T117 Digital Services Platform – Support, Maintenance and Enhancement

Description

Northern Ireland Water is responsible for the supply and distribution of drinking water and the provision of sewerage services for approximately 840,000 domestic, agricultural and business customers across Northern Ireland. Background and Context NI Water has an established Digital Services platform that underpins high volume, customer facing and internal services, supporting both external users and staff across multiple directorates. The current Digital Services platform comprises: • a public facing customer self service portal, and • an enterprise case management and workflow solution, integrated with a range of legacy and modern systems supporting operational, financial and regulatory processes. The existing contract for the delivery of these services is approaching expiry. NI Water therefore intends to undertake a competitive procurement to appoint a delivery partner to provide ongoing support, maintenance, transition and enhancement services, and to enable the platform to evolve in line with future business needs. Nature of the Requirement The appointed supplier will be expected to support a live, business critical platform, ensuring continuity of service while enabling controlled change and improvement. The scope of services is expected to include (high level summary): • Application support and maintenance • Incident, defect and service request management • Transition and knowledge transfer activities at contract commencement • Fixed price, milestone based enhancement delivery • Release, change and testing management in line with NI Water governance • Information governance, cyber security and regulatory compliance • Performance reporting and participation in governance forums Further detail will be provided during the formal procurement process. Future Direction NI Water intends to deliver a rolling programme of enhancements over the life of the contract, prioritised in line with business need, funding approval and governance. NI Water’s objective is to work with a supplier that can: • take over and operate a live enterprise digital estate with minimal disruption, and • support the continuous, controlled evolution of the platform over the contract term.