Home Office Biometric Strategic Central Bureau Platform preliminary market engagement event

Please note, the deadline for registrations for this event is Wednesday 13 May at 12.00. No exceptions will be made.

The Home Office is seeking to engage with potential suppliers ahead of two potential future procurements covering the support, development, transition and ongoing modernisation of the Strategic Central and Bureau Platform and associated services.

SCBP is a critical Home Office digital capability that underpins a range of biometric, identity, and law enforcement systems, supporting operational decision‑making across immigration, borders, policing and wider law enforcement activity. SCBP plays a key role in enabling the Home Office and its partners to protect the public, prevent and detect criminality, and safeguard vulnerable individuals, while ensuring appropriate controls over data privacy, security and access.

SCBP is a key component of the Home Office Biometrics landscape which provides a shared, resilient capability to host and support multiple biometric and identity‑related services, enabling the secure processing, storage and exchange of sensitive data. It supports both live operational services and analytical capabilities, operating at national scale and across multiple delivery partners, technologies and hosting arrangements.

The Home Office has recently transitioned much of the technology onto more modern and widely adopted technology stacks, potentially opening up more of the required support and development functions to suppliers with broader expertise and presenting greater opportunities for a wider range of suppliers to participate.

As a result, the Home Office is currently considering its future commercial and delivery approach for SCBP including potential disaggregation and is keen to engage early with the market to test assumptions, gather supplier insight, and inform the development of its procurement strategy, scope and delivery model.

Please click ‘Book now’ to express your interest in attending this market engagement event.

Please note that, as some of the information shared at the event will be formative and not available in the public domain, all attendees must also sign a Non‑Disclosure Agreement (NDA) by Wednesday 13 May, which is available via the Home Office E-procurement portal https://homeoffice.app.jaggaer.com (search for reference PQQ_793). Please note, admittance to the event will onl be allowed to those who have signed the NDA and have been confirmed by the Home Office to have done so.

The NDA must be completed and uploaded by the stated deadline. Attendance will not be permitted without a signed NDA, and no amendments to the NDA will be accepted.

Please note that, by registering to attend this session, you consent to your name, email address and organisation being shared with the Home Office for the sole purpose of administering and delivering this event.

Please note, there is a limit of two people per organisation.

Indicative scope

The potential supplier(s) may be required to provide elements relating to the SCBP platform and associated services, which may include (but are not limited to):

• Biometric experience

• Platform hosting and infrastructure services

• Application and platform engineering and support services

• Security, resilience and availability services

• Integration with dependent Home Office and third‑party systems

• Data management, environment management and tooling

• Transition, onboarding and knowledge transfer services

• Support for live service operations and continuous improvement

• Transformation services

The precise scope, delivery model and commercial structure are subject to further development and will be informed by this and subsequent market engagement activity.

Note given the potential disaggregation approach interested suppliers may not be required to provide all of the scope described above.

Purpose of the event

This event will provide potential suppliers with:

• Further background on the SCBP programme and objectives and potential procurements

• An overview of the emerging commercial and delivery considerations

• An opportunity to provide feedback, ask questions and share market insight to help shape the Home Office’s approach

Following the event, suppliers who express an interest may also be invited to participate in optional 1:1 sessions with the Home Office to discuss relevant capabilities, potential solutions and lessons learned from comparable programmes. These sessions will be time‑limited, non‑competitive, and will not form part of any formal procurement process.