Questions and Answers
Question
In order to submit a bid respecting the amount between €2,000 (or €5,000 for intellectual services) and €150,000 excluding VAT, we would like to know if the rates are constrained by a specific grid other than the amount in question to be respected. Namely, according to Article 22 of the Financial Regulation of the European Audiovisual Observatory (hereinafter the Observatory), which is based, mutatis mutandis, on Order No 1395 of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on Council of Europe procurement procedures.
Answer
The amounts specified are the only frame applicable to this tender.
Question
In view of the current sanitary crisis, will the deadline for the submission of offers remain 01/04/2020 or is an extension planned?
Answer
The call for tenders is continuing. The date for submitting offers remains fixed at 1 April 2020. You are of course invited to submit your offer to us. If, at the end of the procedure, the tender turns out to be unfruitful, the Observatory may launch a new Call for Tender of which we will keep you informed.
Question
Given the current Covid-19 crisis and its impact on finances and travel, will the budget and the deadlines for this project be maintained as originally planned?
Answer
The budget will be maintained as originally planned.
As far as deadlines are concerned, we believe that a very significant part of the project can be carried out remotely, and that contacts between the Observatory and the selected service provider can be organized in the form of a video conference. If however, a candidate organization considers that, given the current circumstances, the realization of the project is no longer possible within the specified deadlines, we would appreciate that this be indicated in the bid. This will not be grounds for rejecting the bid.
We are obviously aware that the situation is evolving rapidly and that the modalities of the project possibly will or should be adapted.
In this context, please let us know if you will be able to make a proposal before the closing date for the call for tenders on 1 April 2020.
Question
How many different scrapings will need to be carried out?
Answer
Currently only the scraping of IMDb pages is crucial. It is used to complete the missing information found in a local database (cache). The missing information is retrieved from IMDb files which are located at this address: https://www.imdb.com/interfaces/
Several essential pieces of information are missing from these files, namely the countries of production, the languages of the films / series, the budget, etc.
At the start of the project we can make the source code of the scrapers available to the selected company. (if necessary in Python and using the Scrapy library).
Question
How many CSV files will need to be inserted
Answer
Regarding the admissions data for the LUMIERE database, we import around 100 files per year.
With regard to the LUMIERE VoD database data, we receive files from about a dozen providers (including some files aggregating up to 300 VoD services), which translates into a thousand files to be imported in bulk, this 4 times a year for the 4 film sessions.
Question
Are there any elements of the current application that are reusable (even partially) ? Algorithms, documentation, scripts ...)?
Answer
This question is very difficult to answer without a prior analysis of what exists already, and without knowing whether the service provider retained to redevelop the database will use the same language ...
At the start of the project, we can make the source code of everything that is currently in production available (for "inspiration"). We can also provide information as to the "encountered pitfalls" and problems that we had to overcome to operate the databases currently in place .
The scripts to clean up the input files as well as the scrapers code are probably the only thing that can be reused as things stand.
For the rest - algorithms, technical knowledge - related to the development of the various components are not documented and will require a discussion at the launch of the project.
Question
Is a link to Google drive an acceptable means for submission of the offer?
Answer
As indicated in the Terms of reference (see chapter A&E) the documents must be scanned and send to following email address: tenderobs@coe.int
Question
The merger of the two databases results in the migration of the data to the new repository. It is noted that the European Audiovisual Observatory has modelled the new schema of this new repository. It is also noted that the European Audiovisual Observatory will carry out the data migration operations from the 2 old schemas to the new schema. Will the holder have to develop the scripts for migrating data from the 2 databases to the new database? If so, is the schema of the LIGHT VOD database available?
Answer
Data migration will be carried out by the Observatory.
Question
What are the availability constraints of the application? 5/7 8am-8pm?
Answer
The availability constraints are indeed 5 days/7 and 8am- 8pm with recovery at D+1.
Question
What is the average number of users per day? Per month? What is the maximum number of users?
Answer
Over a day we should have an average of 4 to 5 users connected simultaneously. Maximum 10 over 1 month.
Question
Do you have any special requirements regarding the expected response time for employees to be able to work in good conditions?
Answer
A simple search returning only a few indicators should be able to return the page in under a second. For more complex statistics (especially those that are rarely used), there are no particular constraints, knowing that it is not a problem if it takes several minutes.
Question
Do you have any traceability constraints? Technical logs, log wells, monitoring tools, conservation of exchanges...
Answer
We don't have any particular constraints on the logs, except that we would like to be able to at least keep connection logs and trace which pages/tools have been consulted (if the application runs on a server, we should be able to keep a trace, otherwise the Apache logs will suffice).
Question
With regard to the tool for associating the operating data with the records in the LIGHT database, does the tool have to take care of the automatic retrieval of the operating data or is this entered manually?
Answer
These data are imported from the files provided by the different providers.
Question
Do the analysts have technical office automation skills? Will training on future tools have to be provided by the incumbent?
Answer
Yes, the analysts have very good skills with office automation tools, and in particular with Excel, which they master perfectly. A training of future users and a handling of the tool will have to be provided by the provider at the end of the project.