back to article Met Office signs 32 vendors to £30m framework to put the wind up data platform

The UK's Met Office has handed seats on a framework contract worth up to £30m to 32 suppliers in a bid to develop a common data platform over the next four years. Suppliers on framework Actica Consulting Andigital BAE Systems Applied Intelligence BJSS CACI Computacenter Credera Deloitte Envitia Ernst & Young …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    There's a small trough coming and it's not the weather

    > The UK's Met Office has handed seats on a framework contract worth up to £30m to 32 suppliers in a bid to develop a common data platform over the next four years.

    £30m split over 4 years between 32 suppliers? That's hardly going to keep Deloitte, KPMG et al barely going even if they just assign interns to the work, let alone a partner.

    And then there's BAE on the list - £30m is just an overrun to them let alone a whole project.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: There's a small trough coming and it's not the weather

      It's not split over 32 suppliers. It's a menu of suppliers who have won the right to sell the relevant service for part or all of the items on the framework. They buyer now knows these companies can supply some or all of their needs and can now choose who to buy from. It's entirely possible to for a company to "win" a place on a government framework and then not sell anything to the customer. The Met Office, for political reasons, have probably been told to buy from as many suppliers on the framework as possible, getting the best prices, but in practice, they will purchase related services/goods from only the larger suppliers who can supply all the related services/goods. You really don't want two inter-related products from two different suppliers as any problems will result in a game of blame-tennis. The smaller ones may get some crumbs of business, some will get nothing.

  2. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Common data platform

    The UK's Met Office has handed seats on a framework contract worth up to £30m to 32 suppliers in a bid to develop a common data platform over the next four years.

    Are they just going to spin up Postgres?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Common data platform

      No, we are perfectly capable of doing that for ourselved thank you very much, If you actually RTFM you *might* get a clue, but I doubt it.

  3. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    WTF?

    And what for?

    Having already spent a gajillion pounds on computer gear, they still can't predict the weather remotely accurately a useful number of hours ahead.

    I seem to remember that their accuracy numbers are based on "updated" forecasts, that can be "updated" up to an hour or two before the actual weather happens.

    1. Idy

      Re: And what for?

      And even those are normally wrong

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And what for?

      Bzzzt, Incorrect.

      You remember something from a fever dream you had once maybe, but not the truth.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: And what for?

        Agreed. The weather forecasts we get today are way better than 10, 20, 30 or more years ago and aimed at a much more local audience. But no one can predict with any real certainty precisely when or where the weather will be. A prediction of rain, and it passes by a few miles away, and the people who didn't get wet then whinge that the "weatherman" got it wrong again. I travel a lot around the UK and the weather forecast is generally what I see as I travel. It's pretty accurate most of the time by gross region and even gross time. But some people seem to think they should be getting 100% accuracy 100% of the time. Even the BBC weather maps can be reasonable, but look at the weather forecast a few days in advance, remember it then check again as you get a day closer and it's clearly been refined as more data comes in. That's chaotic systems work. You keep gathering data and refining the prediction as you get closer to the event.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And what for?

      Employing a window cleaner would improve their awareness of what the weather is actually doing.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Alien

        Re: And what for?

        Only in Exeter. I am told they make forecasts for places other than Exeter, but perhaps this is lies. Does a world outside Exeter really exist? I hope so.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Re: And what for?

      Is very easy to look up references to 'forecast skill' ('skill' is how much better you do than just predicting the current climate for a day), snd if you do that you will find that skill has increased (I think by about 1 day per decade? so 7 day forecasts today are as good as 3 day forecasts were in 1980). And yes, of course they should refine forecasts as time forecast is for approaches: no-one wants a 7-day-out forecast for tomorrow. But because they are competent people they compare this year's 7-day forecast with the 7-day forecast ten years ago etc when comparing skill, whatever you 'seem to remember'.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So about

    £1Million each then

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