The supplier will conduct analyses and develop decision support tools for policymakers regarding the likely impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on business and industry. These tools will be used to inform policy decisions and prioritise funding to vulnerable businesses, sectors or geographies, and monitor business closures and impacts in near real-time.
Successful delivery of this research and tooling will require the following analytical capabilities:

1. Application of machine learning across alternative data sources to forecast and monitor the impact of Covid-19 across business and industry by sector and geography
2. Simulation to estimate likely future impact of Covid-19 across business and industry
3. Development of interactive applications/dashboards which summarise the above monitoring and forecasting activities into an easily consumable interface to inform policy-makers

At present a cross-functional team from within BEIS is being assembled from experts in the Economics and Data Science practices. Faculty is proposing to support the BEIS internal team with a high-performing group of data scientists, engineers and UI/UX designers to work directly alongside BEIS to deliver these capabilities.
The intention is for this to work as a single team, working in a highly agile and iterative way; potentially shifting towards clearer work streams or deliverables as the user requirements sharpen in focus. The team will work under direction of BEIS on a time-and-materials basis, with an estimated project duration of between 3 and 6 months