Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2020-04-10
Buyer: Cambridge City Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
CPV classification: 48450000

Technical requirements: Cambridge City Council intend to procure a HR and Payroll Information system on behalf of Cambridge City Council, Huntingdonshire District Council and South Cambridgeshire Districts Council. This system should be a modern cloud SaaS based solution aligned to the Council’s ICT strategy. To allow for back office functions and transactions to be processed end to end within the system. Produces management information which supports strategic decision and operational activity -dashboards and bespoke reporting functionality. It must have an intuitive UX, enabling low-tech-skills user access and interaction without formal training.
Allowing employees to update their own personal information directly and giving remote access to Council polices via self-service. The solution will support some of the Council’s social values such as moving towards a paperless solution.
The Councils are seeking to establish a long-term partnership with a supplier and a solution which is HMRC, LGPS and GDPR compliant.
The current solution was implemented in 2004. The solution was Resource Link supported by Northgate who provide HR/Payroll, Recruitment, L&D solutions on a hosted Northgate environment and Huntingdon who host internally.
The main drivers for change is the HR/payroll platform are compliance, process efficiencies anda fit for purpose modern cloud based HRIS system.
The Council requires separate data sets and codes. All data should be attributed and limited to the relevant Council. The Councils may desire to share information across boundaries, but this must be under their control. If necessary, appropriate controls should be available to silo access to one organisation, share some information or share all. The system should have the flexibility to allow for future expansion and mergers of the Councils. (But retain the option to separate out this data as needed (e.g. FSA and LGPS returns, local KPI’s).
The provider must offer DBA services to maintain the database and included within the contract price. The solution must be backed up weekly, as a minimum and automatically to support any specified recovery time. Databases must be set up with transaction logging for point in time restoration
The fully responsive system must allow access from multiple devices including Windows PC’s, Windows virtual PCs, Windows laptops, Android and Apple iOS based mobile devices.
The ‘Council Anywhere’ Programme is standardising devices (Windows 10, Apple iOS), Remote Technologies (Global Protect) and Office 365.
The system should work with Microsoft Office packages. Any plugin must support 32-bit and 64-bit installs. The system must work with Office 365 ProPlus and Exchange Online. All user devices have Office ProPlus locally installed as standard. Exchange is configured with a hybrid server, on-premise for SMTP relay. The system must support OS updates within six months of release.
The solution must be compatible with remote access architecture with more flexible working, solutions need to be accessed from multiple locations. The solution must be compatible with both WAN and VPN access. Palo Alto Global Protect is used on devices away from the LAN.
Audit: The system should provide a full audit log of all transactions, including any changes made. This should include but is not limited to the details of the person (or user ID), date and time, changes made and actions taken. This information should be available as a standard report within the system. It should be possible report and apply filters such as specific time period, specific user, etc.
System integrations: The system should interface with several existing systems. Details of specific interface requirements will be provided in detailed a specification document.
Common, fully documented and supported 2-way, read/write web service API’s, preferably secure web services (Web API preferred but SOAP acceptable) and open integration with no proprietary interfaces.
These must allow access to all customer data fields within the application and provide extensible methods for adding any additional fields added by the service through use of the system. API version changes should be non-breaking where possible. If a breaking change is required, the Council must be provided with at least 3-6 months’ notice of this change becoming mandatory.