Contract Award Unix Support Services
North Lanarkshire Council · 29 August 2022
Back to Enterprise, Growth and Fair Work Committee — 29 August 2022 and its agenda
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North Lanarkshire Council Report Enterprise, Growth and Fair Work Committee Does this report require to be approved? ☒ Yes ☐ No Ref JMcB/KH Date 29/08/22 Contract Award – Unix Support Services From Head of Business & Digital Email hassellk@northlan.gov.uk Telephone 07903 096121 Executive Summary Following consideration and approval by the former Transformation and Digitisation Committee in November 2021, the Council insourced its ICT Service Delivery Contract from Wipro Holdings (UK) Ltd (Wipro) effective April 2022. In recommending operations be insourced, Business and Digital identified Unix skills as an area of risk, advising termination assistance would be sought from Wipro in the first instance to maintain continuity of maintenance and support of the Unix Server estate pending a longer-term procurement exercise. Such maintenance and support therefore remained the responsibility of Wipro Ltd under transitional support arrangements, at a monthly cost of £20,000. The current arrangements are no longer sustainable however due to staffing changes within Wipro Ltd, with an alternative arrangement now required as a matter of urgency. The award of the Contract was completed by conducting a direct award using the Negotiated Tender Procedure (NTP) procedure, in accordance with Regulation 33 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and the Council’s General Contract Standing Order (GCSO) 9.4.1. This award was a reactive measure to address immediate support requirements. Recommendations Members of the Committee are requested to: (1) Acknowledge the synergies with Datavita as outlined in the report. (2) Approve the award of the contract to Datavita Ltd for the value of one hundred and forty eight thousand, one hundred and eighty five Pounds Sterling (£148,145) exclusive of VAT through the NTP procedure. (3) Otherwise note the report. The Plan for North Lanarkshire Priority All priorities Ambition statement All ambition statements
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1. Background 1.1 On 1 April 2022 the managed ICT Service Delivery Contract, which had been under contract with Wipro Ltd was insourced. At that time the support of the Unix estate remained under contract with Wipro Ltd as part of the contract termination assistance. 1.2 The service provides maintenance and support of the Unix server estate and underlying operating system. The Council has 4 Enterprise Class Unix servers on which key applications are deployed including: (i) Housing Management System (HSMS) – which includes modules for the management of Housing and Property Repairs, Homelessness, Anti-Social Behaviour, Rent Accounting and Housing Allocations; (ii) Social Work Information System (MySwis) - which includes modules for the management of Social Work Cases, Justice and Home Care; (iii) Planning and Building Control (UNI-form); (iv) Financial Management (eFinancials); (v) Municipal Bank and Home Insurance. 1.3 As advised to the former Transformation and Digitisation Committee in May and November 2021, the Council did not have Unix support capabilities and resources in- house and would therefore need to seek ongoing third-party provision. To maintain immediate continuity though, these support services were continued through Wipro’s transitional support arrangements following insourcing of the main contract. 1.4 Any service failure in the underlying Unix hardware or operating system on which these applications are deployed would have a severe impact on our ability to deal with critical situations and help vulnerable groups within our community, impacting negatively on customers and our reputation. 2. Report 2.1 The management and support services being procured were previously provided by a Service Delivery Partner, Wipro Ltd, whose contract with NLC ended on 31st March 2022. Under the Termination Assistance clause, Wipro Ltd will continue to provide support for up to 6 months on a rolling monthly basis. The costs associated with this are approximately £20,000 per month. 2.2 HFD Datavita Limited are the providers of our secondary data centre facilities which includes 2 of the 4 Unix servers, amongst other Windows based servers, all of which are used for high availability, fail-over and disaster recovery capabilities. 2.3 HFD Datavita Limited have the capability to supply a managed service for this support, however, this was not part of the initial procurement for Datacentre hosting. There is clear synergy between these two requirements that is uniquely beneficial to the Council. The current contract with HFD Datavita Limited is about to enter year 3 of 3 with a potential 1-year extension.
