Scottish government aims to establish Digital and Technology Services framework

Estimated value for entire duration of the framework could be between £30m and £75m

The Scottish government is seeking to establish a national Digital and Technology Services (DATS) framework agreement for use by Scottish public sector and third sector bodies.

The DATS framework will provide the related bodies with "one-stop access to a commercial arrangement for the purchase of a suite of digital and technology services", a tender notice in the Official Journal of the European Union stated.

It is one of several IT services frameworks that are to be made available to public-sector bodies by the government. According to the notice, the framework will support a wide and extensive range of projects of differing sizes, levels of complexity, value and risk.

"The contractor will be required to develop, implement and manage digital and technology services which may include bespoke and standard commoditised solutions and the use of open standards," the Scottish government said in the tender.

It added that it was likely that no two requirements under the framework agreement would be the same in terms of scale or scope.

Projects may range from the delivery of service desks, transformational digital IT projects, service and system integration, product and network support to large scale fully-managed projects covering a range of IT services.

Some of the service delivery areas include: cyber security, IT project and programme management, digital services, service integration and management, IT consultancy and systems integration.

There is a maximum of 15 participants for the framework agreement, and the duration of the framework agreement is four years.

The estimated total value of purchases for the entire duration of the framework agreement is between £30m and £75m.