The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has signed a £23.6 million deal with space applications company Telespazio to manage its Data Services Platform.
They have agreed on a contract set to run for five years with three possible one-year extensions, under which the company will be responsible for improvements to the platform – which makes environmental data from across the Defra group available to a range of users – over the first 12 months.
An earlier procurement notice stated that the overall objectives of the DSP3 contract are have arrangements in place to maintain the services within six months, implement the improvements within 12, provide core functionality for current users including linked data services, domain registration and metadata management, and provide a managed service.
It also stated a need for future flexibility and the possible implementation of optional services or future requirements without the need for a major capital investment.
Telespazio,a joint venture between Thales and Leonardo, will take over the role from Landmark Information Group and has indicated that it will work with agri-tech centre Agrimetrics on the evolution of the data platform.
It said it will use the Agrimetrics Data Marketplace platform to increase interoperability with other platforms and services, emphasising the importance of making the data discoverable and accessible.
Expanding usability
Chris Howes, chief digital technology officer at Defra, said: “Partnering with Telespazio and Agrimetrics provides a fantastic opportunity for Defra to modernise its data sharing services platform, and expand the usability of our data across the government and the public data marketplace in line with government roadmap for digital and data, 2022 to 2025.”
The current DSP serves 650 Defra group partners, 300 contracting entities and about 13,000 individual users, and supported 1.8 billion API calls over 2019-21. Among its key datasets are those on flood risk, bathing water quality and fish populations.
