Australia - RFI to the Digital Earth Africa Program

Description

Established in 2019 by Geoscience Australia and its partners, the Digital Earth Africa Program exists to improve the lives of people across the African continent by translating freely available Earth observations data into analysis-ready and accessible information that will support sustainable development in Africa. The platform and services underpinning the Program enable African governments, industry and decision makers to track changes across the continent in unprecedented detail. This provides valuable insights for better decision making across many areas, including flooding, drought, soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, forest cover, land use and land cover change, water availability and quality, and changes to human settlements.
Vision
The Program’s vision is to provide a routine, reliable and operational service, using Earth observations to deliver decision-ready products enabling policymakers, scientists, the private sector and civil society to address social, environmental and economic changes on the African continent and develop an ecosystem for innovation across sectors.
Mission
The Program’s mission is to process openly accessible and freely available data to produce decision-ready products. Working closely with the AfriGEO community, the Program will be responsive to the information needs, challenges and priorities of the African continent. The Program will build on existing capacity to enable the use of Earth observations to address key challenges across the African continent.
Purpose of this RFI
Geoscience Australia seeks to identify a new owner for the Program that demonstrates a deep understanding of the value of the assets that the Program’s technology platform and interim team present, and has a clear long-term vision for the Program. In addition, this process specifically seeks to ensure that the new owner:

is able to provide strategic day-to-day leadership for the Program, either through appointing a current member of its team as, or hiring personnel to be, the managing director of the Program;
has a broader leadership team that is aligned with the Program’s mission and is able and willing to champion the Program within Pan-African networks and raise institutional funding to sustain and scale the Program;
can secure the required administrative and functional capabilities for the Program, including procurement, human resources, finance, etc.;
can secure back-end support for the Program team, including office space; and
can manage the Program’s cloud-based data and technology platform infrastructure that makes data and services available to all users.

Following this RFI, and taking into consideration inputs gathered from Respondents through this RFI process, Geoscience Australia anticipates releasing a formal RFT seeking a successful tenderer to become the new owner of the Program. 
The information requested in this RFI will be used by Geoscience Australia solely for internal planning purposes and will be kept confidential.

Opportunity closing date

20 January 2025

Value of contract

to be confirmed