2025-0052 Data Analysis Services for Innovation PoW (NS) - TUE 25 Mar

Deadline Date: Tuesday 25 March 2025

Requirement: Data Analysis Services for Innovation PoW

Location: Off-Site

Note: Please refer to your Subcontract Agreement, article 6.4.1.a, which states “Off-Site Discount: 5% (this discount is applicable to all requirements, and applies when the assigned personnel are permitted to work Off-Site, such as at- home)". Please be sure to price this discount in your overall price proposal when submitting bids against off-site RFQs

Period of Performance: 2025 BASE: 21 April 2025 to 31 December 2025, with the possibility to exercise following options:

• 2026 option: 01 January 2026 to 31 December 2026

• 2027 option: 01 January 2027 to 31 December 2027

• 2028 option: 01 January 2028 to 31 December 2028

Required Security Clearance: NATO SECRET

1 INTRODUCTION

NCIA, as the main ICT service provider in NATO, is the main technical entity providing subject matter expertise to support Allied Command Transformation (ACT) Science and Technology (S&T), NATO Digital Staff (NDS) Innovation Programmes of Work (PoW) and relevant exercises in 2025. NCIA Chief Technology Office (CTO) Innovating Team is looking for a Contractor who will provide day-to-day technical support to the PoW projects with the two NATO bodies.

2 OBJECTIVES

The Contractor will be responsible to provide technical expertise in the area of data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), coordinate activities with the various NCIA teams and perform advanced data analysis by using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. The Contractor will develop tailored tools to enable facilitate demonstration of the results, maintain dashboards and information management artefacts and provide regular reporting to NCIA on the activities.

Furthermore, the Contractor will provide on-site support to the events and workshops that will be organized within the scope of PoW projects.

3 SCOPE OF WORK

Under the direction / guidance of the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff, the Contractor will perform the following activities:

• Support NCI Agency in the NATO Programmes of Work with ACT and NDS in the area of Science & Technology and Innovation

• Gather and analyze vast amounts of data from diverse sources, including scientific publications, news articles, social media, and market reports

• Perform horizon scanning and trend-scouting activities in the area of emerging and disruptive technologies by detecting promising technologies as well as potential applications

• Design and implement data models, repositories, and ETL pipelines to capture and record signals from diverse sources as a structured dataset to enable ad-hoc analysis and reporting

• Develop clear, concise, and actionable reports to communicate your findings to stakeholders across the organization

• Develop dashboards to enable monitoring of the analysis results

• Utilize natural language processing (NLP) and other AI techniques to analyze vast amounts of data from diverse sources

The Contractor will be part of a team and will provide the service using an Agile and iterative approach during multiple sprints. Each sprint is planned for a duration of 1 week. The content and scope of each sprint will be agreed during the sprint-planning meeting.

4 DELIVERABLES AND PAYMENT MILESTONES

The following deliverables are expected from the service on this statement of work:

Deliverable: 20 sprints of data analysis, technical support, and software development (Number of sprints is estimated considering a starting date 21 April 2025. This will be adjusted depending on the actual start date.)

Payment Milestones: Upon completion of each fourth sprint and at the end of the work.

The Purchaser (NCIA) reserves the right to exercise a number of options of one or more sprints based on the same scrum deliverables, at a later time, depending on the project priorities and requirements, at the following cost: for base year (2025) at the same cost, for outer years (2026-2028) the Price Adjustment Formula will be applied in accordance with paragraph 6.5 of the Framework Contract Special Provisions.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex A). Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table.

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex A) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

2026, 2027 and 2028 OPTION: 01 January to 31 December of the respective year

Deliverable: Up to 48 sprints of data analysis, technical support, and software development

Cost Ceiling: Price will be determined by applying the price adjustment formula as outlined in CO‐115786‐ AAS+ Special Provisions article 6.5.

Payment Milestones: Upon completion of each fourth sprint and at the end of the work.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex A). Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table.

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex A) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

5 COORDINATION AND REPORTING

The Contractor shall participate in daily status update meetings, sprint planning, sprint retrospectives and other meetings, physically in the office, or in person via electronic means using Conference Call capabilities, according to project manager’s instructions.

For each sprint to be considered as complete and payable, the contractor must report the outcome of his/her work during the sprint, first verbally during the retrospective meeting and then in written within three (3) days after the sprint’s end date. The format of this report shall be a short email to the NCIA Point of Contact mentioning briefly the work held and the development achievements during the sprint.

Acceptance of each delivery completion will be documented in Annex A – Delivery Acceptance Sheet.

6 SCHEDULE

This task order will be active immediately after signing of the contract by both parties but not before required starting date of 21 April 2025.

If the 2026 option is exercised, the period of performance is 01st January 2026 to 31st December 2026.

If the 2027 option is exercised, the period of performance is 01st January 2027 to 31st December 2027.

If the 2028 option is exercised, the period of performance is 01st January 2028 to 31st December 2028.

7 CONSTRAINTS

All the deliverables provided under this statement of work will be based on NCI Agency templates or agreed with the project point of contact.

All code, scripts, documentation, etc. will be stored under configuration management and/or in the provided NCI Agency tools.

All the deliverables of this project will be considered NATO UNCLASSIFIED.

Part of the work may involve handling classified networks, therefore, a security clearance at the right level is expected for the contractor(s) undertaking this project, although the contractor may start working already while the clearance process is ongoing.

8 SECURITY

The security classification of the service will be up to NATO SECRET.

The Contractor is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance.

9 PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS

The Contractor will be required to provide the service off-site. Access to the NCI Agency NATO Software Factory platform will be provided in coordination with the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff.

This service must be accomplished by ONE contractor.

10 TRAVEL

The Contractor may be required to travel to NCI Agency, Brussels, Belgium and other sites within NATO for completing these tasks. Travel expenses will be reimbursed to the individual directly (outside this contract) in accordance with Article 5.5 of AAS Framework Contract and within the limits of the NCIA Travel Directive.

11 QUALIFICATIONS

[See Requirements]

Requirements

8 SECURITY

• The Contractor is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance.

11 QUALIFICATIONS

The support services under this SOW require Data Analyst Services with the following qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (computer science, data science, software engineering, machine learning, etc.) or equivalent experience.
• At least five years of experience in a mid-level data analytics role
• Strong understanding of AI and its potential applications in data analysis – particularly Natural language processing (NLP) techniques, language models and multilingual technologies.
• Strong programming, data modelling, and data visualization skills, including Python, SQL, PowerBI, R, TensorFlow and NoSQL DBs.
• Experience with Extract, Transform, Load tools and techniques integrating with REST APIs and document management systems.
• Proven experience with technology horizon scanning techniques and identification of technology trends and high potential use-cases.
• Proven experience with media monitoring, media data analysis, threat analysis in text and text classification.
• Proven experience with software/tool development in the area of strategic foresight analysis and horizon scanning.
• Excellent analytical and critical thinking skills particularly as applied to trend scouting and innovation management

Preferred qualifications:

• Relevant experience with NATO and/or international organizations is highly desired.