01816B Provision of Fibre Backhaul to SPS Establishments (COVID-19)

Description

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, SPS was required to implement a telephony solution (including the provision of mobile phone handsets and a mobile device management system) to improve current communication arrangements for those in our care to maintain family contact. Due to varying mobile phone signal strengths across all SPS prison sites, a fibre backhaul connection would provide SPS with the ability to increase the number of concurrent calls to be made by those in our care and improve the overall service. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a profound impact on many aspects of the Scottish Prison Service’s daily operations. This included the need to place restrictions on the prison regime in the interests of the health and wellbeing of those living and working in establishments in Scotland. A number of decisions were necessarily made to curtail aspects of the prison regime in order to support effective social distancing measures. Once such measure was the temporary cessation of prison visits. This, alongside limited access to existing shared telephones, severely limited the ability of those in our care to make contact with family and friends. SPS therefore identified an urgent requirement to increase access for those in our care to make telephone contact with family and friends. SPS urgently procured an in-cell telephony solution based on mobile phones via a dedicated and uncontended private network and managed through local mobile device management systems (MDMS). To provide coverage and capacity across the entire prison estate and to handle the anticipated call volumes, SPS also required to procure fibre backhaul services. The desired timescales available for implementing fibre backhaul were restricted, especially when operational stability was a primary concern. Therefore, SPS made the strategic decision to expedite the award of this contract by making a direct award under the Crown Commercial Services Framework RM3808.