The new unit to monitor company investment, mergers and acquisitions for national security is aiming to set up a digital system to support its work.
The Investment Security Unit (ISU), part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has been set up to manage new powers given to the Government by the National Security and Investment (NSI) Act, which received Royal Asset in April.
It has declared its need for a digital system to provide a public facing portal into which acquirers of businesses will have to submit notifications in line with the NSI Act, a case management system for its staff and the ability to work with information classified as SECRET.
It has published a market notice for support in developing a beta version of the system to be available by the end of December. A discovery phase has already taken place and the project is currently in alpha.
The notice specifies the problem to be solved as: “Businesses will be required to notify and submit information to BEIS regarding qualifying business acquisitions and transactions. The ISU will be required to initially receive and review these notifications, communicating case status changes back to notifiers, assessing and assuring transactions within a case management and workflow system.
“The system will enable caseworkers to manage cases within the statutory timelines. It will cross three domains - public facing notification forms, Official-Sensitive data within the case management element and SECRET data held in the Rosa service, specifically Rosa docs.”
Image from iStock, Aboudz
