RFI-NATO Edge OSINT Workshop.pdf

PP.A2(07.25)

NCIA Pre-competitive Engagement Calling Notice

OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE (OSINT) CAPABILITY

NCIA/ACQ/2026/16800

Friday, 23 October 2026

NCIA Pre-competitive Engagement Calling Notice

To: Industry Partners

1. The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) is conducting pre-competitive market engagement to gather input on potential solutions to support the upcoming acquisition for an Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Capability. To that end, we are issuing the attached Questionnaire to inform a dedicated workshop at NATO Edge and solicit feedback from industry partners.

2. This Calling Notice is issued for planning purposes only and is not a request for bids. It is part of NCIA’s effort to engage early to inform and ensure it has a clear understanding of the marketplace, available capabilities, and potential acquisition strategies.

3. We value your insight and invite you to review and comment on our draft high level problem statement (Annex A) to provide recommendations for improving performance outcomes, competition, and efficiency; and identifying any risks or concerns that should be considered during planning.

4. Feedback can be provided in writing in accordance with submission instructions and/or by attending a dedicated industry engagement – OSINT Data Exploitation and Visualization Workshop at NATO Edge, taking place on 17-19 November in Izmir (Türkiye), where NCIA will respond to clarifying questions and invite comments from participants.

5. Submission instructions and additional details can be found in the enclosure to this Calling Notice.

6. Only companies from a NATO member country can participate in or respond to this Calling Notice (https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/nato_countries.htm) or attend a dedicated workshop.

7. Should you have any questions or need clarification, please contact Nicholas Griffin at IFB-CO-424330-OSINT@ncia.nato.int.

8. We thank you in advance for your time and input, and we look forward to engaging with you as we shape this potential acquisition.

For the Chief of Acquisition:

Nicholas Griffin Senior Contracting Officer https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/nato_countries.htm mailto:IFB-CO-424330-OSINT@ncia.nato.int

Enclosure:

• Calling Notice with Annex A

• Distribution List

Distribution List

1. NATO Delegation (Attn: Infrastructure Adviser)

1. Albania 12. Greece 23. Poland

2. Belgium 13. Hungary 24. Portugal

3. Bulgaria 14. Iceland 25. Romania

4. Canada 15. Italy 26. Slovakia

5. Croatia 16. Latvia 27. Slovenia

6. Czechia 17. Lithuania 28. Spain

7. Denmark 18. Luxembourg 29. Sweden

8. Estonia 19. Montenegro 30. Türkiye

9. Finland 20. Netherlands 31. United Kingdom

10. France 21. North Macedonia 32. United States

11. Germany 22. Norway

2. All NATEXs

Table of Contents

CALLING NOTICE

A. Introduction

B. Submission Instructions

C. Industry Engagement

D. Disclaimer

E. Use of Information Provided through Responses

F. Calling Notice Point of Contact

Annex A – Problem statement

CALLING NOTICE

A. Introduction

1. The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) is conducting pre-competitive market engagement to gather input on potential solutions to support the upcoming acquisition for an Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Capability. To that end, we are issuing the attached Questionnaire to inform a dedicated workshop at NATO Edge and solicit feedback from industry partners.

2. This Calling Notice is issued for planning purposes only and is not a request for bids. It is part of NCIA’s effort to engage early to inform and ensure it has a clear understanding of the marketplace, available capabilities, and potential acquisition strategies.

B. Submission Instructions

1. Interested parties are invited to respond in accordance with the instructions below or provide feedback during Industry Engagement:

a. Submit responses via the on-line questionnaire [https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FN5JYBJ ] no later than 12:00 hours Central European Time (CET) on 04 November 2026.

b. As part of the questionnaire, respondents are also encouraged to review and comment on the draft problem statement in Annex A. Please note, feedback on Annex A can be provided under question 54 of the Questionnaire link above.

C. Industry Engagement

1. Planned industry engagement will take place in the form of OSINT Data Exploitation and Visualization Workshop at NATO Edge, taking place on 17-19 November in Izmir (Türkiye).

2. During the workshop NCIA will brief the high-level problem statement and the user story (Annex A), respond to clarifying questions and invite comments from participants, in the open forum as well as in bilateral meetings (schedule allowing).

3. More information on NATO Edge attendance and registration is available on event’s official website - https://www.natoedge.nato.int/ .

D. Disclaimer

1. This Calling Notice is for planning and informational purposes only and shall not be construed as a solicitation or obligation on the part of the NCIA. The NCIA does not intend to award a contract based on responses to this Calling Notice. Respondents are solely responsible for all costs incurred in responding to this Calling Notice. The NCIA will consider and analyse all information received from this Calling Notice and may use these findings to develop a future solicitation. The NCIA will consider all responses as confidential commercial information and will protect it as such.

2. NCIA reserves the right, at any time, to cancel this Calling Notice, partially or in its entirety. No legal liability on the part of NCIA for payment of any sort shall arise and in https://www.natoedge.nato.int/ no event will a cause of action lie with any prospective participant for the recovery of any costs incurred in connection with the preparation of documentation or participation in response hereto. All effort initiated or undertaken by prospective informal market survey participants shall be done considering and accepting this fact.

E. Use of Information Provided through Responses

1. Confidentiality of Responses

The NCIA may incorporate industry comments and responses, in part or in whole, into a future release of a solicitation. Should respondents include proprietary data in their responses that they do not wish to be disclosed to the public for any purpose, or used by NCIA (except for internal evaluation purposes), they must notify through the questionnaire.

