Central Digital Architecture & Associated Services Contract - RM3804

Description

The Pension Schemes Act 2021 and The Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022 (as amended by The Pensions Dashboards (Amendment) Regulations 2023) sets out the requirement for pension providers and schemes to connect to the pension dashboards system. It also empowers the Money and Pensions Service ("MaPS") through the Pensions Dashboards Programme ("PDP"), to create pensions dashboards standards with the approval of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The legislation sets out a single statutory long-stop connection deadline of 31 October 2026 (the "Statutory Deadline").

MaPS is party to a Central Digital Architecture & Associated Services contract (the "Contract") with Capgemini UK PLC ("CG") to deliver the major components of the digital architecture, including the pension finder service (PFS), the consent and authorisation service, and the governance register, that will enable the PDP to operate. 

The Contract was procured via a call off from RM3084 - Technology Services 2.  The Contract as awarded contains two optional extension periods of 1 year each 

The value of the Contract has now been uplifted by £15,000,000 for additional services, which are now necessary for successful project delivery, that were not included in the original contract award.

Additional work is required under the Contract to develop the central digital architecture to include key components required to ensure that the programme can enable pension providers and schemes to meet their statutory obligations. Namely, to connect to the dashboards system by the statutory deadline of 31 October 2026, having regard to the staged timetable in guidance issued by DWP, and to maintain that connection. This has resulted in new Statements of Work ("SoW") being awarded to CG for the additional work required, charged as "time and materials", and an increase in value of £15,000,000 (approximately 26%). 

CG as the incumbent supplier is the only provider who can undertake these additional SOW under the Contract. This is due to technical reasons due to the requirements of interoperability with the existing ecosystem equipment and installations. Introducing an alternative provider for the additional services would require:

•	knowledge transfer and upskilling, over a relatively short timescale, of the existing technology build that they would be doing additional development work on;
•	a period of dual running of personnel during onboarding to enable knowledge transfer between roles; and
•	additional management overhead, due to managing multiple suppliers for delivery.

MaPS is therefore satisfied that any change of contractor would cause significant inconvenience, delay and additional cost to the programme and would put the connection of pension providers and schemes by their statutory Deadline at substantial risk.

Therefore, this notice is issued to update the revised contract award notice 8bcf5892-9c31-4e44-a23a-82e1fd4e6e0c  with the new Total Contract Value.