Content

Decision to award a contract to CDS for a
partnership agreement to access the Reletaivityone software tool to
enable an external investigator to have a licence to be able to
search the Council's data as part of an ongoing external senior
staff investigation. Arrangement to be in place for approximately 3
months with a cost of approximately £10,000.

Direct award to be made due to the specialist nature of the
software and the existing experience and familiarity of the tool of
the external investigator.

Reasons for the decision

To facilitate an external investigation into
senior staff matters.

To provide a better outcome by using an AI based search facility on
a significant amount of data.

A manual search would not be possible and would not be likely to
produce the same optimal outcome.

Option was the optimal considering time, cost, and likely
outcome.

Alternative options considered

Alternative option considered was a manual
search of the relevant data which would be impractical due to the
size of data.

Also considered a non AI search tool but discounted as unlikely to
provide the same optimal outcome and ultimately a robust outcome of
the investigation.

Also considered purchase of the software tool direct without the
use of a partnership arrangement but option discounted as
significantly more expensive and time consuming.