The European Commission is setting up a procurement competition on Cybersecurity Professional Services

The European Commission is setting up a competition on Cybersecurity Professional Services. The resulting contracts will serve the needs of the European Commission and of the other participating Institutions, Agencies and Bodies to acquire Cybersecurity Professional Services, with a dual scope:

• To support operational services (both technical operations services and support for policy implementation).
• Advisory and capability development services, including consultancy and support for specialised skills/capabilities development.

The contracting authority will run this procedure as a competition in the European Commission Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) for Professional Services Related to Cloud Services (CLOUD II DPS).

The DPS is a two-stage electronic procurement process under EU's Financial Regulation, in which, in a first stage, suppliers are pre-qualified and admitted to a pool of participants, and in a second stage, contracts are awarded through competitive tenders from this pool. The DPS simplifies procurement, enhances competition, and offers quick access to new suppliers.

All economic operators interested in participating in this competition are welcome to apply to the first stage of the DPS. Only economic operators that have passed the first stage of the DPS will receive an invitation and will be able to participate, upon the launch of the competition. 

The competition will be structured into three lots:

• Technical operations services will focus on the operational services relying on technical/engineering experience and requiring highly specialised profiles.
• Support for policy implementation will focus on operational services in support of continuous cybersecurity maturity improvement.
• Advisory and capability development services will be covering technical and market studies, as well as skills assessments, skills development paths and skills reinforcement.

The services will be delivered in two models: 

• Result-based services (fixed price – FP and quoted time and means – QTM) will be used when there are clearly defined technical requirements, such as specific deliverables or service-level agreements.
• Effort-based services (time and means – TM) will be used to deal with role-based and task-based assignments with clear objectives for which specific deliverables or service-level agreements cannot be defined upfront and which require a specific expertise profile.

In preparation for this competition, the contracting authority is conducting a preliminary survey. Economic operators are invited to fill in the Cybersecurity Professional Services market consultation survey by 1 March 2024.