The Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued a contract notice for the construction of a database that will monitor progress towards human rights and equality.

The Equalities Measurement Framework (EMF) will be a database of carefully selected groups who represent an accurate cross section of society.

Data will be collected on areas including health, living standards, physical and legal security and right to self-expression.

The database will run on the Commission's own IT equipment and be accessible by Commission staff and the general public by late spring 2010.

The data will in large part be collected from existing information sources such as national surveys and public sector administrative information.

The firm that wins the contract to build the database will also be required to develop relationships with possible data providers and be able to input and analyse the data.

"The successful contractor must therefore be able to demonstrate strong relationships with data providers (to improve the quality and availability of data), or the ability to create them, and to show that it is able to conduct the necessary statistical analyses of the data and provide academic-standard presentation of the results," the contract notice said.

Because this role is so different from that of building the database, the Commission will accept bids from several contractors.

The EMF standards were developed for the Commission and the Government Equalities Office by a team based at the London School of Economics.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission must measure equality by law and report to parliament.