Marine Recorder Online development continuation

Descriptions

The existing system Marine Recorder Online is a cloud-based multitenant marine benthic biodiversity data management system. It has been built as a redevelopment against the niche and use cases of the previous "Marine Recorder" desktop solution. It has been built from the ground up on modern Azure architecture and from a user-story-centric agile approach. It has not necessarily aimed to directly duplicate all functionality within the old application. The system is used by all of the UK Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies (SNCBs; JNCC, Natural England, NatureScot, Natural Resources Wales, DAERA), along with key marine NGOs, who provide high-quality marine benthic survey evidence for UK reporting. The online application provides the central collation, storage, querying and dissemination of spatial marine benthic biodiversity from a range of custodians, stored against a consistent data structure and metadata/vocabularies across all organisations to enable both effective active-data management, and cross-organisational interoperable data for large-scale data analyses regardless of the source. This contract aims to build upon the initial minimum viable product (MVP) release of the "Marine Recorder Online" multi-organisation cloud-based benthic data management (and analysis) solution. Currently under contract for initial development until March 2024, the initial MVP is expected to be released by 31st March 2024. It is therefore intended that this contract will provide ongoing improvements including implementing tweaks to existing functionality and developing new functionality, as prioritised and agreed by the Marine Recorder Steering Group, comprised of the public and third sector organisations that hold tenancies within the application (henceforth 'custodians').