The department has signed a duo of deals to support its Data Service Platform and deliver transformation for a system designed to save £500m a year in fraud and error
The Department for Work and Pensions has signed two contracts potentially worth a cumulative £7m to maintain and modernise a key platform designed to use big data to help tackle fraud and error.
Both deals come into effect tomorrow and respectively cover “service maintenance and change” and “DevOps as a service” provision in relation to the DWP’s Data Service Platform (DSP).
The platform is described by the department as “a critical service used within DWP for the management and exploitation of big data which realises approximately £0.5bn per year in fraud and error based on future benefit spend”.
The larger of the two contracts has been awarded to Preston-headquartered big data specialist R+ Analytics, which will help the DWP “support and maintain the applications and develop ongoing changes and modernisation transformation on the platform”, according to the text of the contract.
The supplier will be expected to “lead and support delivery activities across DSP and continuous improvement”. This will include “identifying setbacks and shortcomings”, and then supporting the “adoption, application, and oversight of architectural governance, ensuring that optimal approaches are used”.
The contract also covers the provision of “design and development for OPH (on-premises hosting), AWS and Azure integration with different tools like Cloudera, Informatica BDM, data science and QlikSense”.
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As well increasing deployments to Microsoft Azure environments, the deal will require R+ to support the development and implementation of a Role Based Access Control (RBAC) system across “all modules and services” of the platform. This will dictate which parts of the system individual users can access.
This will require the firm to “work closely with engineers and end users to understand requirements” and, ultimately, “design, develop and arrange handover of a supporting business process for ongoing maintenance and support of the RBAC model”.
The agreement will last for an initial term of one year, and can be extended for a further 12 months – which would take total spending to about £5.08m, once VAT is included.
The second contract commencing tomorrow will also run for a year, or potentially two, and could be worth up to £2m.
This engagement, which has been awarded to Cardiff-based digital transformation firm bedigital, covers the delivery of software-development support – primarily in relation to Cloudera and Azure technologies.
“A DevOps engineering service is required for delivery of business critical data services and ongoing changes,” the contract says.
This will involve “establishing continuous build environments to speed up software development, designing efficient practices, delivering comprehensive best practices, [and] managing and reviewing technical operations”, the document adds.
The supplier will also “interact with end users and convert business problems into system requirements”.
