* Note: Suppliers wishing to attend this event and receive the RFI pack must submit an expression of interest by signing and returning a Non-Disclosure Agreement to the Home Office.

On Wednesday 22 March (10:00-11:30) techUK is pleased to be hosting the Home Office for a market engagement event, the purpose of which is to inform potential suppliers of DSA’s intent to issue a Request for Information (RFI) coupled with Technical Spike Testing (early Alpha work) for a Matching (Entity Resolution) Engine.

Background

The Home Office’s Data Services & Analytics (DSA) is a centralised service within DDaT’s Enterprise Services and has been at the forefront of efforts to re-imagine the department’s relationship with data. It has led the way in professionalising the Home Office’s approach to the acquisition and analysis of data, promoting dynamic insight-led and evidence-based decision-making tools and techniques. The Home Office Data Matching (Entity Resolution) Engine is a key component of the DSA Data Integration Service and is fundamental to the DSA data platform delivering on DSA’s vision to be at the forefront in the use of data analytics in Government.

The Data Matching Engine deals with a significant amount of data from a variety of streaming and batch sources. It is required to process large volumes of data in near-real time across a variety of data domains (Persons, Objects, Locations & Events (POLE)).  The matching engine needs to meet functional requirements for both persisted and non-persisted Entity Resolution (“non-persisted”, meaning being able to resolve records from across multiple persisted sources and provide a search/wash/look-up capability to find possible matches without storing data in the engine).

A full set of requirements will be shared after the event.

Commercial Context

DSA currently uses IBM Big Match for the above purpose. However, the contract is coming up for renewal, and DSA is aware that market capability has increased in this space and, given financial pressures, wishes to ensure it fully explore its options.

Within the context of the high-level requirements, DSA’s aim is to:

  1. identify at least three (ideally five) products which support HO in its initial market analysis with Spike Testing; and
  2. use this process to help develop requirements and inform its future strategy.

Suppliers should be aware that other Home Office-related departments are aware of this exercise and we shall be sharing our findings with them.

IMPORTANT: In order to attend this event and receive the RFI pack, the Home Office requires suppliers to submit an expression of interest by signing and returning a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

Fully signed NDAs must be sent directly to [email protected] and received by 17:00 on Friday 17 March.

Upon receipt of the NDA, you will also be issued the RFI pack no earlier than 1 week before the Engagement event.

A copy of the NDA can be downloaded here:

You must also register via this page to attend the event.

Find out more about the Matching Entity Resolution Engine opportunity here.

If you have any questions about this event, please do get in touch with one of the team below.

Heather Cover-Kus

Heather Cover-Kus

Head of Central Government Programme, techUK

Ellie Huckle

Ellie Huckle

Programme Manager, Central Government, techUK

Annie Collings

Annie Collings

Programme Manager, Cyber Security and Central Government, techUK

Ella Gago-Brookes

Team Assistant, Markets, techUK