DWP Disaster Emergency Payments Service

The purpose of this Prior Information Notice is to invite representatives from potential supplier organisations to attend a closed virtual supplier engagement event. We are keen to engage with interested suppliers to present their innovative and creative solution to meet DWP's future disaster contingency payments needs and to help the Department make an informed strategic decision for future procurement activity.

DWP intends to host the event towards end of January 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. Hence, 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, as a baseline ISO 27001 and FSA Security

secure and resilient to potential fraudulent activity;

able to provide reporting for Management Information, reconciliation and audit purposes;

compliant with UK payment scheme(s) rules and payment formats;

capable of operating nationally and be available for other Government Departments including Department for Communities.

The duration of the contract is expected to be 2 - 3 years. The potential future supplier is expected to be able to work with our existing supplier to avoid any gap in service due to the criticality of this service.

If you are interested in meeting with DWP to discuss your potential solutions for a DWP disaster payment contingency service, please register your interest by Monday 17 January 2022 by e-mailing Lydia Chung - Lydia.chung@dwp.gov.uk

The event is being held in advance of a potential future procurement however suppliers should be aware that DWP is not committed to, nor guarantees a procurement at this stage. A further Prior Information Notice 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.