Stormy Times For Meteorological Procurement

Procurement / By / May 31, 2022 / 2 minutes of reading

Stormy Times For Meteorological Procurement

May 31, 2022
Procurement

The UK government faces trial in the High Court over its award of an £854 million contract for a new Meteorological Office IT system, according to the Financial Times.

The court case has arisen from accusations by ATOS, the French multinational information technology service and consulting company who are suing the Meteorological Office and Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as they claim their unsuccessful tender was due to breaches of the Governments obligations under the Public Contract Regulations 2015. ATOS lost out on the tender to Microsoft.

Court documents show that the new system is expected to be in the top 25 supercomputers in the world, with the objective of more accurately predicting storms and predicting changes to the global climate. The new supercomputer will also provide detailed information for the energy sector to help it take action against potential blackouts and power surges.

ATOS and Microsoft were the only two companies to submit a final tender, however, the ATOS tender response was considered to be non-compliant, being scored at 0/5 in each of three categories on the basis that the proposed development supercomputer system was not architecturally equivalent to the main supercomputer system.

However, ATOS challenges these scores, claiming there were errors in the evaluation of its tender response and in the conclusion that the proposed development supercomputer was not architecturally equivalent to the main supercomputer. ATOS further claims that the requirement of architectural equivalence was contrary to the obligation under the regulations for the procurement to be conducted with transparency and consistency. The company alleges the decision to award was made on the basis of undisclosed requirements or the requirement of architectural equivalence was interpreted in a way that would not be transparent to the reasonably well-informed and normally diligent tenderer.

The BEIS denies liability, saying that the requirement of architectural equivalence was interpreted correctly and that the ATOS tender was scored correctly and the proposed development supercomputer did lack the required architectural equivalence to the main supercomputer. Therefore the conclusion that the tender was non-compliant did not involve either error or any other breach of regulations.

Get in touch with us to talk about our government procurement data and our data API.

As you read this article, you may like Public Procurement Has A Big Problem

March 21, 2023

AUKUS Defence Procurement Deal

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the US President Joe Biden, and the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in San Diego this...
Read more...
March 14, 2023

Australian Government Responds to COVID-19 Procurement Review

Many governments around the world have faced pressure regarding their procurement of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, so it is encouraging to see...
Read more...
March 8, 2023

EU Joint Ammunition Procurement

EU ministers will meet today in Stockholm to decide whether to  jointly procure  ammunition to aid Ukraine and replenish domestic stockpiles. EU...
Read more...
March 7, 2023

Denial Of Service By Wall Of Text

Clarkesworld Magazine is a publisher of science fiction short stories. They accept and pay for submissions from anyone. As of last week,...
Read more...
March 1, 2023

Canadian Government Announces Rail Procurement Process

This week, the Canadian Government announced a major step in the procurement process for their High Frequency Rail project: the launch of...
Read more...
February 28, 2023

Deduplication Routines

Deduplication is a deceptively complex problem to handle at scale. There’s a simple, ugly and brutal way to do it, where you...
Read more...
February 23, 2023

Policy Proposal: Analysts In Place

Data is critical to the functioning of government. Policies and services live or die on the quality of data. Successes and failures...
Read more...
February 23, 2023

Hallucination As A Service

I asked Chat-GPT to find me some academic papers that highlight the usefulness of combining two different machine learning techniques. I hoped...
Read more...
February 20, 2023

Future Trends in Government Procurement

Over the years, government procurement has undergone significant changes, with new trends emerging that are reshaping the way governments buy goods and...
Read more...
February 15, 2023

Making Your Own Export Platform?

If you are building your own export platform, sourcing, organising and analysing your data has its challenges. Here are some of the...
Read more...
February 14, 2023

Tackling Modern Slavery in Supply Chains – Guidance

On 26 March 2020, the UK became the first country to publish a Government Modern Slavery Statement, setting out the steps government...
Read more...
February 8, 2023

Securing The Competitive Edge.

Are you an exporter looking for leads for your exporters? Do you want to help your in-country teams build more partnerships within...
Read more...
February 7, 2023

The Benefits of Data Tech 101

Government procurement, the process by which government entities purchase goods, services and works from private businesses, is being revolutionised by the integration...
Read more...
February 1, 2023

EU Awards New Gas Aggregation Contract

In December 2022, EU energy ministers agreed to create a platform for the collective demand aggregation and joint procurement of gas, with...
Read more...
January 25, 2023

Does Procurement Need Blockchain?

Blockchain is fundamentally a database, but rather than a database where one item is allowed to replace another, each change to the...
Read more...

Newsletter

Compelling research, insights and data directly into your inbox.

Recent media stories

Search

Recent articles