Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will (a) publish the statement of requirements for the contract reference C2264 awarded to Landmark Information Group on 5 October and published by his Department on 10 October 2022 and (b) explain the purpose of that contract.

a) The Statement of Requirements for Points of Interest Data for the National Situation Centre states the following requirement:

1. Points of interest data covering the whole of the UK including Northern Ireland.

2. In-depth tagging of types of location, allowing us to differentiate between types of premises in the event of a crisis.

3. Information to be quality assured quarterly to ensure accuracy and establish a level of confidence in the information provided.

4. Level of accuracy - the information provided to clearly communicate where premises are registered as dual purpose (commercial business parks, and buildings of multiple occupancy). Where multiple of the same business are located within close proximity.

5. Information provided to be in the form of CSV files with any aggregate results able to be shared across government departments at the discretion of the customer.

6. Information ingestion to be automatable as far as reasonably practicable, supplier support for this automation is essential to delivery to tight timescales of response, the level of support

7. Points of Interest data for a comprehensive list of locations is provided in a range of geolocational formats including file Geodatabase (.gdb), Shapefile (.shp) and simple text file (.csv).

8. Quarterly updates are provided as standard with the data provided as a secure web link.

9. Supplier to provide an attribute table for locations including information as identified by the WatchKeepers that provides suitable context information to inform a crisis response.

10. Information regularly updated against available sources, such as yellow pages, Companies House and other public sources to ensure information being provided is up to date and accurate.

11. Referencing to be compatible across Defra, MOD and BEIS systems - these departments are critical partners in the crisis response/information sharing network and using the same referencing information is required to limit system lag, and to ensure clarity across multiple partners. Being able to use the same location referencing layout as partners is an essential requirement.

12. Updates to location data, provided by the customer are to be only accessible to approved government partners.

The Statement of Requirements shall not be published on Security Grounds. This procurement activity relates to The National Situation Centre, which is exempt from publishing Commercially Sensitive documents under National Security Exemptions.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Sections 23 (Security Bodies) and 24 (National Security) apply. Under Public Contracts Regulations 2015, Section 15 (National Security) applies.

b) The National Situation Centre provides situational awareness to senior officials and ministers during civil contingency and national security crisis events. The purpose of this contract is to provide SitCen with detailed, accurate data on premises across the UK, allowing us to identify with confidence risks to individuals and businesses. Open source alternatives are not accurate enough for this purpose.