Expression of Interest for DWP Disaster Emergency Payments Service (DEPS)

The purpose of this Expression of Interest is to invite representatives from potential supplier organisations to register their interest to participate in the upcoming tender DWP Disaster Emergency Payments Service (DEPS). The contract is due to commence on 1 December 2022.

Estimated timeline:

Tender Publication: 23 June 2022

Supplier Clarification: 23 June 2022 - 8 July 2022

Supplier Proposal Response Deadline: 25 July 2022

Evaluation of Supplier Responses: 1 August 2022 - 24 August 2022

Outcome Notification to Supplier: 22 September 2022

Contract Award: 4 October 2022

Go Live: 1 December 2022

The potential solution must be able to support DWP with a payment infrastructure to address a catastrophic event which prevents DWP from preparing and issuing payments files. The Department could be vulnerable to external risk such as cyber security threats which could result in the estate environment not being able to access the data and potentially unable to process and create the payment files. The potential solution which will be operating outside of DWP estate is crucial for the Department's risk mitigation strategy.

In general, DWP makes on average 2.5m customer payments per day, to a value of over £3bn per week. We are obliged to ensure that payments are credited to customer accounts on the due date, early or late payments cannot be tolerated. The secure, timely payment of benefits to our vulnerable customers is critical to DWP's business.

All potential solutions must be:

• Able to meet Industry Standards for Security Best practice, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus, FSA Security and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1

• Able to provide Management Information for reconciliation and audit purposes;

• Compliant with UK payment scheme(s) (e.g. BACS) rules and payment formats;

• Capable of operating nationally and be available for other Government Departments including Department for Communities and Scottish Government.

The duration of the contract is expected to be 36 months with 2 x 12 month optional extensions.

If you are interested in participating in the upcoming tender, please register your interest on Jaggaer (reference: pqq_28887) by 12:00, Friday 10 June 2022.

Link to register: https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/web/login.shtml

The Expression of Interest is being published in advance of a potential upcoming opportunity however suppliers should be aware that DWP is not committed to, nor guarantees a procurement at this stage. An Invitation to Tender will be issued should DWP proceed to a procurement. DWP reserves the right to withdraw or amend any intention to proceed to procurement stage at any time. Failure to register interest by the deadline will not result in exclusion from the bidding process.