IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Tender description

The Authority is procuring a contract for the delivery of Hosting and Application Support (‘H&AS’) Services (“the Contract”) to Defra, the Environment Agency (EA), Natural England (NE), Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), Marine Management Organisation (MMO) and Rural Payments Agency (RPA) (“the Core Defra Group”). The remaining organisations within the wider Defra group (“Defra Group”) will be potential service recipients and may be added to the contract at a later date via change control. The Contract will be delivered at locations situated within England Scotland and Wales. The Contract is one of a suite of contracts collectively referred to as the “Unity” programme that will replace existing ICT Services which are currently delivered under separate contracts by two separate service suppliers to the Environment Agency and Defra. The contract will provide the whole range of Hosting and Application Support Services. These include implementation, provision, management and operation of: — Data Centre (DC) site services, — DC facilities management services, — infrastructure services, — platform services, — application support and operations, and — an appropriate service management layer to support the new Defra Group ICT Service Management Operating Model. The Supplier will also provide a subset of H and AS Services in 150 distributed server rooms (“DSRs”). The Supplier will provide continued access for approximately 21 000 end users to approximately 250 unique applications. These Services are hosted from 5 data centres and the DSRs. The applications support a diverse range of existing business services and are of varying age and complexity. The Supplier will be required to interface and collaborate with other Unity suppliers to ensure delivery of an integrated ICT Service to end users. The Contract scope will include a number of Optional Services including: — project work associated with DSR rationalisation, — project work associated with other Defra Group Programmes where there is a dependency on the H and AS services, — Non-Core Defra Group organisations may be added as Service Recipients during the Contract Term, — H and AS Services for any new or additional applications required to support business services across the Defra Group. — Data Centre Catalogue services. Applications Maintenance and Applications Development as defined in the Descriptive Document will be out of scope for this procurement. The estimated contract value stated in section II.1.7 is the maximum estimated value. This assumes a 6-year contract term (i.e. it assumes that Defra invokes the one-year extension option) and includes the one-off costs associated with implementation. The estimate also includes provision for optional services, contingency And for growth to allow for any additional Service Recipients who may join the Contract during its term.