25 Jan 2024

Event round-up: CCS Digital Capability for Health 2 Market Engagement Event

The event round-up including slides and recording of the CCS Digital Capability for Health 2 Market Engagement event that took place on Thursday 18 January.

On Thursday 18 January techUK was delighted to host the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) for their latest online supplier engagement session to help start shaping the new Digital Capability for Health 2 Framework Agreement (RM6345 DCfH 2). This agreement, which will replace RM6221, Digital Capability for Health, will continue to provide digital solutions for public health and care sectors.

CCS kicked off the event and introduced themselves, highlighting the fact that they are really interested in hearing thoughts from suppliers in this discovery phase for the new framework.

Key facts

The team ran through some key facts on digital capability for health.

This framework agreement is for the provision of application development and programme delivery for the health and social care sector. The team will be looking to award a space for suppliers who have demonstrable experience of managing unique data, and experience with complex interfaces, integration with different platforms, and technology stacks. The evaluation will take place through the use of award questions which will be part of the ITT pack.

The team would like to grow and broaden the pool of suppliers on the new agreement, but at this stage they do not have a capped figure or clear number in mind.

Suppliers were keen to know what is going to be on DCfH 2 that is currently not on DOS and DSP, and what makes it stand out is the inclusion of the health specific IT stack and the inclusion of additional security standards as part of the specification.

An update on previous supplier engagement

CCS has been running a series of engagement sessions from November 2023 to gather views and feedback from buyers and suppliers around what is working well and what improvements can be made in the future – also exploring the possibility of expanding the scope of this new agreement. They concluded that the intention for DCfH 2 at this stage is to have a single lot which will cover five service provisions including DevOps services and digital definition services.

Attendees then heard about the specifications and the scope of the agreement.

Social Value

CCS took attendees through the approach for applying Social Value to DCFH 2 which includes conducting market engagement to understand Social Value priorities and identifying the most relevant Social Value themes which make the most sense to the supply market selected to be included in the framework specification. They also went through Social Value in Further Competitions and how customers will address Social Value.

Carbon Net Zero, Prompt Payment and Modern Slavery

It is likely that all suppliers will be expected to have a Carbon Zero Plan in place and provided suppliers with further information on the government Carbon Net Zero procurement policy notes.

The Cabinet Office have also released a new Procurement Policy Note for Prompt Payment, further information of which can be found here.

Furthermore, DCfH 2 RM6345 will ensure that supply chains are compliant with regulation on slavery, forced labour and human trafficking. The details can be found here.

Next steps

Suppliers answered a series of questions via Menti before the team went through the next steps and proposed timelines.

Click here to download the slides from the event.

Please see below the recording of the event.