Computer-related services

Tender description

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), a department of the Northern Ireland Executive, has a requirement for a new animal health, public health and animal welfare management system which will also be the primary repository in Northern Ireland for information on food animals and their keepers (the ‘New System’ to be known as the Northern Ireland Food Animal Information System (NIFAIS)), and for associated services, including but not limited to software development, support and maintenance. In NIFAIS, DARD requires a comprehensive and flexible IT system that will hold details of all food and farm animal identifications, registrations and movements plus their locations, test histories and animal welfare statuses. It will hold registration numbers of a wide range of other businesses involved in handling and processing the products of livestock farming. It will provide secure, controlled access through a range of interfaces to a diverse set of internal and external users to control animal diseases, validate subsidy and other scheme information and to generate management reports. It is envisaged that the system will be used by DARD personnel, farmers, markets, abattoirs, private veterinary practitioners, breed societies, ear tag suppliers, rendering premises and others in the agri-food sector to register births and deaths of animals, record movements, reject/accept animals for sale or slaughter, hold test/inspection reports, and extract information for marketing purposes. The successful supplier will be required to supply a model technical architecture and specifications for all hardware needed to deploy their solution, appropriately sized to perform within the target environment. The solution will be hosted on the Northern Ireland Civil Service infrastructure (IT Assist) and must be compatible with it and the DARD infrastructure.