2025-0145 Force Avail. & IDC Support Serv. (NS) NETHERLANDS- 29 MAY

Deadline Date:  29 May, 2025
 
Questions due date:  22 May, 2025
 
Requirement Title:   FORCE AVAILABILITY AND INVENTORY DATA CURATION SUPPORT SERVICE
 
Location:  The Hague, Netherlands
 
Cost Not to Exceed (Euro):  2025-2026 Q1: NTE 586,800 EUR, 2026 OPTION, 2027-2028 OPTIONS
 
Period of Performance:  BASE 2025-2026 30 June 2025
 
Required Security Clearance:  NATO SECRET
 
Introduction:
The NCIA, herein further also referred to as the “Purchaser”, requires a Data Curation Support Service to facilitate military force availability and inventory management. This Data Curation Support Service is required to:

• Establish a coherent solution package comprised of fit-for-purpose data curation methods, processes and tools along with a team of suitably trained and experienced data scientists, operational analysts
  and military Subject Matter Experts to enable efficient and structured data curation.
• Facilitate on-site data curation sprints of three (3) weeks duration in support of the NCIA Operational Analysis Centre at the secure, classified laboratory facilities of the NCIA The Hague, Netherlands, campus. The 3-week, on-site data curation sprints are required twice year: Sept and Dec 2025.

• The primary objective of the Force Availability and Inventory Data Curation Support Service is to organize, clean, and standardize NATO military force and availability data to enhance its quality and usability for military exploitation.
• The service will facilitate a campaign of recurring data curation sprints in support of NCIA Operational Analysis personnel. These data curation sprints will establish accessible, consistent and reliable forces and inventory datasets for exploitation by existing NATO Operations and Defence Planning software tools. These datasets will be exploited for a range of military-analytic purposes. Goal is to ensure that raw Force Availability and Inventory data reported by nations to NATO is
  cleaned and processed efficiently. This will maximise accuracy, completeness, and standardisation of format.
• The Data Curation Support Service should deliver innovative and tailored techniques and tools emerging from on-going Artificial Intelligence/Big Data revolution. Intent is to support NCIA
  Operational Analysis to work smarter, not harder, as a force multiplier to significantly enhance the quality of NATO military forces and availability data.
• The Data Curation Support Service solution will tailor established data curation techniques to clean, transform, and validate data declared to NATO by the nations. The Data Curation Support Service will select the appropriate tools and techniques for data curation. The proposed service solution should offer robust capabilities for cleaning and standardizing data, along with facilitating complex data transformations. Data validation is a critical process in data curation that ensures the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of data. It involves checking data against predefined rules, constraints, or
  formats to identify and rectify errors. The Data Curation Support Service must apply validation techniques such as data profiling, schema validation, and rule-based validation to ensure data quality,
  and deliver integration tools to streamline the process of combining data from multiple sources. By leveraging these tools and techniques, the Data Curation Support Service will significantly enhance the quality and usability of the NATO forces and inventories datasets, supporting better decision-making and analytical outcomes.

• The Contractor shall appoint a project manager (PM). They will be the technical point of contact throughout Data Curation Support Service establishment and Data Curation Sprint delivery.
• The PM shall attend all meetings.
• A deputy PM may be appointed. PM names and contact details are as stipulated in the Contract Special Provisions.

• The Data Curation Support Service shall include all the personnel resources needed to meet the contractual requirements as described in this SOW.
• All personnel must be subject matter experts in their domain of the required competencies; they shall have the adequate experience and certifications to perform the job. Specific skill and expertise requirements are listed in the ‘Facilitation’ section of the Functional Requirements below.
• Further specific administrative requirements for personnel contributing to the Data Curation service are listed in the Non-Functional Requirements below.

• Annex B, Nominal Forces & Inventory Data Curation Sprint Outline, provides an illustrativeoutline concept for a single data curation sprint. This is included to help potential biddersfully understand the scope and scale of the required service solution. It is not intended to be prescriptive of any specific solution that may be proposed by the bidders.

• Each Forces & Inventory data curation sprint will focus on a specified dataset that requires improvement. Specific focus of each sprint will be agreed with the NCIA sponsors at the start of the contract.
• Curated improvements include correcting errors in national reporting, filling in missing values, removing duplicates, and ensuring consistency across the dataset. The Forces & Inventory data
  curation sprints will utilize data curation tools and techniques emerging from Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Big Data practice to achieve these goals.