The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has awarded consultancy Deloitte a seven-month contract estimated as being worth £3.46 million to work on the design and implementation of the department’s data reference architecture (DRA).
The published version of the contract, a call-off from the Crown Commercial Service’s G-Cloud 12 framework arrangement, says that Deloitte staff will use DWP computer hardware, telephone lines, email accounts and software, as all services and products need to be developed and delivered on the department’s infrastructure. The work will be based at DWP’s sites in Blackpool, Newcastle and Caxton House in London, although the document notes that teams are working from home at present.
A table in the contract on what needs to be delivered includes a ‘Target Logical reference architecture design’, which includes data flow plans and a strategy for interfacing data with other providers and consumers; a roadmap for the DRA with one element covering five years; a governance and operations model; delivery management; and delivery of detailed patterns, including analysis of existing datasets and sources. It includes a requirement for sufficient detail to take forward the outcomes of this autumn’s government spending review.
Deloitte is required to provide regular ‘show and tell’ sessions, weekly engagement with DWP architecture teams and weekly verbal updates for the department’s chief data officer Paul Lodge and Katharine Purser, head of data strategy and enablement. The engagement is planned to run until the end of March 2022.
Image from istock, Gaihong Dong
