The Director of Strategy and Resources gave approval to commence a procurement exercise to establish a 3-year framework contract for resource augmentation within the Integrated Digital Service. IDS is seeking to award a contract to one or more qualified providers for cost effective and rapid augmentation services to support a number of ongoing and planned projects in a timely manner and at a cheaper cost than is currently possible.
This framework will reduce the time taken to secure additional resources and will reduce the need to continue to use contractors. IDS urgently needs to augment existing resources to support delivery of a number of major council change initiatives in a timely manner. Specifically, specialist technical resources are required to support:
• Over 215 programmes and projects in delivery with more waiting to start and currently in scoping. This includes major change initiatives including the Corporate Business Transformation (CBT) Programme, the Essential Services Programme (ESP), the Cloud Migration, Modernisation and Compliance Programme and the Drupal Web Replacement Programme
• Additional capacity in key posts that IDS has been unable to successfully recruit to.
• Additional capacity to existing teams where the volume of work outstrips available capacity.
IDS continues to struggle to recruit certain key posts that were identified as part of its Phase 2 structure. In addition, the volume of work is increasing and the gaps in capacity are severely impacting on IDS ability to deliver digital solutions required in a timely manner. Much of the work is required to support the financial challenge agenda. As the volume of work continues to grow and the urgency to deliver on key corporate transformational projects which support delivery of financial savings, IDS needs to be able to flex its resources up and down to meet demand in a timely manner whilst providing the best value for money.
IDS has used a mix of contractors and undertaken numerous tender exercises over the last 2 years to secure suppliers to deliver specific pieces of work. However, this mixed economy is time consuming to implement and manage and is not the most cost effective, value for money approach. The resource augmentation framework will allow the service to better manage demand and address resource needs. The framework will allow IDS to drive better pricing through economies of scale.