F. Calling Notice Point of Contact

1. Nicholas Griffin, Senior Contracting Officer

2. IFB-CO-424330-OSINT@ncia.nato.int mailto:IFB-CO-424330-OSINT@ncia.nato.int

Annex A – Problem statement

Note: This is a DRAFT and subject to change. The NCIA is seeking industry feedback.

1. Background

The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) requires a common capability for NATO OSINT analysts, with which to collect, process and exploit publicly and commercially available information (PAI/CAI) to produce OSINT. This capability supports NATO’s mission to better understand the operational environment, support decision-making and enable cognitive superiority.

2. Scope

The OSINT project will aim to deliver a capability to NATO analysts from Q1 2028; invitation for bids to industry will be released by Q1 2027. The OSINT platform will provide tiered access to users: tier 1 users (around 400 generalist analysts) will have access only to a managed attribution (MA) capability; tier 2 users (around 300 fusion analysts) will have access to MA and alerts from a PAI/CAI alerting platform; tier 3 users (around 120 trained OSINT analysts) will have additional access to the more specialist OSINT tools and services. The project will seek one prime contractor to provide integrated, best-of-breed capabilities, from multiple sub-vendors: collaboration is encouraged and expected. Therefore, for the purposes of this calling notice, responses are sought from all vendors, including those who may only be able to address part of the scope, in order to best inform the project.

The overall scope of the OSINT processing capability can be split into three main areas.

2.a. User-facing/Front-end Platform

The Contractor shall provide all required functions to support an OSINT Analyst to search, find, collect, process, and retrieve PAI/CAI in a secure and non-attributable way from sources within the Internet, including but not limited to:

a. Managed Attribution (MA): The managed attribution service provides a way for the intelligence analyst in the collection phase to browse the Internet while customizing its online presence. This capability will resolve: inconsistencies between operating system language and VPN egress point; keyboard and device layout; and fingerprinting techniques meant to track users, beyond the use of cookies or IP addresses.

b. Secure Unclassified OSINT website: This will provide forums for discussion;

sharing of tradecraft and knowledge; sharing of releasable data; and enable collaboration with wider NATO partners, classification and policy allowing.

c. Collaboration space: Analysts must have the ability to share data and assessment both within and between teams if required.

d. Report Writing Tool: Analysts must have the ability to create reports on the unclassified environment. This report creation tool must provide the ability to receive automated summaries, automatic formatting, translation, annotation of embedded data, automated referencing and other tools as requested by analysts.

e. User querying and alerting capability: Analysts must have the ability to set

“indicators and warning”-type queries on topics or areas of interest and to receive regular updates and cueing for further research as required, from all available data sources and services.

f. Tasking tools: Managers and analysts must have the ability to receive and forward tasks, both up and down the chain, to allow for allocation of tasks according to resources and for quality review prior to release.

2.b. Data Sources and Services

The following is a non-exhaustive list of the main categories of potential data sources:

a. Traditional media, blogs, forums, periodicals, grey literature;

b. Deep and Dark web (Tor);

c. Social media (e.g. Facebook, X, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn, weibo, Renren, VK, Odnoklassnik);

d. Niche social media (e.g. Parler, Mastedon, GAB, Truth Social);

e. Secure messaging platforms (e.g. Telegram, Whatsapp, weChat, etc.);

f. Ad-tech data;

g. Internet of Things (IoT) data;

h. Financial data (including blockchain, crypto etc.);

i. Cached websites, archived or deleted webpages;

j. Cyber threat data.

As the OSINT landscape evolves, NCIA will expect its service providers to keep up to date with emerging sources and be able to integrate them into the platform as required.

2.c. Analytic Functions

There is the need to enrich, process and exploit relevant collated PAI/CAI data, using the latest AI, tools and capabilities. The following is a non-exhaustive list of the main categories of potential analytic functions:

a. Query-setting for effective data collection;

b. Automatic summarization;

c. Translation and transcription services;

d. Screen capture service;

e. Optical Character Recognition (OCR);

f. Deepfake recognition;

g. Named Entity Recognition (NER) and automatic classification;

h. Network analysis;

i. Automated geolocation;

j. Geolocation extraction;

k. Heatmap/cluster generation;

l. Anomaly detection;

m. Data enrichment.

As the OSINT landscape evolves, NCIA will expect its service provider to keep up to date with emerging OSINT technologies and advancements in AI, tools and capabilities and be able to integrate them into the platform as required.

2.b. Non-Functional Requirements

a. A strong emphasis on cyber security. Potential vendors will need to demonstrate their adherence to the strictest cyber security principles and provide audit reports.

b. A user management panel for NCIA and NATO functional administrators, allowing to manage accounts, groups and permissions for the user-facing data-provider(s).

c. A documented log for all services, to enable traceability for security and monitoring purposes. allowing secure automation and orchestration of all services features.

d. Provision of training, which includes delivery of train-the-trainer, user (and administrator) trainings, and all training documentation.

3. Objectives

This OSINT capability will enable analysts, amongst other activities, to:

• Set and receive alerts and notifications based on areas or topics of interest across multiple data sets and services;

• Focus their research and receive alerts on emerging topics of interest;

• Securely conduct their own research directly on the open web without attribution, tailoring their digital footprint effectively;

• Receive and forward tasking;

• Collaborate both within and between teams;

• Draft reports;

• Access an automated source registry capability,

• Automatically enrich data for onward processing and exploitation as needed.

While providing these capabilities, NCIA is considering to:

a. maximize the participation of the data services market, as opposed to running its own analytic platform;

b. limit custom development to focus on proven industry solutions;

c. have one primary contract covering all capabilities outlined in the Scope.