Department alerts tech suppliers to its plans to proceed with early planning and exploratory stages of the delivery of a system that will unite information from a range of sources
HM Treasury is proceeding with plans to implement a major new government data platform intended to drive ministers’ plans to “rewire the state”.
The finance department says that, a key part of delivering on the vision of the chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, will be enabling “more collaboration and transparency between departments and the centre of government, requiring a greater level of sharing and harmonising of key data sets – including finance, outcome and performance data”, according to a newly published commercial notice.
This vision is complemented by the ongoing delivery across Whitehall of the Shared Services for Government (SSfG), wherein five clusters of departments are each unifying on a unified back-office software infrastructure.
“The SSfG Strategy presents an opportunity to identify, extract, analyse and present departmental finance and performance data in near real-time. The intent is to build the necessary IT infrastructure to extract data from cluster systems,” added the notice, which informs suppliers of an opportunity to work with the Treasury on the early stages of the project.
This tech architecture will derive information “from a range of sources [and] the expected solution will require a wide range of integrator capability options, able to extract, transform and load data from current legacy and new IT Systems, along with centrally held MS Office-based datasets”.
The procurement document said that “security will be paramount” to the new cross-government data system, “as will ensuring good data governance and control is baked into the solution”.
“While there is currently not an explicit need for the use of artificial intelligence in this requirement, HMT is exploring and is open to the use of AI capabilities, enabling the solution to be scaled up efficiently, based on an ‘AI Data Ready’ solution being in place,” the notice said. “Long-term flexibility and agility will be vital, to allow for new data sets to be ingested as they come online, or to expand the scope of data collection to bodies currently not included for scope for the shared service programmes (e.g. local government entities or arm’s-length bodies.”
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It added: “Once obtained, the data will need to be translated, standardised and harmonised with other existing datasets. It will then need to be presented in a flexible and intuitive way to a wide range of users utilising wide ranging capable reporting suites. In addition, HMT will require support to deliver an effective business change process to upskill users and engage on the opportunities this new solution, approach and consolidated data sets presents.”
The Treasury indicated that, to support the development of the an initial business case for the project, later this year it “intends to undertake a small-scale pilot towards the end of 2025”.
“To inform the full business case there may be opportunities for vendors to engage in small scale, low-cost pilots to demonstrate capabilities and suitability for the programme as a whole,” the notice said.
Between now and the end of 2025, the Treasury wishes to hear from potential providers that are interested in supporting these exploratory and planning stages.
“We will engage with suppliers directly who express an interest in this requirement to discuss the services and products they offer. We are open to consider Pro Bono arrangements – subject to relevant approvals – to trial proof of concepts on available technology to better explore the current market of integration and reporting applications,” the notice said. “This will help HMT to inform its business case that is currently being developed. We welcome engagements and recommended approaches from both vendors and technical design partners who would come with a range or a preferred software and service solution.”
The document outlines that, following its planning and prototyping stages, the department ultimately expects to put in place a contract with one of more technology firms from summer 2026 until spring 2028.
