Postal and telecommunications services

Tender description

The existing contract is for Vodafone provided Government Convergence Framework (GCF) services to be supplied from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2021. The GCF is the ‘intelligent core’ of the Public Services Network (PSN) which is used for secure communication by numerous bodies across the public sector. This extension will extend the email relay and filtering services (one of four lots) for use by those public sector bodies that still have a limited requirement for this legacy technology. The new one year extension covers a period during which these bodies will transition away to new email services sourced from the open telecommunications and software markets. The email relay service enables users of the PSN to communicate securely with each other and third parties via email. Users comprise multiple public sector bodies across central government and the wider public sector (e.g. local government). The email filtering services are used by the same user group and scan PSN email communications for dangerous content such as suspicious website links and spam email. The extension will be awarded to Vodafone. This is legacy technology and a previous further competition to replace the technology provided in this lot attracted no bidders. Service continuity is required to enable transition of remaining users to open market replacement solutions.