The Provision of Electronic Human Resource and Related ICT Services for the Northern Ireland Civil Service (e-HR Programme)

Concepts

• northern ireland civil service
• belfast
• personnel and payroll
• provision of electronic human resource
• data services
• related ict services
• e-hr programme
• software services
• e-hr
• hr services

Location

Belfast

Description

Following an open competition (advertised in the Official Journal of the EU in 2003), the Department of Finance (DoF) entered into a Strategic Partnering Agreement (SPA) with Fujitsu on 29 March 2006 for the provision of Electronic Human Resource and related ICT Services for the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) and a number of Non Departmental Public Bodies. The SPA (known as e-HR) provided an end to end fully managed solution for the provision of payroll and HR services. The system is heavily customised to align to its users' wide range of HR policies and procedures. The SPA expires on 29 March 2021.

Ammendments to Previous Notice

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 79631000 - Personnel and payroll services
• 72300000 - Data services
• 72260000 - Software-related services
• 72510000 - Computer-related management services
• 72253200 - Systems support services
• 79414000 - Human resources management consultancy services
• 79400000 - Business and management consultancy and related services
• 79410000 - Business and management consultancy services

Indicators

• Contract modified due to additional needs.

Legal Justification

The eHR Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) is a fully managed contract for the provision of payroll and HR systems and services. It has become necessary to maintain the current system and services beyond the contract's expiry date (i.e 29 March 2021). As such DoF has modified the contract with effect from 29 March 2021 in accordance with Regulation 72(1)(b) for the following reasons: (i) the existing contractor provides a fully managed service for a broad and complex range of payroll, HR and related ICT services (including, without limitation, on-going management, operation and maintenance support), underpinned by computer hardware, software and associated products; (ii) the Oracle solution has been heavily customised to align with the NICS HR policies and procedures and the current contractor has acquired the necessary intellectual property and know how to maintain and develop the system; (iii) a change of contractor for this critical managed service, for a relatively short period of time, during which replacement contract(s) will be procured and implemented, would introduce an unacceptable risk of system failure and will cause substantial duplication of costs and significant inconvenience to the contracting authority and a potential disruption to public services.

Other Information

For completeness the Department of Finance published a voluntary transparency notice (ref 2021/S 053-134593) to alert economic operators to the Department's intention to modify contract ref P17980. The contract modification was concluded on 29 March 2021 and will extend the contract for a maximum of 6 years (4 years with 2 annual options to extend). The estimated value of the extension is GBP 58.2 million for 4 years; GBP 72.8 million for 5 years and GBP 86.8 million for 6 years.