Data services

Tender description

The contracting authority has entered into an agreement with Royal Mail Group Ltd under which Royal Mail will continue to grant a licence to public sector bodies in England and Wales for the use of their intellectual property contained in their postcode address file (PAF), multiple residence (MR), and Not Yet Built (NYB) datasets. The terms of this licence cover the public sectors use of the Royal Mail’s intellectual property in products and solutions provided by Royal Mail solution providers and as such does not require public sector bodies to pay any royalties associated with the use of PAF, MR or NYB within the third party solutions or datasets. It is not a direct supply agreement and therefore does not make provision for Royal Mail to directly supply data to the public sector. The PAF Public Sector Licence (PSL) was first entered into between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2014 and the Royal Mail Group Ltd. The PSL is a collective purchase by government, on behalf of the public sector in England and Wales, of a licence for Royal Mail’s intellectual property within the postcode address file that forms a critical part of a wide range of addressing datasets and solutions that are used across the public sector. Each of use of PAF therefore attracted a usage-based royalty payment to be made by the public sector body to Royal Mail through the solution provider. The public sector’s use of addressing data that contains PAF IPR continues to grow and as such the PSL have been extended in 2017, 2018 and 2019 with the last extension due to end on the 31 March 2020. This procurement has therefore sought to extend the PSL for a further 3 years on the same terms as the original agreement to continue to enable the public sector’s use of address data. Following requests from their solution providers and the public sector to further reduce the administrative burden on the market Cabinet Office and Royal Mail has agreed to extend the PSL to also include Royal Mail’s Multiple Residence and Not Yet Built datasets within the licence. As with PAF these additional datasets are included on a use licence only basis and doesn’t cover any supply of the data whether directly from Royal Mail or from the wider solution provider market.