Local government authority in the heart of the capital is to undertake a project in multiple stages, beginning with the creation of a new warehouse facility based on specialist systems
Westminster City Council is embarking on a £4m project to implement a major new data system to support its ambitions to use artificial intelligence and personalised services.
The central London authority has published a commercial notice outlining its intent “to develop its next generation, strategic data platform, to underpin its reporting, analytics, AI and personalisation goals”.
The document reveals that the platform’s “core data warehouse” will be constructed from technology from specialist vendor Snowflake, whose platform will “likely supported by a range of other products and services”.
The notice adds: “The programme of work will involve consolidation of a range of existing data platforms through migration activities, as well as identifying and processing new datasets to fuel new data products.”
Westminster intends to implement the new platform via a programme of work to be delivered in several phases, beginning with an initial stage “covering delivery items related to the data hub and data deliverable”.
“The initial phase will be to design the new data warehouse environment, then migrate and refactor the existing corporate data warehouse (CDW),” the notice says. “It will involve discovery and analysis around the data sets, privacy considerations [and other issues] of the data held in the existing Microsoft SQL Server environment. These datasets and their data pipelines will need to be migrated onto the Snowflake environment.”
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The procurement document goes on to outline the technical complexities involved with the programme.
“Downstream dependencies such as Power BI dashboards will need to be repointed and if necessary, redesigned,” it says. “Importantly, this will require extensive refactoring. For example, ingestion may move from SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to Azure Data Factory (ADF) and the overall architectural pattern will move from ETL to ELT. The migration is therefore not a ‘lift and shift’ migration. However, the scope will be limited to datasets currently processed into the existing CDW.”
Spending across all stages of delivery is estimated to add up to about £3.9m, up to £850,000 of which will be spent during the first phase.
“Further phases and additional expenditure will be confirmed as the programme progresses and are discretionary, subject to both budgetary approval and the requirements of the council, therefore not guaranteed to the supplier,” the notice adds.
Westminster is conducted the procurement process via the Spark Dynamic Purchasing System – a buying vehicle created by the Crown Commercial Service to help public sector buyers invest in emerging technologies, including the likes of AI, virtual reality, and wearables.
Providers interested in bidding for the contract need to register for a spot on the DPS before 5pm tomorrow. The council will then draw up its own shortlist on suppliers from those that feature on the agreement by 7 May and these firms will be provided with further documentation.
Based in the heart of London – and covering the area surrounding parliament and the city’s West End, including Oxford Street – Westminster is one of London’s 32 boroughs. A little over 200,000 people live in the borough.
