Covid-19 Test Digital Platform

Concepts

• information technology
• leeds
• deloitte llp
• digital platform
• live service of a digital platform
• national test service
• covid-19 test
• provision of digital solution design
• covid-19 testing
• tests

Location

The services will be delivered remotely by the supplier however the supplier will comply with reasonable requests to co-locate where practical to facilitate integration of the services

Description

Contract with Deloitte LLP for the provision of digital solution design, build and live service of a digital platform, ordering portals and mobile applications to support the Covid-19 National Test Service. The services provided under this contract support the digital and data journey for Covid-19 testing, currently amounting to millions of tests each week, and have introduced new capabilities as the testing programme has evolved to support the pandemic response.

Total Quantity or Scope

Please see the description provided at section II.1.4). The estimated contract value is GBP 51 000 000.

Award Detail

Renewal Options

The contract has an initial period expiring on 31 March 2021 and includes an option to extend the contract by way of variation. The changing pressures of the pandemic due to the new variants in circulation and the increased rate of spread of the virus are both factors contributing to the criticality of ensuring that the testing services continue uninterrupted. Therefore, it is envisaged that the option to extend the contract is likely to be utilised to ensure there is no interruption to service, as this poses a significant risk to public health.

Award Criteria

CPV Codes

• 72000000 - IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Indicators

• Options are available.
• Award on basis of price and quality.

Legal Justification

1) The Covid-19 outbreak is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern as declared by the World Health Organisation on 30 January 2020. The UK Government’s response to the national emergency posed by Covid-19 included putting in place arrangements for large-scale testing for Covid-19 on an urgent basis. 2) Upon transition of responsibility of the Digital Delivery Lead role, NHS Digital awarded the contract to the supplier following the supplier’s prior engagement with DHSC. 3) NHS Digital is satisfied the tests permitting use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication (Regulation 32(2)(b(ii)) are met: A. The works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator as competition is absent for technical reasons: due to the highly bespoke nature of the testing services and the criticality of ensuring that the testing services continued uninterrupted, at the stage of contract award, the supplier was the only economic operator capable of facilitating the continuation of the testing services. It would be seriously counter-productive to the national effort to have carried out a procurement in respect of some or all of the workstreams being undertaken by the existing provider and/or that any attempt to potentially transition between providers in the context of ensuring that the relevant work progresses with appropriate rapidity could have led to material avoidable delay or risk of disruption to the service and the ability to access data which could have had a fundamental impact on the provision of testing services to citizens in England. B. No reasonable alternative or substitute exists – the continuation of the testing services was and is critical to England’s response to the Coronavirus outbreak and the containment of the spread of the virus. If the existing supplier was unable to continue in the short-term to provide the services due to the transition of responsibility to another provider identified by NHS Digital, this could have had a catastrophic impact on the success of the TTCE strategy and may have resulted in further spreading of the virus due to difficulties in testing and isolating those who have tested positive. C. The absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement – this procurement is part of a procurement strategy by the UK government to provide a stable and effective digital testing platform to meet demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Other Information

Following signature of the original contract, a contract variation was entered into on 12 February 2021 in order to reflect an increase in the scope of services being provided. Pursuant to this contract variation, the maximum contract value was increased to GBP 51 000 000. Due to the character limit, further information in relation to section II.2.5) is set out in section VI.3). In addition to the sub-contracts referenced in V.2.5, the supplier also passes on to NHS Digital the charges at cost for a number of third party services. These third party services have an estimated value of GBP 2 000 000 and are included within the total contract value of GBP 51 000 000. The value likely to be subcontracted set on in V.2.5 has been calculated on the basis of the subcontracts set out in V.2.5, as well as the value of the third party services. These third party services include toolsets for the management of the software development process, as well as AWS cloud infrastructure for both non-production and production environments, used to deploy and host the web portal and iOS applications. The material third party suppliers providing services at the contract award date are as follows (the threshold for materiality is based on third parties providing services with an aggregate spend under the contract above GBP 10 000): — Atlassian — AWS — BrowserStack — Scandit — Micro Focus Fortify — ServiceNow — UIPath It is the intention of NHS Digital to transition the contracts for these third party services in-house in the future. Scandit was transitioned to NHSD with effect from 1 December 2020 and as at the date of this notice, the other third party services are under review. In relation to section II.2.5), the contract was awarded to the supplier upon transition of responsibility of the Digital Delivery Lead role, due to the supplier’s prior engagement with DHSC. Due to the highly bespoke nature of the testing services and the criticality of ensuring that the testing services continued uninterrupted, the supplier was engaged to facilitate continuity of service and transfer of responsibility from DHSC to NHS Digital. NHS Digital originally submitted its Contract Award Notice for publication in OJEU on 3 February 2021. However, due to technical difficulties with Tenders Electronic Daily this notice was not published. NHS Digital made the decision to proceed with publication on Find a Tender to ensure it was meeting its transparency obligations. The technical issue has now been rectified and NHS Digital has been able to proceed with its delayed publication of this CAN.