Call for tenders: Information Environment Assessment Analytics Engine Prototype
Contractor: NATO HQ, Brussels
Deadline: 11/5
The purpose of this Request for Proposal is to award a single contract for the development and provision of an Information Environment Assessment (IEA) Analytics Engine Prototype.
The services and products to be provided under the contract include:
* A discovery phase (deep questioning) between the Contractor and NATO staff;
* Development, support and continuous processing and training (using AI-driven techniques) of an IEA Analytics Engine Prototype to achieve the objectives stated in the Statement of Work;
* Consultancy services to identify, ingest and/or integrate data sources, and build and support the required analytics to meet NATO IEA analysts’ needs;
* Any required training of NATO staff;
* Relevant project documentation;
* Monthly progress reports;
* Quarterly lessons identified reports;
* An end-of-contract assessment report including lessons identified.
The period of performance under the Contract will be from the effective date of the Contract for the period of one (1) year, which may be extended through the exercise of two (2) one-year extension options, resulting in an extended Contract duration which in no case shall exceed a maximum of 3 years.
Background:
IEA is a capability that draws together an understanding of the information environment (IE), target audience analysis (TAA), and the assessment of information effects in order to support NATO senior leaders and communicators in their decision-making, as well as continuous improvement of NATO’s communications planning and tactics. The IE is comprised of the information itself, the individuals, organisations and systems that receive, process and convey the information, and the inter-relationships between the cognitive, virtual and physical space in which this occurs. NATO’s approach to IEA is explained in NATO IEA Process & Methodology for IEA Initial Operating Capability (IOC) and Developing a NATO IEA Capability.
NATO’s development of an IEA capability began in 2016, following direction from Allies to enhance early warnings and indications of hybrid warfare activities targeted at NATO and member nations of the Alliance, and to enable an effective communications assessment and evaluation function.
However, the current NATO IEA process is considered complex because it depends on an assortment of tools and data sources that are disconnected from each other and which can duplicate outputs. This produces a disparate combination of raw data and processed data that requires considerable manpower to turn into meaningful reporting. Consequently, NATO has decided to procure a Prototype that will help improve its IEA capability, support NATO’s senior leaders’ and communicators’ decision-making, and help improve NATO’s communications efforts with external audiences.
During the development, testing and evaluation phases of the Prototype project, NATO will be working simultaneously (in a separate but related stream) toward the preparation and procurement of a FOC IEA system, planned to be implemented after the Prototype project. The learnings from the Prototype project are intended to inform the development of NATO’s IEA FOC.
Leave a Reply