Provision of support services to TacSys Dismounted Data System (DDS)

The TacSys Service Executive (SE) within Defence Digital (DD), part of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), intends to place with Rowden Technologies a 7-month contract for the Provision of Support Services to the TacSys Dismounted Data System (DDS). It is considered that this contract can be placed using a Direct Award Procedure pursuant to Schedule 5, Paras 6 & 7, of the Procurement Act 2023 (PA23) due to technical reasons and the supply of repeat services. Following the competitive procedure through the Digital Outcomes and Specialists 5 (DOS 5) framework, the MOD awarded initial Design and Integration Partner (DIP) 2-year contract to Rowden Technologies in July 2021. The scope of the contract was to deliver a DSA system design, which would be used by the MOD to carry out an Assessment Phase competition and to supply the Dismounted Situational Awareness (DSA) system at scale. This design was delivered and has been extensively used and further developed by the MOD and will be used to deliver DDS requirement. As such a new short-term support contract is required prior to planned competition for a longer term contract. Rowden were responsible for the development and delivery of the DSA system design and are currently the only company who have the requisite technical knowhow, expertise and experience to carry out the activities required for the DDS. A change of supplier at this time would introduce disproportionate technical difficulties in both the operation and maintenance of the DDS system, resulting in a loss of capability. Due to the above reasons the requirement will continue as a single source requirement.