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2.4 The Council will continue to require a secondary hosting environment for the foreseeable future and will be conducting a further procurement for hosted services before the end of this financial year, it is intended that this will include additional requirements such as Unix support. 2.5 This NTP proposes that a 1 year contract be awarded to HFD Datavita Limited for Unix support services, so that the proposed future procurement can then seek the most advantageous combined award. Due to the tight timescales and the high costs associated with the transition support being provided by Wipro, the proposal that has been submitted by HFD Datavita Limited provides NLC with best value and allows NLC to obtain the required support from a trusted existing supplier. 2.6 The Wipro support that is currently in place was only intended to be a short-term measure as current support is provided by a single individual located in England. Unix support tends to be in high demand therefore giving rise to a major risk of our nominated resource finding employment elsewhere or being redeployed by Wipro internally. Indeed, the Council was recently advised this individual has submitted his notice at Wipro. He left the organisation on 5 August 2022, creating an emergency for the Council, given Wipro Ltd only had a single resource available with Unix support skills. 2.7 With this change in circumstances, Regulation 33 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 was invoked with a proposal for a 1-year NTP with HFD Datavita Limited. 2.8 Having followed the General Contract Standing Order (GCSO) and discussed the requirement, approved through the Enterprise Architecture Governance Group (EAGG), with the Heads of Asset and Procurement Solutions and Legal and Democratic Solutions, the Head of Business and Digital determined the Negotiated Tendering Procedure (NTP) was appropriate to use in this instance. 3. Measures of success (a) Supporting the works of the Digital Community, Digital Economy and Digital Council. 4. Supporting documentation N/A Katrina Hassell Head of Business and Digital
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5. Impacts ( http://connect/report-template-guidance ) 5.1 Public Sector Equality Duty and Fairer Scotland Duty Does the report contain information that has an impact as a result of the Public Sector Equality Duty and/or Fairer Scotland Duty? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? If Yes, has an assessment been carried out and published on the council’s website? https://www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/your-community/equalities/equality-and-fairer- scotland-duty-impact-assessments Yes ☐ No ☐ 5.2 Financial impact Does the report contain any financial impacts? Yes ☒ No ☐ All financial information is contained within the body of the report, with all insourcing costs – including Unix support – previously included within relevant reports to the former Transformation and Digitisation Committee. If Yes, have all relevant financial impacts have been discussed and agreed with Financial Solutions? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? 5.3 HR policy impact Does the report contain any HR policy or procedure impacts? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, have all relevant HR impacts have been discussed and agreed with People and Organisational Development? Yes ☐ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? 5.4 Legal impact Does the report contain any legal impacts (such as general legal matters, statutory considerations (including employment law considerations), or new legislation)? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, have all relevant legal impacts have been discussed and agreed with Legal and Democratic Solutions? Yes ☐ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? 5.5 Data protection impact Does the report / project / practice contain or involve the processing of personal data? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, is the processing of this personal data likely to result in a high risk to the data subject? Yes ☐ No ☐ If Yes, has a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) been carried out and e- mailed to dataprotection@northlan.gov.uk Yes ☐ No ☐
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5.6 Technology / Digital impact Does the report contain information that has an impact on either technology, digital transformation, service redesign / business change processes, data management, or connectivity / broadband / Wi-Fi? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? Paragraph 1.2 details the business-critical nature of supporting the underlying Unix operation system. Where the impact identifies a requirement for technology, has an assessment been carried out (or scheduled) by the Enterprise Architecture Governance Group (EAGG)? Paragraph 2.8 confirms discussion has taken place at this key governance group. Yes ☒ No ☐ 5.7 Environmental / Carbon impact Does the report / project / practice contain information that has an impact on any environmental or carbon matters? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? 5.8 Communications impact Does the report contain any information that has an impact on the council’s communications activities? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? 5.9 Risk impact Is there a risk impact? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the key risks and potential impacts, highlighting where the risk(s) are assessed and recorded (e.g. Corporate or Service or Project Risk Registers), and how they are managed? Paragraph 1.2 highlights the business-critical nature of Unix support, which paragraph 2.6 above highlights is in high demand. Lack of Unix support therefore presents a major risk to Council operations. Whilst Regulation 33 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 appropriately permits a one-year NTP, scope for challenge may still exist given termination assistance from Wipro was a known factor.