Australia’s financial sector regulator APRA has issued an RFI seeking information on a new digital Knowledge Management System to assist with its digital transformation. According to the tender documents, the “framework” APRA employs to manage the sector is currently spread across 350+ individual PDFs that need to be regularly updated.

Although APRA is not looking to obtain quotations. The RFI concludes by noting: “If the information provided in your response aligns to the agencies high level requirements, APRA may release an official Request for Quote (RFQ) to the shortlisted vendors.”

APRA also states that: “In the longer term, APRA welcomes industry experts and stakeholders to explore together the potential for suptech and regtech solutions, such developing machine-readable regulation to facilitate compliance systems.”

APRA is responsible for regulating banks, building societies, credit unions, life insurers, friendly societies, general insurers, private health insurers and a large number of superannuation entities and their trustees – currently approximately 2,900 institutions. It also collects data from approximately 2,000 non-regulated entities.

APRA is seeking a digital system that can provide interactive filtering, searching and linking of paragraphs within the 350+ PDFs that make up its prudential framework.

“The digital KMS should be more than just a system for storing and retrieving document. APRA is also looking for information on the different features and functions that different digital KMSs can provide to achieve this goal. APRA would like to understand the market and the different products and solutions available.

“The ability to present the prudential framework in a user centric way is key to this strategy.”

The RFI includes a lengthy list of requirements although APRA states this is non-exhaustive:

• Large storage capacity for English words, numbers, mathematical formulas and graphs

• Ability to combine the information that is currently spread across 350+ individual PDFs into a single database

• Various ways to categorise & sub-categorise information (i.e. industry based, topic based, time based etc)

• Ability to download into Word and PDF (including the ability to allow users to tailor the download via topics)

• Ability to have in-text hyperlinks and tags on paragraphs

• Global search function (title and context based) with filters and sort capabilities

• Ability to have past, present and future versions display side-by-side

• Accessibility for users who require visual assistance (font size, text to audio etc.)

• Ability to store data in Australia (including cloud infrastructure)

• Analytics and dashboards on usage

• Ability to create flow charts and relationship graphics from the information (i.e. entity relation extraction, tagging and linking)

• SEO optimisation within the platform (e.g. the most search article/topic will be displayed at the top of the page).

• Integrations with other platforms (e.g. Microsoft)

• API in order to connect to regulated entities GRC systems

• BOT to assist users with questions and searches

• Ability for users to submit questions or clarifications on the framework