ASIC seeks externally managed data analytics service for financial stats

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) wants a central location for its Strategic Intelligence team to find and analyse financial and economic data on both domestic and international organisations.

Publishing a Request for Tender (RFT) at the end of 2017, ASIC is seeking a vendor to provide and manage the platform, which will include the consolidation of data such as financial and economic information, as well as individual company and market statistics and news.

ASIC wants to host the terminal on-premises in its Sydney offices, but wants it connected to the contractor's system through an external standard internet connection rather than via ASIC's intranet.

It is a condition of the tender that data, reports, spreadsheets, and other associated files be transferable to ASIC's intranet virtual machines through email or another standard digital service.

The installation, configuration, and maintenance of the dedicated physical computer terminal will be the responsibility of the contractor.

The RFT also stipulates that the service must allow automated, regular or ad-hoc, scheduled or real-time data file transfers into ASIC through FTP services, email, or other digital services, and must provide users with an API or with Microsoft Office plug-ins to allow for automation and design of data downloads.

The service must allow the sharing of data, reports, spreadsheets, and other files from the contractor internally throughout ASIC, and must allow for the feeding of data from the service into ASIC's databases and enterprise content management system.

The corporate regulator has also asked the contractor handle the security elements of the offering, requesting compliance with the Commonwealth Protective Security Policy Framework defined by the Australian Signals Directorate.

"ASIC will not publish the raw data from the contractor," the RFT says. "However, ASIC must be allowed to externally publish aggregated, summarised, or processed data from the contractor on a non-regular basis and with appropriate acknowledgement of the contractor."

The independent Australian government body has also requested that unplanned outages span no longer than one day.

See also: ATO resolves 'intermittent issues' affecting its online services, again

Specifically, ASIC is keen to gather information on exchange markets in Australia, such as equities and indices prices, market caps, shares on issue, volumes, and turnover; as well as information on equity and debt capital raisings. It wants similar information on overseas exchange markets.

Foreign exchange cross-rates and volumes, credit default swap spreads, and interest rate benchmarks; as well as balance sheets, income statements, capital buffers, and information on company auditors is also required by ASIC on both domestic and international entities.

It wants access to information on managed investment schemes, including hedge funds, as well as debt data, including issuance, amounts outstanding, and underwriters.

The contract will be awarded for an initial two-year term, with three options to extend for one year each, to be actioned at ASIC's discretion.

The tender closes on January 30, 2018.

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