Published date: 13 December 2017

Last edited date: 13 December 2017

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Closing: 10 January 2018

Contract summary

Industry

  • Software package and information systems - 48000000

  • Data services - 72300000

  • Data-processing services - 72310000

    • Data conversion services - 72311100

    • Data collection and collation services - 72314000

    • Data analysis services - 72316000

    • Data supply services - 72319000

    • Data management services - 72322000

Location of contract

NP10 8XG

Value of contract

£0

Procurement reference

PU-18-0203

Published date

13 December 2017

Closing date

10 January 2018

Contract start date

29 January 2018

Contract end date

28 February 2019

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (below threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements below the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

Yes

Description

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes measures of consumer price inflation and associated price statistics. Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise and fall; it is estimated using consumer price indices.
Consumer price indices are important indicators of how the UK economy is performing. The indices are used in many ways by the government, businesses, and society in general. They can affect interest rates, tax allowances, wages, state benefits, pensions, maintenance, contracts and many other payments.
To give an accurate picture of price changes, our consumer price indices are compiled using a large and representative sample of over 700 goods and services, and their price movements are regularly measured in approximately 20,000 outlets within the UK.
There are 3 distinct collection methods used in reaching the total of over 180,000 prices collected.
The 3 methods are:
1. local collection - local price collectors visit 20,000 shops in around 150 locations to collect over 100,000 prices. This ensures that variations in price across the UK are captured. The price collectors visit the same shops each month to collect the prices of identical products to ensure they are collecting like for like. The shelf-price of an item is collected, and entered into a hand-held computer
2. central shops - for some larger chain stores, there is a central pricing policy which is used throughout their UK branches. These prices are collected centrally, and weighted according to the retailer's market share.
3. central collection - prices are collected centrally for goods and services where the price is the same for all UK residents or the regional variation can be collected centrally (for example via the internet, telephone or e-mail enquiries)

As part of the future strategy for this collection ONS are investigating the feasibility and impact of collecting prices automatically from websites via web scrapers and including them in the consumer price statistics. This data would replace parts of the local and central collections.
ONS have been carrying out research into the potential use of web scraped data in consumer price statistics since 2014. An update on this research was published in September 2017.[1]
The objective of this project is therefore to obtain web-scraped data from UK retailers that are in a structured format for ONS' estimation of their consumer price indices. ONS is only interested in provision of a service to provide data, and not in purchasing software or a licence to use an established software as a service (SAAS) solution.


If you would like to express and interest in this procurement, register on the ONS e-tendering portal https://in-tendhost.co.uk/ons and use the express an interest function against the project - Consumer prices web scraped data.

More information

Links

Additional text

If you would like to express and interest in this procurement, register on the ONS e-tendering portal https://in-tendhost.co.uk/ons and use the express an interest function against the project - Consumer prices web scraped data.

Is a Recurrent Procurement Type? : No
If you would like to express and interest in this procurement, register on the ONS e-tendering portal https://in-tendhost.co.uk/ons and use the express an interest function against the project - Consumer prices web scraped data.

Is a Recurrent Procurement Type? : No

About the buyer

Contact name

Kath Evans

Address

Cardiff Road
Newport
Gwent
NP10 8XG
United Kingdom

Telephone

01633 451671

Email

kath.evans@ons.gsi.gov.uk