The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) is currently inviting tenders from service providers to update and maintain the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), along with other digitising services.
The two year contract, which can be extended by a further two years, is expected to cost around €27.8 million, excluding VAT.
Under Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) regulations, all EU member states must establish and regularly update a land database system which is used to administer payments to farmers under area-based schemes.
These include the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS); the eco-scheme; the Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS); the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES); the Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) Scheme; Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM) and the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS).
DAFM
The Irish LPIS, originally established by DAFM in 1995, contains approximately 1,300,000 land parcels which are continuously reviewed and updated based on imagery, mapping and ground inspections.
In 2018, the department undertook a rebuild of the system to “improve accuracy” and rollout a new parcel numbering system.
To date, 24 counties are covered by the updated LPIS database with the remaining two, Galway and Clare, being delivered in early 2024.
The LPIS database must be updated annually to reflect the applications and maps received from farmers and record any permanent changes, such as the addition of new plots.
In 2023, 41,754 applicants submitted requests to change the eligible hectare on some parcels.
“If a failure to properly maintain and update the LPIS is determined by a European Commission audit it could lead to a significant financial disallowance,” the tender document states.
Land mapping
The successful tenderer will work with the DAFM LPIS Co-ordination team on the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) project.
This EU directive aims to create “spatial data infrastructure for EU environmental policies and policies or activities that may have an impact on the environment”.
Updating and maintenance of the LPIS will be carried out in the department’s offices in Portlaoise and Dublin.
Along with updating any land parcel changes on LPIS, the service provider will be tasked with identifying and mapping burnt land and digitising forestry grant scheme pre-approval applications.
The service provider will be expected to digitise all 2024 BISS applications by August 31, and resolve all cases by November 30.
“Under no circumstances can the deadlines be extended as completion of projects on time is essential for timely payments to farmers,” the tender document states.
The deadline for submission of tenders falls at 3:00p.m on January 26, 2024.
Meanwhile, DAFM is also inviting tenders for a service provider to assess its data security efforts.
The international standard to manage information security (ISO/IEC 27001) was orginally published in 2005, revised in 2013 and again in 2022.
The standard details requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system.
The department said that it is “committed to protecting its information and that of its customers”.
DAFM has implemented an Information Security Management System (ISMS) in accordance with international standards from 2013.
The successful tenderer will be awarded a two-year contract, valued at €100,000, excluding VAT, to assess DAFM locations to ensure conformity with the 2013 standard and the 2022 standard when the department “decides to migrate to the new standard”.