IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Tender description

Both staff and students at the University of Birmingham use the Virtual Learning Environment, Canvas, on and off campus to support learning and enhance the student experience. StARS+ (Student Administration Refresh and Simplification+) is a University-wide programme to simplify, standardise and improve our student administration services, enabled by a replacement and upgrade of our student record system. Due to the expanded scope of the StARS+ programme, the University won’t have the capacity to implement new systems and associated process and change during this time (now to 2023/4), should we choose to change supplier. This would also introduce substantial risk and additional training requirements during with the very real possibility of overloading programme teams. We need to be certain that University resources will be available to support the delivery of this work as required. Both staff and students at the University of Birmingham use the Virtual Learning Environment, Canvas, on and off campus to support learning and enhance the student experience. StARS+ (Student Administration Refresh and Simplification+) is a University-wide programme to simplify, standardise and improve our student administration services, enabled by a replacement and upgrade of our student record system. Due to the expanded scope of the StARS+ programme, and that the project will affect transformational change across many key areas and include changes to a number of applications including Canvas, the University won’t have the capacity to implement new systems and associated process and change during this time (now to 2023/4), should we choose to change supplier. This would also introduce substantial risk and additional training requirements during with the very real possibility of overloading programme teams. We need to be certain that University resources will be available to support the delivery of this work as required, and it would be important to align the development, change, and implementation road map of this project with other University and ITS projects through the normal prioritisation process. Therefore we are looking to extend the current contract for a period of up to 3 years, up to 31 July 2024 (current contract expires 2021). The University plans to re-tender during this time.