication is required to get into the system. In the system each project has its own VLAN and its own virtual file system, thus project participants in 1 project do not have access to or knowledge of other projects in the environment. Secure data acquisition is a quality of the TSD system by the use of web and smart-phone apps. TSD offers heavy calculations for the research project's data as well as user support with separate research experience. HSØ intends, by the end of the contract period, to build and operate a system itself that has the same functionality as UiO/Usit's (TSD). The operational contract will be signed for 3 years. HSØs procurement of a clear part of the TSD system's production and user support and not only 1 and 1 service in a price list, over a 3 year period supports the exceptions below. Traditional self-management internally in the government. The contracting authority believes that the exception for real self-management applies, as the procurement and sale between 2 governmental entities is, according to Norwegian law, to be seen as a procurement in real self-management as the government constitutionally, procedurally and formally is 1 unit. This has been tested in KOFA in the cases 2012/188 and 2005/251. It is also the basis of the Ministry of Trade and the Fisheries' (then FAD) interpretation statement dated 18.1.2005. There is the same basis in legal theory by respectively Thune with others (2013) and Dragsten (2013). The sole supplier exception. The legal basis for an exception from an announcement obligation is in the regulations § 14-4 letter c, in which the contracting authority can use a negotiated procedure (direct procurement) without announcing the competition, provided that ‘the service of technical or artistic reasons, or to protect a monopoly, can only be provided by a specific supplier’. There are no similar services in the current market — the security level is particularly unique in the service. In concrete the TSD system supports several independent research projects, including isolation of them (multi-tenant) — something that enables sensitive data. At the same time, there are options for heavy calculations for data that is stored in each of the research projects, in a way that maintains the integrity of the data. Researchers require a high level of choices and DaaS (Desktop as a Service) for both Linux and Windows provides such options. The actual data acquisition can be carried out securely with the use of a TSD tool that uses www or also smart-phones apps. The technical environment scales up with equal security with the number of project areas, amount of storage and CPU availability. The offered user support for the research projects has great subject specific competence with separate research experience.