Security software development services

Tender description

London Grid for Learning (LGfL) is a charitable trust founded in 2001 to provide and assist in the provision of information and communications technology to schools for the advancement of education and the benefit of children attending schools, and to assist local authorities in the advancement of health and community development through the provision of broadband, communications technology and integrated services. The Trust currently serves over 1 million children, 250 000 teachers and over 2 800 maintained schools nationally. LGfL delivers broadband connections and a range of ICT services to schools and educational establishments, local authorities, health and social care services and other public bodies. It operates as a central purchasing body and the aggregator of demand on behalf of those contracting authorities. LGfL is seeking to contract with a provider to supply and implement a Proactive Technical Online Monitoring Service (‘Service’) for the provision of ‘appropriate monitoring’ as specified in keeping children safe in education to on its network and for the benefit of it customers. LGfL is seeking proposals from suitably qualified suppliers to provide the service to its network of over 3 500 schools. The service will provide alerts to schools in line with LGfL's functionality requirements, alerting safeguarding teams of individual events as well as trends and enabling them to respond in a timely manner, take informed decision based on clear evidence, and keep children safe online. Alerts may relate to bullying or other peer-on-peer harassment or abuse, child sexual or criminal exploitation and related grooming, as well as markers of self-harm and suicide, radicalisation and a range of other key safeguarding areas. The service will be fully customisable to meet the individual needs of schools and their requirements for different levels of sensitivity; it will use machine learning to improve and avoid false positives based on their feedback, and be designed with the user experience in mind for a range of different roles within a school environment. Security and privacy must comply with current data protection legislation, including the requirement to provide privacy ‘by design and by default’ in compliance with well-documented GDPR obligations. It will be constantly under review and open to development to meet customers’ changing needs and the social, educational and legislative landscape. The service will enable the integration and inclusion of related areas such as filtering, a human screening element and service provision for non-educational public bodies as separate chargeable services. LGfL is seeking a long-term partner to provide the required capabilities and, as such, is looking for an initial contract term of 5 years with possible extensions of up to 2 x 2-year extensions (i.e. up to a potential total of 9 years in all). Bidders are to note that LGfL does not ‘manage’ the 3 500 schools that utilise its broadband service; the intention is that LGfL will make the Service available to the schools either at no cost or at a heavily subsidised cost to the schools as part of its broadband service. However, it will be the decision of individual schools/MATs to determine whether they wish to utilise the service or not. The winning bidder will have a proven track record in this area, will be able to provide clear evidence of safeguarding expertise, and a commitment to developing the system in line with the needs of LGfL. The authority reserves the right to require a parent company guarantee and/or a financial performance bond.