National Highways spends £106 million on Chief Data Office

National Highways has published details of four contracts with a combined value of £106 million as part of a package to support its Chief Data Office.

All of the agreements came into effect at the beginning of this month to run for five years.

They have been numbered two to five, indicating that the award of another is yet to be announced.

The agency that manages major roads in England indicated in its award notice for the cross-capability role that the core elements of the Chief Data Office are to deal with data strategy, capacity building and awareness, stakeholder engagement and innovation and continuous improvement.

Investing in capability

"Recognising the critical importance of data management and governance we propose to continue in our investment of services and capability of a high functioning and fit for purpose Chief Data Office,” the notice says.

“Whilst the data maturity of National Highways has increased, it has held steady at its current level since 2020. To ensure our data is fit for our future purposes and can enable our digital ambitions, we identified the need to invest in building data capability across the organisation, embedding a data operating model into our business operating model and building data literacy and professionalisation of data specialists."

Deloitte won the cross-capability contract, which has a value of £35 million under the classification of data analysis services.

The company has won another £35 million agreement for the management of the Digital Lab, the agency’s design and delivery arm for digital products and services.

Among its responsibilities are to increase capability in areas such as AI, data standards APIs, and built the strategic partnerships in the ‘mobility ecosystem’ that will underpin National Highways’ transition into a business-to-business-to-customer service provider.

Governance and assurance

Anmut Consulting has won a £25 million contract to support data governance and assurance. This includes a framework for the safe and responsible adoption of AI solutions and use of generative AI tools.

“We promote a culture of data governance and awareness, fostering accountability for data governance by having clear data roles and responsibilities,” the award notice says. “Data governance and assurance play a crucial role in helping the organisation manage its data as one of our most important and valuable assets, and that data needs to be fit for purpose.”

It adds that there are plans to roll out a number of relevant of services, including data specifications and standards as a service, data condition as a service, governance service design and integration, communications and change management services, and records management assurance.

Gutteridge, Haskins and Davey has won the other contract, for ontology and taxonomyand valued at £11 million.

The notice identifies this as a core part of National Highways’ ability to record, share and manage institutional knowledge, with the ontology acting as a top level conceptual map as the central pillar of data models.

It adds: "The taxonomy service exists to effectively master, manage, and maintain lists of things and controlled vocabularies that are key to running the business. By providing a single consistent point of interaction for simple lists of things, interoperability and consistency is driven across domains at the lowest possible opportunity cost."