Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-11-06
Buyer: Defra
Country: UK
Contract type: Works
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 03100000
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: Support and maintenance services for SITI Agri which masters Defra basic payment scheme customers’ entitlements register used to determine payment quantities and values and the audit trail of processing checks made due to internal processing and external checks (inspections). SITI Agri calculates the claim values and passes the final figures across to DAX to make payment. SITI Agri holds all countryside stewardship agreements submitted and approved since 2015, along with the audit trail of processing checks and inspection findings. There are numerous compatibility and eligibility matrices maintained within SITI Agri used to confirm agreements are valid and that subsidies are paid after the correct controls are applied. It is SITI Agri that presents the screens to our customers to submit wildlife offer applications, capital claims and revenue claims online reducing the need for paper submissions
This system serves the rural community in England as the devolved assemblies take responsibility individually for their areas.
Defra are seeking a new support and maintenance contract (which will also cover system re-development activity) for a legacy system providing payment services to the rural community. This contract is a replacement for an existing contract with Abaco SPA. The SITI Agri system has been developed over a number of years to deliver basic payment scheme and countryside stewardship. In light of the UK leaving the European Union and the Government confirming that the rural community will continue to benefit from these payment services, the system needs to be kept operational and continue to have annualised development programmes to continue to simplify its use and to support critical requirements throughout the agricultural transition period in England. The agricultural transition period is planned to last for 7 years from 2021 and conclude in 2027. This includes further development of the system, changes to business rules, and simplification to aid transition arrangement.
This is an award of a support and maintenance contract in respect of the RPA’s SITI Agri system, which is the core IT infrastructure used to process UK Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidy payments to all UK farmers, of which there are over 100 000, and to whom payments exceed 2 000 000 000 GBP per annum. Timely and correct payments to farmers are mission critical for RPA as well as the farmers themselves. This award is justified on the grounds that Ábaco SPA is the only supplier who can provide the services and hence competition is absent for technical reasons. Those technical reasons are, by definition, complex and interrelated, but they follow from the following 2 facts.
1) Ábaco is the original and only developer of the IPR which forms the core of the SITI Agri system and therefore, in addition to owning certain core IPR, is the only person with the required knowledge and expertise in relation to the development, configuration and operation of the core SITI Agri system;
2) Ábaco has developed all the bespoke elements of the RPA version of SITI Agri during the last 5 years and therefore has substantial accrued know how as to how it has been designed, configured and built, as well as having a unique understanding of all the interfaces between the core SITI Agri product and the RPA version of it, plus all the other interfaces to other systems which make up the whole RPA farm subsidy payment system. A brief non exhaustive summary of the main technical reasons is as follows:
A. Know how transfer: RPA believes that it would be near technically impossible for any other supplier to gain an adequate level of understanding of such a complex and partly proprietary system within a timeframe which is acceptable to both parties, and acceptable to RPA from a risk perspective, and that even then, an alternative supplier would need to retain Ábaco as a subcontractor for third line support;
B. Security concerns: RPA is unwilling to take any risks with respect to data security, and considers that any transition period to a replacement supplier, would, because of points 1 and 2 above, entail unacceptable levels of risk in relation to security of the whole of the RPA farm subsidy payment system;
C. Testing: appointing a new supplier to operate the RPA version of SITI Agri would require an additional level of testing with each new release, with cost consequences and operational risk to RPA. The above is a non exhaustive snapshot of the reasons why the RPA considers that it would be near technically impossible for another supplier to provide the services the subject of this contract to the requisite standard and that hence a direct award to Ábaco SPA is justified.


Winner: Abaco SPA