Procurement of Source code licence

CPV: Software package and information systems

Procedure method

Award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition

Legal basis

CELEX · 32014L0024 Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (Directive 2014/24/EU)

Procurement category

Goods

Notice status

Awarded without competition

Procurement threshold

Unspecified in notice

Regulatory regime

Standard

Commercial structure

Stand-alone contract (no framework)

Competition type

Direct award (no call for competition)

GPA / WTO covered

Yes (GPA)

Recurring procurement

Unspecified in notice

First published

16 Jul 2024, 15:25 BST

Last source update

16 Jul 2024, 15:25 BST

FTS notice number

2024/S 000-021872

Classification (CPV)

Software package and information systems

Delivery area

UK

Official registry OCID

ocds-h6vhtk-047dc9 Find a Tender

Why no open competition

The procurement falls outside the scope of application of the directive

Published justification

DfE believes that competition is absent for technical reasons and/or as a result in the exclusive rights held in the Source Code by RM. DfE believes that no reasonable alternatives to, or substitutes for, the Source Code exist, for the following reasons.

(i) It is not technically possible for there to be an alternative or substitute to the Source Code, or to the overarching service provided by RM. The Source Code represents a very small, specialised and bespoke element of the overarching RM service. For example, the Source Code relates to:

o the matching of learners from educational attainment data. More specifically it helps identify false and positive learner matches, but within a very specific range of data and values.

o the performance measures data for 16-18 year old learners. The Source Code represents the end-to-end process for the application of the rules and how the performance measures should be calculated. These are DfE policy rules that are extremely unlikely to exist in any other system.

(iv) The NPDAAT service to which the Source Code relates is aligned with the England’s education system, which is unique to England. Therefore, the ability to replicate the Source Code is unlikely to exist elsewhere.

(v) For the 16-18 age group, there are around 1,700 ‘indicators’ that are driven by DfE policies and rules. The total extent of code for these indicators is estimated to range from 85,000 to 170,000 lines of code.

(vi) For the over/under matching code there are 15 datasets, 15-20 scenarios per dataset, 50-100 lines of code per dataset so 11,000 – 30,000 lines of code in total.

(vii) Whilst the Source Code represents a small component of the wider NPDAAT service, it is bespoke to DfE policies and rules, and is a highly nuanced technical subset of the overall NPDAAT system.

(viii) The Source Code (specifically) is proven to work at scale in a production environment, and has done so reliably for the past fifteen years.

(ix) The code has been refined to deal with anomalies that have occurred while processing live data over that fifteen-year period. No other code set that might be similar can possibly have the same level of testing and reliability achieved during this period.

(x) The Department produces a range of measures to assess pupil and school performance for students aged 16-18. This data is shared with schools and colleges in October each year to inform their own target setting and ahead of wider publication and use by the Department and Ofsted. It is critical that the performance measures data is produced by the end of September to meet this established timetable and shared with schools/colleges ahead of the school holidays at the end of October. Therefore, there is insufficient time to conduct production testing to prove that any previously unknown code might be reliable

• RM EducationAwarded supplier Oxford, UK

No document links were published on the notice.