"INTEL-FS is already in its existing version providing NATO Commands with comprehensive and relevant intelligence in a timely and responsive manner. The next version will include significant improvements that will support the NATO intelligence function," said Trond Skaar, Principal Scientist in the NCI Agency's Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Service Line.
INTEL-FS Spiral 2 will improve the Spiral 1 provided capabilities with the additions of collection management and signals intelligence, enhanced interoperability with other NATO functional services and with national systems, and an initial functionality that supports ballistic missile defence.
The NCI Agency will award two contracts, one for the "front-end" user applications, and another for the "back-end" intelligence information platform that will be managing the data and integrating with external systems and services.
Bidders for the "front-end" user applications contract will need to have strong User Experience (UX) skills and extensive experience in developing web applications in the Angular framework, and in data and graph visualizations.
Bidders for the "back-end" intelligence information platform will need to have strong skills and experience in developing high performance and scalable back-end information services, where these services include highly efficient REST OData interfaces, graph query interfaces and faceted search queries.
The NCI Agency intends to manage these contracts using elements of the agile methodology, in place of the traditional waterfall approach to testing and acceptance.
Bidders are free to bid on either one, or on both contracts. The evaluations will be conducted separately, so a bidder who submits a bid for both contracts may be selected for only one of them.
The initial estimation of the combined value of the front-end and the back-end is 15,800,000 EUR. This cost estimation will be updated prior to release of the IFB.
The Agency plans to award a contract in the first quarter of 2021.
Download the Notification of Intent to Invite Bids here.
Questions on the project can be directed to the point of contact for the IFB: Dan Gaertner at daniel.gaertner@ncia.nato.int.