OSCT RA Grant competition - Understanding, Preventing and Responding to Cyber Crime

The Office for Security and Counter Terrorism Research and Analysis (OSCTRA) in the Home Office is launching an open grant competition for academic-led research and evaluation projects on cyber crime.

The contracting authority will be inviting research bids to help build the evidence base on the following key research themes: - Cyber Prevent - understanding cyber offenders, the risk factors for offending, and offending pathways - for overseas as well as UK-based offenders; evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to prevent people becoming involved in cyber crime and interventions to divert those on an offending pathway. - Cyber Protect - developing and testing interventions to improve cyber security behaviours amongst the public and businesses; evaluating interventions and determining measures of long term changes to behaviour. - Future technological developments and policing of cyber crime - understanding effective approaches to tackling cyber crime at the national, regional and local level; understanding how future technological changes may enable crime, and how technology may also be used by law enforcement to tackle cyber crime.

The contracting authority will welcome academic-led proposals with collaborative, multi-disciplinary approaches, employing any appropriate and justified methodological techniques.

Proposals either focused on single sub questions within the themes, or those looking to address multiple questions within the themes will be equally welcome.

This grant competition is the final phase of a research programme commissioned by the Home Office, via funding from the National Cyber Security Programme (NCSP).

The research programme has funded both multi-year research projects and shorter-term research, aiming to help expand academic research in relation to cyber crime.

New projects will be required to start after the beginning of April 2020 and complete by 31st March 2021.

A maximum of £400,000 will be available.

The number and nature of projects funded will depend upon the proposals received.

Accessing further details: The full grant call will open on Wednesday 29 January 2020 and close by Monday 2 March 2020.

In order to submit a proposal, bidders MUST be registered on the government's Esourcing website and submit an expression of interest to the OSCTRA commercial team in advance of the opening date of Wednesday , 29 January 2020.

Fuller details of the grant competition and evaluation criteria will only be accessible via the Esourcing suite to those who have registered by this date.

Please note registration on the Esourcing suite is a relatively speedy process and should not be confused with registration as a supplier on the Research Marketplace of the Crown Commercial Services' (CCS) Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS), which is a different process.

Details of next steps and how to register your interest are laid out in the 'How to Apply' section below.