PRE-TENDER MARKET ENGAGEMENT - Open Regulation Platform Beta

Description

Summary of the work This is an early market engagement for the Open Regulation Platform - a project around building an enriched, machine readable dataset of regulations as well as an open API to release this data to the public. Please contact us at openregulationplatform@beis.gov.uk for the full specification and proposal templates. Expected Contract Length We are looking for responses to this early engagement by 30th January 2022 Latest start date Tuesday 18 January 2022 Budget Range This is an early market engagement and thus has a budget of £0. We are looking for market guidance on the potential budget required for this procurement. Why the Work is Being Done The UK government is committed to delivering an innovative and world-leading regulatory system and the Better Regulation Executive aims to ensure that regulation is smarter, better targeted, and less costly to business. We want to make it simpler for businesses to know which regulations apply to them and how they can comply with any requirements. The Open Regulation Platform project aims to achieve this goal by processing the UK’s statute book and other regulatory texts into an enriched machine-readable dataset of business regulations that is publicly accessible through an API. We have recently completed an Alpha phase which focused on experimental development of prototypes to help test key concepts and assumptions. We are using this tender as a means of pre-market engagement for the next phase, Beta, before we put the actual tender out shortly. To receive further information, please email us on openregulationplatform@beis.gov.uk quoting “ORP Beta Q&A” as your email subject by 5pm on Thursday 20th January. There is no need to formally apply to this opportunity through the DOS webpage. All responses should be sent to our email address. Problem to Be Solved This pre-market engagement exercise will help us understand how we may engage with the Beta phase of the project. Through our Discovery and Alpha findings, we have identified four workstreams that we would like to explore in the Beta: Workstream 1: Data Infrastructure • Build data repository: • Identify data sources: • Create ingestion pipeline • Define ORPML regulatory guidance data standard Workstream 2: Data Enrichment • Enrichment Scope • Knowledge Graph • Natural Language Processing • Editorial interfaces • Research Environments Workstream 3: API design • Public and private API build • User Research • API Documentation Workstream 4: User Engagement and Community Development • Roll out • Regulators and Government • Developers • Businesses Who Are the Users Please refer to the Alpha summary slide pack that outlines the previous Suppliers’ findings. You can request this information from the ORP Platform email address, at openregulationplatform@beis.gov.uk. Early Market Engagement We are using this tender as a means of pre-market engagement to assess whether project expectations, timescales, resources and budget are achievable. The documents involved in this early market engagement are available upon request (email: openregulationplatform@beis.gov.uk) and include: - Discovery report - Early-market specification - Alpha Suppliers summary report (slide pack version) If a supplier does not submit a proposal responding to this pre-market engagement, this will not preclude them from submitting a final proposal when the invitation to tender (ITT) is published. Work Already Done Most recently we completed the alpha phase of the ORP which developed prototypes in the following areas: • Ingestion pipeline from legilsation.gov.uk and External Open API for users to ingest data the ORP platform. • Creation of a first draft of a markup language to include regulatory guidance (ORPML). • Citation graph • Design of a sandbox environment to perform enrichments in. • Editorial tool to allow data owners to validate data enrichments. Please contact us at openregulationplatform@beis.gov.uk for the summary reports for the Discovery and Alpha phases. Existing Team As part of this pre-market engagement exercise, we are interested in understanding what sort of existing team would be relevant. Please contact us at openregulationplatform@beis.gov.uk. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • N/A • N/A Nice to Haves • N/A • N/A Work Location This an early market engagement and will thus be done entirely remotely. Working Arrangments This is an early market engagement. Please contact us if you are interested in providing comments around this specification. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • N/A • N/A Cultural Fit Criteria • N/A • N/A Payment Approach Fixed price Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 75% Cultural fit 5% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Do you have a schema for ORPML available? (beyond Akoma Ntoso dtd)? Yes – as part of the Alpha phase, we created a first draft of ORPML, including the creation of an XML schema as well as proof of concept document conversion ORPML. However, this will not be released as part of the pre-market engagement exercise. 2. Which procurement framework will you be using? This remains under review – we may use DOS, or G-Cloud. 3. Did Alpha identify a technology stack which Beta should build on? Some components of the Alpha stack include: a PostgreSQL database, an external REST API implemented in Django and an editorial UI written in React. We do not necessarily expect Beta suppliers to directly build off the Alpha prototypes nor use the same technology stack. We are open to suggestions around technology for Beta phase. 4. For developers will you consider a subscription (commercial) model in the end product? This remains under review, and the BRE team welcome suggestions from suppliers. 5. Are you looking to use a search technology which is opensource? (and have you identified one?) We will continue working with technology that is open source and freely available – we welcome suggestions and technology choices from suppliers. 6. With the updating of regulations do you need time sequencing to allow user to move back to previous versions? There exists a facility on legislation.gov.uk providing access to revised legislation as it stood at specific points in time. More on this can be found at legislation.gov.uk/help. We are open to suggestions on how this could be done for regulatory guidance and other kinds of data. 7. Have you identified a graph-store? (source of database) We do not have any explicit preferences and are open to suggestions from suppliers. 8. If allowing general users to provide taxonomy updates - have you given consideration how to manage this i.e. conflicting updates/majority agreement on terms etc?) We currently do not expect users to directly feed into the taxonomy, although we would be open to suggestions about this. Conversations across government and with regulators continue around the taxonomies that should be being used. 9. Did you review BERT ML (legal)? We did not review it in Alpha phase but we are aware about its use for natural language processing of legal text as part of previous projects in the programme. We are interested in exploring the use of AI / NLP in Beta and welcome suggestions from suppliers. 10. 10. What is your database plan? Are you thinking NoSQL as you are storing XML or are you going to go to the extent of a relational data model? It likely strongly affects whether the API serves section of XML / JSON or whether it is DB of clauses with hierarchical structure over it. During the Alpha phase, we used a relational data model We remain open to suggestions from the supplier on the best approach. 11. Will this require a UK sovereign solution for storage and processing? We haven't formally discussed the requirements around this, although most of our data is already publicly available. We expect to do a data impact assessment during Beta to help answer this question. 12. Have you identified early-adopter regulators? We have identified some potential early adopter regulators, and will be approaching them in due course. 13. Have the users that were involved in Alpha agreed to participate in Beta or are you looking for a fresh set? Our expectation is that any supplier for this project will be able to recruit new participants beyond those identified in Alpha. 14. What's the criteria for participants? The criteria will depend on whether it is during the private/public phase of the Beta cycle. We remain open to suggestions from the supplier about this. 15. Who was the supplier for the Alpha Phase? The supplier was Analytic Engines, please see their Digital Marketplace profile: https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/supplier/706367