Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2016-02-16
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Corporate Services Transition Team
Country: UK
Region: UNITED KINGDOM
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 72222300: Information technology services | 75112000 | 79420000 | 79421000 | 79512000

Technical requirements: Following an earlier PIN published by MOD on 20.11.2014 (2014/S 226-399411) relating to soft market testing in respect of Defence Business Services (DBS), MOD is now considering a newly formulated alternative option, termed the ‘Corporate Service Integration and Innovation Provider’ (CSIIP), whereby a contractor would be appointed to manage, transform and integrate a number of services provided by DBS and other internal and external service providers.
The MOD is therefore issuing this PIN both to update the Market in respect of its potential plans for the future of DBS and to seek the market's views on the CSIIP option (through ‘soft market testing’).
The DBS organisation within MOD was established on 4.7.2011 by bringing together the Finance, Civilian HR, Vetting and some Knowledge and Information (K&I) services into a single shared service organisation, creating a centre of ‘shared service’ expertise. Subsequently, the Service Personnel and Veterans' Agency (SPVA), which provides support services to Armed Forces personnel and Veterans, was brought into the DBS organisation in April 2014.
A Management Partner was appointed to operate and transform the DBS organisation while, at the same time, making significant savings; contract CTLBC/1580 Defence Business Services Management Contract was placed on 14.3.2012 and will complete on 18.4.2016.
DBS's 2 700 staff deliver a range of Business Services within an operations budget in excess of 170 000 000 GBP making it 1 of the largest shared service operations in Europe.
Following previous market testing undertaken in 2015 (notified through the previous PIN referred to above), MOD has considered in more detail the options for DBS service delivery post-expiry of the current DBS Management Contract and has concluded that a full outsource of DBS as a single contract before 2018 may not represent best value for money and that a better solution might be achieved through an alternative commercial model — a ‘CSIIP’. MOD now wishes to informally explore the potential of this model with the Market more generally before proceeding with any formal competitive contract action. MOD is not currently contemplating an equity ‘Joint Venture’ arrangement (or similar) with 1 or more partners for the CSIIP.
Although subject to ongoing work, including internal approval processes, MOD aims to refine and confirm the CSIIP option through this market testing activity, then presuming the decision is taken to proceed with the CSIIP option, issue a Defence Contract Notice in the OJEU to initiate a competitive procedure in summer 2016, an Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) in late summer 2016 anticipating a contract award in summer 2017.
The CSIIP model has been specifically developed to deliver MOD's strategic goals within Departmental constraints and structurally is closely related to both the Global Business Services (GBS) model adopted by a number of private sector organisations, many of whom have a similarly mixed in-house and outsourced economy for delivery of shared services and a Service Integration and Management (‘SIAM’) function commonly used in IT outsourcing, both of which may be models which the market is familiar with.
The approach has been chosen as it has the potential to offer greater flexibility and agility in service delivery by enabling the incremental introduction of new services into DBS, and the potential outsourcing of current and new services on a service-by-service basis through further discrete contract action(s) in the future.
The CSIIP entity itself, which MOD is intending to procure, is intended to deliver the following requirements:
— Delivery of the management, continuous improvement and integration of services provided by multiple providers, both external and in-house, into an end-to-end user capability;
— Provision of an enduring transformation capability that can take on and transform additional services, alongside existing services;
— Provision of the ability to look across the Department and identify services suitable for transformation;
— The delivery of a number of shared service technology platforms including a multi-channel contact capability, an integrated MI capability and a service management and reporting capability;
— Provision of flexibility to take on additional services as the Department develops confidence in delivery.