Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2017-09-26
Buyer: Natural Environment Research Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 72230000: Custom software development services | 72315000: Data network management and support services
Estimated value: 1995000 GBP

Technical requirements: The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) is the leading public funding agency for environmental science in the United Kingdom (UK) investing over 300 000 000 GBP in cutting-edge research, training and innovation. NERC funded scientists study the physical, chemical and biological processes on which our planet and life itself depends — from pole to pole, from the deep Earth and oceans to the atmosphere and space.
NERC is launching a strategic investment establishing an Environmental Data Service (Dodona EDS), with two primary objectives:
1. To use NERC's data assets and expertise to solve user-defined problems which are often multi-disciplinary, complex and may not map easily onto the expertise of a single data centre/research domain.
2. To realise new data applications and advances in science and innovation by combining NERC data with non-NERC data from other sources or disciplines.
The service will be carried out primarily at the contractor's premises, regular meetings at NERC Head Office in Swindon are anticipated.
NERC holds substantial amounts (10-15 PB) of environmental data, managed across its 5  data centres, which serves a research community who use this data to solve important social, technological and environmental problems. NERC want to build on the work of the data centres and further increase the impact and value of these data archives by making them more open and accessible to non-academic audiences, promoting data innovation and delivering economic and societal benefits.
NERC is launching a strategic investment establishing an Environmental Data Service (Dodona EDS), with 2 primary objectives:
1. To use NERC's data assets and expertise to solve user-defined problems which are often multi-disciplinary, complex and may not map easily onto the expertise of a single data centre/research domain.
2. To realise new data applications and  advances in science and innovation by combining NERC data with non-NERC data from other sources or disciplines.
The Dodona EDS will create an overarching framework to provide access to NERC data, to broker user engagement with the data, to identify challenges and to help in direction of funding towards defined innovation programmes, and will be comprised of three components representing a total NERC investment of about 10 000 000 GBP:
— A Dodona Operational Service (the subject of this Prior Information Notice), which will support & co-ordinate the delivery of the Dodona EDS including through a technical platform that will provide a preferred (but not exclusive) point of access into NERC data holdings.
1.A brokerage and facilitation service, which will bring together potential new users and appropriate data to enable data innovation. This will:
— Work with data-producers and data-users to understand the needs of data customers and determine what data should be made more usable and available
2.The development and management of the Dodona Portal, which may be built on already established and mature infrastructure, taking advantage of common standards and procedures in the NERC data centres and elsewhere, to allow users to discover datasets, metadata and supporting documentation in an effective and efficient way. The Portal should:
— Be an eye-catching flagship environmental data and innovation site, providing users with a single point of access into the environmental data and services across NERC and beyond.


Award value: 1995000