The Cabinet Office has taken a further step in the development of the Data Marketplace for government through a contract with Agrimetrics for work on the supporting software.
Under a £4.1 million deal to run until March of next year, the company will handle software development and systems integration to take the project beyond the private beta phase.
It will use the Agrimetrics Data Marketplace software-as-a-service solution and other commercial-off-the-shelf products.
This marks a significant stage in the development of the Data Marketplace, which is being built to help public sector organisations find data held by others more easily and to facilitate data sharing.
Defra supplier
Agrimetrics is currently known primarily as supplier of a data marketplace for the agrifood industry, and has a place on the Defra Data Services Platform for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
An attachment to the contract award notice describes the Data Marketplace as service to provide a front door to discover, access and share government data in a legal, ethical and trusted way.
It adds that five government departments have signed up as private beta users to integrate the service with their own processes.
Exploratory work is also underway understand the requirements of industry for access to public sector data and the role the Data Marketplace could play.
