BBC Issues Contract Notice for "Project Atlas"

BBC New Media has issued a contract notice seeking "one or more contractors to provide a software component, or components, that deliver interactive television production and assurance functionality." The software components, the notice continues, "constitute elements of a new infrastructure to support the BBC's interactive services across all current platforms. This programme of work will establish an enterprise architecture, based on a coherent top-down redesign, and adopting industry best practices." The BBC has dubbed this initiative to revamp its interactive TV infrastructure, "Project Atlas." The notice goes on to state that the BBC "may require ongoing maintenance and support of the system once built. It is anticipated," the notice continues, "that the initial contract period will be for 12 months renewable at 12 monthly intervals up to a maximum of 5 years in total. Alternatively the BBC may award a separate contract for a fixed period of system support and maintenance. The BBC may award more than one contract under this procurement to single suppliers, supplier consortiums or a combination of both."

The contract notice specifies six components:

1. "Aggregate--a software component that aggregates content items into service fragments. It takes as input content items, and collections of content items, that will be aggregated into fragments of iTV service descriptions."
2. "Service Build--a software component that builds fragments of a service description (including templates, sets of content ready for propagation into templates, navigational structures and interactive behaviour descriptions) into complete, and platform independent, iTV service descriptions."
3. "Marshal--a software component that provides marshalling for built iTV services. As an input, it takes built, coded, platform-specific interactive services in a format ready for playout with appropriate browsers."
4. "iTV Production Management--a tool or set of tools that allows, through a GUI interface, day-to-day management of iTV service production."
5. "Fragment Test--a software component that allows the desktop testing and viewing of iTV service content items, fragments and the dependency structure between fragments."
6. "Service View--a software component that allows the desktop testing and viewing of platform independent iTV service descriptions in a simulated rendering."

The text of the notice is available online at http://www.ojec.com, the Web site of the Official Journal of the European Union, a publication in which all contracts from public-sector organizations in the European Union must be published, if they are valued above a certain threshold. Interested parties are invited to email steve.pannell@bbc.co.uk, in order to receive a "Pre-Qualification Questionnaire," which must be completed and returned by February 13th.

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