Public procurement notice: Modification Of A Contract/Concession During Its Term
Published: 2022-06-24
Buyer: The Office of Government Procurement
Country: IE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 48000000 | 48517000 | 48900000 | 72222300: Information technology services | 72250000: System and support services

Technical requirements: Provision of a Payroll Solution for the Education and Training Boards (ETBs) Delivered as a Managed Service.
Please refer to the Request for Tender documents associated with the notice published on www.etenders.gov.ie (RFT #119116).
Provision of a Payroll Solution for the Education and Training Boards (ETBs) Delivered as a Managed Service
The Department of Education and Skills (“the Contracting Authority”) procured the services of COREHR (now Access Group) to provide, configure and implement an off-the-shelf web-enabled payroll solution, and associated managed services. This was for the delivery of payroll and travel and subsistence claims for the Education and Training Boards (ETB) sector, as the first shared service offered from the Contracting Authorities Education Shared Business Services (ESBS) Centre. The Contracting Authorities vision for the shared service centre is an environment which uses a single software solution for all common processing and this was outlined in the RFT.
The Contracting Authority previously modified the contract to expand the services to include payments to Apprentices, following a ruling from the Revenue Commissioners that payments to this group fall into the charge to income tax under schedule E of the Tax Consolidation Act, and as such require processing through a payroll system.
The Contracting Authority now needs to extend the payroll solution to service payments to a new separate cohort of payees –Learners. This change is necessary to standardise the calculation of PRSI and other deductions across the sector. These payments had previously been made either manually or using many different ETB payment systems across the sector.
Whilst the systems and methods of payments for Learners are fragmented and can be inefficient, (payments are processed manually in some cases), it was possible to operate in this way at the time that the existing contract was issued. However, in 2020 the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science was formed, and it has placed renewed emphasis on the Further Education and Training (FET) sector.
It is expanding FET programmes and setting new targets for recruitment of Learners into this sector, which increases the volume of Learners whose payments need to be processed. It is not feasible to continue with the inconsistent and fragmented approach that has been in place until now in the context of expanding numbers of Learners.
Additionally, some of the ETB local payment solutions currently in use are older and will approach end-of-life in the near future. In the context of recent cyber-attacks, there is risk entailed in continuing to use outdated software that in some cases will soon be unsupported.
The payroll solution will need to be configured so that this additional cohort of payees can be accommodated and the relevant attendance data, approval hierarchy information, daily rates and course payments be processed for these additional Learners. This modification will also provide additional and enhanced reporting capabilities.
The software required to process this new cohort of payees is identical to that already procured under the original RFT. Therefore, in line with the original aspirations set out in the RFT, the Department seeks to put these payees on the original solution to mitigate the risks inherent in continuing with systems that are not capable of supporting the expanded number of Learners envisaged.
The Contracting Authority estimates the total cost of the modification over the remaining life of the contract to be €2.0 million including implementation costs and managed service charges. This is less than 50% of the original contract award notice of €5.7 million. The Contracting Authority has evaluated this cost against other possible solutions and concluded that this option is the most economically advantageous option.
The proposed modifications are required to provide a standardised and secure payroll processing service for Learners that is capable of managing the increased volume of learners on FET training programmes envisaged by the Department of Further and Higher Education. The modifications will replace legacy systems for payroll processing, many of which are near end-of-life and will no longer be supported. Recent increases in cyber-attacks have increased the risk inherent in using out-dated software. Any system procured must be linked to the original system to achieve process and reporting interoperability. Processing all transactions through the same technology stack reduces the number of handover points and the possibility of errors as third party systems interact, and is a more secure approach. The proposed approach provides for a full end-to-end software solution with fit-for-purpose payroll functionality and has been determined to be the most economically and technically viable option.


Winner: Core HR