Office of Public Sector Information

Contract Information

Her Majesty’s Stationery Office issues contracts to the private sector for the provision of a range of editorial, printing, publishing and distribution services to support its role in relation to the publication of legislation and related products; the Official Gazettes; Command and Departmental House of Commons Papers.

Whenever contracts are due to be re-tendered details will generally be advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union and published on this website.

Legislation Contract Tendering

On 18 February 2010 we published a notice in the OJEU for a competition to award contracts to produce and publish UK (England and Wales), Northern Ireland and Scottish legislation on behalf of government and the devolved administrations.

A potential provider briefing event will be held on 12 March 2010 in London. Interested companies should email hmsocontracts@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk to confirm attendance and to receive details about the event.

All potential suppliers are encouraged to consider this information which outlines the separate inter-related technical requirements of official legislation publishing and the current business model:

Delegates received this information pack:

• legislation publishing briefing presentation (PDF - 4 MB)
• information on publishing processes data inputs and outputs (PDF - 250 KB)
• information on publishing volumes (PDF - 153 KB)
• list of legislative products produced under the contracts (PDF - 72 KB)
• personae information on users that access legislation from the OPSI and Statute Law Database websites (PDF - 244 KB)

This information was provided at a briefing event given to the supplier community on 30 November 2009. A summary of the questions and issues raised by delegates, and our responses can be also be downloaded:

• Questions and Answer session summary (PDF - 141 KB)

The event was hosted by Intellect, the UK trade association for the IT, telecoms and electronics industries (see www.intellectuk.org) and over 40 publishing and technology companies attended. Intellect also facilitated sessions to bring together potential suppliers who may be interested in supplying contract services, but to do so, would need to work in partnership with other suppliers.

We will also make available additional technologies, information and data used to produce legislation. Potential bidders will be able to access these and experiment with new approaches. This information will be accessible on our website.

Information already available on our website includes:

• Crown XML Schema for legislation. This is a reference source for those with an interest in data standards for legislation.
• Information on secondary legislation production processes

We would like to thank all those who have already shown interest in the withdrawn competition (March 2009) and hope that they will benefit from the additional information provided. Respondees to the withdrawn notice will need to re-respond to the re-issued notice.