20194: Appointment Booking System - Universal Credit full service

On Friday the 19th of May 2017, The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published an early market engagement notice for an Appointment Booking System. Following feedback received through this early engagement notice, an open future opportunity is now being published.

This contains a draft requirements questionnaire that is being made available for potential suppliers who are interested and/or have already expressed an interest in participating in the procurement process. The Department is engaging with the market to share information, and invite feedback on the requirements, in order to help develop the final Invitation to Tender (ITT) pack.

This market engagement exercise is also designed to ensure that the final ITT pack provides all potential suppliers with a clear understanding of the Department's requirements to help reduce the number of questions that may be raised during the procurement process, and therefore reducing the project timescale. To support the provision of Universal Credit full service (UCFS), the Department for Work and Pensions require an Appointment Booking System for the creation and management of claimants' appointments with DWP staff.

The Appointment Booking System will host staff locations, availability and skill sets which define the types of appointments the DWP staff are trained to handle. This information will be used to find a DWP member of staff, within a jobcentre, that is available and trained to handle the appointment.

There are currently 740 jobcentres across the UK and Northern Ireland, with over 10,000 DWP staff supporting claimants. Each member of DWP staff who support claimants will have a calendar in the Appointment Booking System.

When UCFS is fully rolled out in June 2018, it is anticipated that 25-30 million appointments will be created and managed on an annual basis via the Appointment Booking System. The Department will need a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year system with a service level agreement(SLA) that provides 99.90 percent availability, as the Appointment Booking System will be supporting the UCFS which allows claimants to access their online claim at any time.

The Appointment Booking System will be integrated into UCFS and its platforms. The entire booking process will be performed via the UCFS user interface.

Universal Credit will utilise the Appointment Booking System Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to create and manage appointments. Administration and Management functions are not expected to be integrated into UCFS.

Additional information: This draft requirements questionnaire forms part of the market engagement activity to support the procurement of the Appointment Booking System. Information supplied and any discussions throughout the duration of the market engagement process will not be subjected to formal evaluation or scoring.

To maximise the benefits from the market engagement and best inform the ITT and service requirements, suppliers are encouraged to participate and be as open and detailed in their responses as much as possible. This is not a shortlisting process and will not prejudice any future procurement exercise.

Please note the deadline for completing and returning this document is 17.30pm UK time on Thursday the 13th of July 2017. DWP will then analyse the responses and look to refine the functional and non-functional requirements ahead of a procurement process, expected to commence later this year. DWP may issue further documents and correspondence to support the development of the ITT.