IT company chosen to create the UK government’s Rail Data Marketplace

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been selected by the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) to design, develop, implement, and operate the UK’s Rail Data Marketplace (RDM) which will bring together fragmented sources of rail data into one digital service, to accelerate innovation in the transport sector and enhance the passenger experience.

The RDM was first announced in 2021 by the UK Rail Minister, Chris Heaton-Harris, as part of his plan to stimulate collaboration between the government and industry to accelerate innovation and deliver new products and services to enhance passenger experience and the effective movement of freight.

Improve the sharing of data

The RDM will offer tools and frameworks to improve the sharing of data and real-time information to passengers across the UK. This will simplify data-sharing across operational bodies, including the UK’s rail and non-rail transportation and the mobility network. It will also increase access to data for public and private bodies, improving transparency and facilitating a UK wide railway innovation ecosystem.

In the development of the RDM, TCS will leverage TCS Dexam™ – a controlled data exchange environment for enterprises and their ecosystem partners. It enables democratisation, monetisation, and commercialisation of data, while preserving the security, privacy, and consent of data and its stakeholders. Additionally, TCS will use Google’s Apigee platform to develop and securely manage the APIs that partner applications will use to connect with the RDM.

“In winning a challenging competitive tender, TCS was able to demonstrate its capability to support the innovative launch of the RDM,” explained Simon Moorhead, CIO and Member of the Board at the RDG. “This brand-new service will build on the capability created in TCS’s Dexam™ product supported by Google’s integration tools. It will offer access to new data sources as well as present existing data in more accessible formats to help businesses use rail open data to speed change, reduce costs and create new value for customers.”

The contract between TCS and RDG is for a term of six years including an extension term opportunity.

Amit Kapur, Country Head for TCS UK and Ireland, said: ‘’We are delighted to lead on this strategic programme with the RDG. Built on TCS Dexam™, the RDM can not only provide data relating to the rail industry but could also present adjacent data sources important to passengers and operators and help deliver an improved experience for users. In addition, the platform will have the ability to track environmental parameters, which will allow it to support the UK’s rail decarbonisation agenda.’’