PS17172 NERC Dodona Operational Service

Tender description

*This is not a call for competition* NERC holds substantial amounts (10 to 15 PB) of environmental data, managed across its five 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 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 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 £10m: • A Dodona Operational Service (the subject of this Prior Information Notice), which will support and 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. • Technical data integration activities under the management and direction of the NERC Data Centres. • NERC's data innovation programmes, under the management and direction of NERC Head Office. The Requirement The Dodona Operational Service, to be led by a Director, will have three main functions: 1. A brokerage and facilitation service, which will bring together potential new users and appropriate data to enable data innovation. 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. 3. The Coordination of the Dodona EDS, including seeking opportunities to grow the funding of the Dodona EDS from a range of potential data users. The maximum total value of this contract is forecast to be £1,955,000 (exc. VAT) over an estimated 5 years. **UPDATE** A market engagement day was held on Friday 20 October 2017, 9am-1pm, at 1 Victoria Street, London. Please see attachments for more information regarding the market engagement day.