ESFA030 - ICT SERVICES TRANSFORMATION

East Sussex Fire Authority (the Authority) seeks a long term partner to provide its IT services. The partner is expected to take over existing services, improving their stability and resilience to form a firm foundation on which to build new services to support our future business requirements.

The team of approximately 800 staff (650 firefighters and 150 support staff) serves a population of over 800,000 residents. The Authority serves an area of 179,000 hectares from 24 fire stations across East Sussex, supported by a Headquarters in Eastbourne, a joint control centre in Haywards Heath, a training centre in Maresfield, and three engineering workshops attached to stations. Our Information Management Department of 15 current staff manages over 1000 devices, and fields more than 600 service calls per month.

Information Technology is central to our ambitious programme of business change – it will deliver the tools to improve processes, drive down costs, enabling our people to work more flexibly, and to work better with other organisations. The Supplier partner will help us to deliver the right technologies and services progressively to meet these requirements. The initial focus will be on adopting existing services and consolidating them to improve stability and support. From this new foundation, enhancements to make better use of the toolset will be implemented, and the portfolio of services will be expanded. The Supplier will, amongst other requirements: • Take on the management, maintenance and development of the current IT estate. • Help to develop a roadmap for the transformation of our IT services to support our business strategy. • Provide a full range of technical, commercial and management services for IT. • Provide a wide range of business and management consultancy services, including for strategy and architecture design, process reengineering and information security. • Maintain and demonstrate best value for the IT service over the life of the contract, including through partnerships with specialist providers. • Develop closer integration between our systems. • Migrate custom application functionality to strategic platforms, and support the development of new functionalities through the most appropriate means • Develop our data warehouse and reporting technologies. • Work with us to implement proven technologies to support mobile and delivered desktop working. • Where appropriate, work with us to recruit the right staff to work with you • Support and develop our telephony and paging services The awarding authority does not commit to letting contract(s) for any of the above, should it become evident that it is not economically advantageous to do so.

Additional information: It is anticipated that the initial term of the agreement will be 7 years with the possibility of extensions of 1+1+1 years, making a total of 10 years maximum. In addition, the Supplier is expected to provide service for up to a further 1 year to manage migration to a successor supplier.

Contract term is subject to dialogue with bidders. Suppliers will be expected to deliver services that demonstrate a best value approach. There will be a Suppliers Briefing Day to be held, provisionally in Uckfield, Sussex, on 11th August 2015.

Further information is available in the Authority’s draft Descriptive Document. East Sussex Fire Authority is a Public Authority within the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and all correspondence received will be dealt with in accordance with the Act. The Authority (including successors to its functions and organisations created as a result of re-organisation or organisational changes) is procuring the public contract on behalf of itself and the following bodies delivering public services (Partner Organisations): Fire & Rescue Services in England, as listed at http://www.cfoa.org.uk/10007. Sussex Police Any such Partner Organisation will be entitled, with the prior written consent, of and through the Authority, to access the contract and require services to be delivered to it by the appointed organisation on the same or substantially the same terms and conditions as agreed with the Authority. The Contracting Authority intends to use an e-Tendering system for this procurement process: uk.eu-supply.com Supplier registration is free of charge.

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East Sussex Fire Authority is the Contracting Authority covering all contracts executed for use by the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service.