Ireland - IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support - Met Éireann Public Web Services

Met Éireann provides 24/7/365 operational forecast and warning services to the public. These services are provided digitally through a web portal (met.ie) and native mobile apps for Android and iOS operating systems. There is also a web portal providing access to observations from private weather stations (wow.met.ie). Met Éireann will be looking to procure hosting, maintenance and support and development services for these applications.. We are looking to work with organisations who can: 1) Configure and maintain a hosting solution to meet our challenging technical needs. The system will be expected to provide high availability and georesilience across multiple regions with contingency and disaster recovery applications to ensure continuity of service. Any infrastructure solution will be expected to meet the highest security standards assessed by penetration testing. 2) Develop the web portals and mobile applications based on the requirements provided. The web portal and mobile apps provide the following key services to the public and stakeholders: a. Communication and dissemination of weather and marine warnings, plus weather and environmental advisories. b. Communication of weather, marine and tailored forecasts eg farming commentary c. Presentation of radar and satellite imagery d. Presentation of analysis charts and data from Met Éireann’s observations network e. Presentation of data from private weather stations (wow.met.ie) f. Dissemination of climate services g. Interactive access to climate datasets h. Access to education and outreach materials, including the Met Éireann podcast i. Access to Met Éireann publications j. Access to information on Met Éireann’s scientific activities k. General information on Met Éireann including news articles and vacancies l. Contact helpdesk for various support channels, for example digital queries, climate enquiries m. Access to data, either through web page download or hosting links accessed from data.gov.ie The bulk of these pages have Irish language equivalents in line with Met Éireann’s obligations under the Irish Language Act. All web and mobile applications are subject to accessibility standards, which are routinely tested using an automated scan provisioned by the National Disability Authority (NDA). The anticipated development projects over the contract term are likely to include some or all of the following, but this list is not exhaustive: • Modernisation of mobile application code • Improvements to Content Management System (CMS) capability to enhance usability for Met Éireann staff. • Set up an archive to reduce operational load • Extension of Product Services (shared server) • Consolidation of Data Services - including extended use of APIs • Failover / DR solutions and processes for critical components • Enhancements to the 10 day location based forecast (Meteogram) • Ongoing enhancement of existing functionality as specified by Met Éireann stakeholders The application components will be expected to meet security and accessibility standards with support for Irish language content and responsive design. There should also be the ability to track analytics for each system component, with dashboards, notifications and alarms for Met Éireann operational staff. 3) Support and maintain the infrastructure and applications. Maintenance will be expected to be an ongoing activity for the infrastructure and applications, ensuring that components are kept up to date and overall system health is sustained. Support for the infrastructure and essential applications will be provided on a 24/7/365 basis to ensure continuity of critical services to the public and stakeholders. Our services are subject to intense scrutiny not just from the general public and stakeholders, but also through traditional and social media, hence short support response times will be set to minimise any loss of service time. This is necessary to ensure that Met Éireann’s operational teams have visibility that any issue is being investigated. The support team will not be working in isolation, there should be a close, collaborative relationship with Met Éireann’s operational IT, third party application support and forecast office teams. Further, well defined processes for management of critical scenarios would be established, with easily deployed failover/contingency solutions if the underlying issue will require significant time to resolve. Some of these failover and contingency solutions are already partially available, and further enhancement is included in the proposed development activities presented earlier. Lower priority issues should still be acknowledged outside of business hours, with resolution provided during normal business hours. All of the applications mentioned above are fully public and freely accessible and so potential tenderers are encouraged to review the functionality while assessing a response.