Development and Live Support of the DWP Digital Children's Platform

Tender description

The Child Maintenance Group (CMG) is responsible for obtaining maintenance from absent or non-resident parents and paying it to parents with care not in receipt of benefit. CMG depends on the Child Maintenance Scheme (CMS) 2012 System to deliver its services to customers. The supplier currently provides an Application Development and Live Support service to the Department under a contract that is due to expire on 31st March 2021. The primary purpose of the contract is to provide development and maintenance in relation to the core CMS2012 application so that it remains operational and fit for use. The CMS2012 application underpins the CMS 2012 System and enables the CMG's administration of child maintenance services. For context, 750k children are covered by 530k child maintenance service arrangements and £960m per annum in child maintenance is paid to parents with care. The CMS 2012 System also supports the processing of 6.5k applications per month by CMG through its various channels. The services provided under the contract include the provision of delivery of products, projects and programmes, architecture strategy, product design, engineering and quality (build and test), service management and support/development/enhancement of application functionality to meet and deliver evolving business requirements. Lot 1: The contract was awarded as a call-off contract under the Digital Outcomes and Specialists 2 framework. It provided for a 2-year initial term from 1st October 2018 with a right for DWP to extend for a further period of up to 6 months, which was exercised in August 2020 and is currently due to expire on 31st March 2021. This notice confirms that an extension of up to an additional 12 months to 31st March 2022 has become necessary to mitigate the high risk of disruption to the critical public services provided by CMG which are dependent on the CMS2012 application. The extension will allow for the delivery of key business and transformation initiatives to enable DWP to efficiently transition and exit from the contract. Under the contract, the supplier provides digital teams for the Development and Live Support of the DWP Digital Children & Families service line technology estate, primarily the Child Maintenance Scheme (CMS) 2012 System which is underpinned by the CMS2012 application. Digital teams support the delivery of outcomes for required regular releases to deploy a range of additional business and technical requirements and provide live support to the production system, within a complex multi-application, multi-supplier environment, to ensure it remains current with legislation, operational and fit for use. In addition, the contract supports all applications in the CMG IT estate which have interfaces to various other applications used within DWP. The CMG IT estate is integrated into the critical public services provided by DWP that UK citizens rely on for the payment of their benefit and pensions. Issues with the service continuity of CMG’s systems, including those supported under this contract, are likely to impact other areas of DWP service provision. For these reasons, as explained below, DWP considers the proposed extension to be justifiable under Regulation 72 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, namely Regulation 72(1)(b), 72(1)(c) and 72(1)(e) Technical (including interoperability) reasons prevent a change of contractor: Significant elements of the CMG IT estate are based on tightly coupled, highly customised Commercial Off the Shelf products. Detailed functional knowledge of the customisations to support CMG’s processes is required in addition to product knowledge. This functional knowledge rests with the incumbent supplier. Transferring responsibility for managing, supporting and modifying the solution to another supplier without having completed CMG’s planned key business and transformation initiatives would therefore carry a high risk of disruption to service continuity, with elements that another supplier may be unable to support or replicate. A change of contractor would cause significant inconvenience: Transition to a new supplier before 31 March 2021 would have led to inevitable service disruption of the critical public services delivered by the Child Maintenance Scheme (CMS) 2012 System which is underpinned by the CMS2012 application resulting in significant inconvenience to DWP. Unforeseen circumstances: The COVID-19 pandemic is an event that DWP could not have foreseen. The impact of COVID-19 resulted in the decision to extend the contract rather than re-compete during 2020 as COVID-19 delayed delivery of all CMG planned work. No alteration in the overall nature of the contract: The variation will extend the length/increase the value of the contract but will not alter the nature of the contract. Any increase in price does not exceed 50% of the value of the original contract: The maximum value for the extension period will be limited to £14.58m. The original published contract value was £36m, and the extension value will therefore fall within the 50% threshold. No substantial change: Aside from length and value, there will be no changes made to the contract’s terms.