Wow. According to the Government Computing website, the ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk) contract has been awarded to CACI, as part of a four year deal for various services worth £3-£4 million, with the option of a two year extension. The four years deal includes a year of development for the ScotlandsPeople site, and then three years to run the service.The new version of the ScotlandsPeople service to be run by CACI, which previously worked with the National Records of Scotland on the 2011 census, will go live in September 2016, and will effectively continue a service provision that has been previously offered by Brightsolid (now known as FindmyPast) since 2002.
For further details visit http://devolved.governmentcomputing.com/news/nrs-picks-caci-to-help-develop-scotlands-people-ancestry-site-4691870.
Chris
For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.
"Wow" indeed! There must be quite a bit of background to this decision. I wonder what it will mean for the transcripts of the Scottish census currently hosted by Findmypast -- the ones indexed by those contrived TNA-like codes.
ReplyDeleteVery little I would imagine. FindmyPast (the website) and ScotlandsPeople have been separate entities, I would suspect the FMP transcripts, as with the Ancestry ones, are copyright to the data vendor.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder will we retain access to our previous searches and viewed images?
ReplyDeleteNo idea what the plan is as yet, though when Scots Origins lost the contract to Brightsolid in 2002, the previous viewed searches and images were carried over to the ScotlandsPeople platform, so will be surprised if this isn't the case again.
ReplyDeleteI'm just crossing my fingers for short term subscriptions to the Kirk Sessions stuff. But since it seems like the commercial direction is set by the NRS, hoping for something new may be pointless.
ReplyDeleteThe new CACI contract should have resulted in a new website launched on 1 September but this date has clearly been missed. Anyone have any news or update? Hopefully not another failed IT contract! John
ReplyDeleteSee http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/new-scotlandspeople-website-launch.html
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