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Official procurement procedure

Procurement of Source code licence

Software package and information systems
UK
Published value
Not published
Submission deadline Not published
Lots published1
Procurement Executive Summary
AI & Search Synopsis
Generated from official OCDS record
Tenderline Synopsis: Department for Education: "Procurement of Source code licence". Published status: complete. Published value: Value not published. 1 published lot. Submission deadline not published. See the official notice for participation instructions.
Contracting AuthorityDepartment for EducationScope & CategoriesNot publishedSubmission Window
complete
No deadline published
Submission GatewayDirect notice routeLegal Basis & RegimeStandard procurementEstimated Value (exc. VAT)Not published
Bidder Intelligence · Authority Profile: Department for Education
Market Analytics
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Derived from OCDS awards & bid statistics
Published history for Department for Education. These figures describe retained records, not a forecast of bids or a measure of buyer bias.
Average Price Reduction
Not availableInsufficient comparable data
Requires at least 5 comparable procedures
Competition Density
49.6Bids / Report
11.6% of reports have one bid
Supplier ConcentrationNo estimate
Insufficient attributable awardsNo concentration estimate available
Payment Terms
Check noticePublished terms
Payment obligations depend on the applicable regime and contract. Consult the official documents.
Coverage: 368 active published awards; 352 bid reports (which may be per lot). Supplier values exclude multi-supplier awards, frameworks and DPS, and use GBP only. They are published award values, not payments. Price reduction compares single-lot, single-award, single-supplier GBP procedures with explicitly non-framework/non-DPS status; increases remain in the average. Unpublished data stays unknown. Awarded suppliers are winners, not all bidders.
Procedure terms
Contracting AuthorityDepartment for Education
Procedure methodNot published
Procurement categoryNot published
Statuscomplete
Framework / DPSNot published
CompetitionNot published
Above thresholdNot published
Legal basisNot published
Tender period startsNot published
Clarification deadlineNot published
Electronic submissionNot published
Submission languagesNot published
Published29 May 2024, 16:50 BST
Last source update29 May 2024, 16:50 BST
Recurring procurementNot published
ClassificationSoftware package and information systems
Delivery area
UK
OCIDocds-h6vhtk-046c3b
What is being bought
The Department for Education (DfE) wishes to take a licence of from RM Education plc (RM) of the Source Code (Portland code 16-18 and DCAM Under and Overmatch checks) to relating to the provision of the National Pupil Data Achievement and Attainment Tables (NPDAAT).
What changed
From the official release history
  1. Status changed to complete
    29 May 2024, 16:50 BST
  2. Official notice release published
    29 May 2024, 16:50 BST
  3. Buyer information updated
    29 May 2024, 16:50 BST
Lots and requirements (1)
Published by the contracting authority
  • Lot 1 · #1
    Individual lot title not published
    Status not published
    Published valueNot published
    The Department for Education (DfE) wishes to take a licence of from RM Education plc (RM) of the Source Code (Portland code 16-18 and DCAM Under and Overmatch checks) to relating to the provision of the National Pupil Data Achievement and Attainment Tables (NPDAAT). Taking the licence is time-critical, for reasons of compliance with reporting requirements. DfE wishes to rely on Regulation 32(2) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (as amended) as justification for taking a licence of the Source Code direct from RM. DfE believes that such direct purchase is justifiable on the basis that: • competition is absent for technical reasons (relying on Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii)); and/or • RM has exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights, in the Source Code, meaning that the Source Code cannot be replicated (relying on Regulation 32(2)(b)(iii). • DfE believes that no reasonable alternative or substitute to the Source Code exists, and that the absence of competition is not the result of any artificial narrowing down of the parameters of what should be a competitive procurement. The reasons for this belief are set out in this notice. • In 2020, RM was the only supplier to bid in the final stage of the procurement for the NPDAAT service. Since then, several contract modifications have taken place and, on each occasion, details of them were published. No other suppliers reacted to the published modification notices. • The service to which the Source Code relates is highly bespoke, and only RM has delivered it for the past fifteen years. As such, DfE considers that only RM, as incumbent supplier, can provide the existing technical solution required (namely that embodied in the Source Code). • The Source Code represents the business rules of DfE's policies (as encapsulated in source code and database objects) and that, as such, the Source Code is only relevant in the context of DfE's specific system and for its specific purpose • The intellectual property in the Source Code is vested in RM.
    Contract periodNot published
    EligibilityNot published
    Options / renewalNot published
Timeline
  1. Procedure published
    29 May 2024, 16:50 BST
  2. Award active
    Not published · Not published
  3. Contract active
    Signed 29 May 2024, 00:00 BST · £270,000
Commercial outcome and competition
Awards
RM Education
Not published · Not published · active
Contracts
Contract
£270,000 · signed 29 May 2024, 00:00 BST · active
Bid statisticsNo aggregate bid statistics published
Buyer and organisations in this procedure

Department for Education

Contracting authority GB-FTS-165
View buyer profile

  • Department for Education
    buyer

    Sanctuary Buildings, 20, Great Smith Street, London, UK, SW1P 3BT
    Commercial.DDAT@EDUCATION.GOV.UK

  • High Court
    reviewBody

    London

  • RM Education
    supplier

    Oxford, UK
Documents (0)
Official links; attachments are not copied
No data
No linked documents are published
Related procedures (0)
No data
No related procedures published
Planning and rationale
Planning budgetNot published
No-engagement rationaleNot published
Procedure rationaleDfE 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