Employment support products for JCS

Background:

The Get Britain Working (GBW) White Paper, co-authored by the Secretaries of State for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), Department for Education (DfE) and His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), sets out plans to set the country on a path to bring down economic inactivity and improve employment outcomes.

A key enabler is to reform Jobcentre Plus (JCP) through the creation of a new single and universal Jobs and Careers Service (JCS). JCS will provide support for anyone who is looking for work, who wants to get on in work, or who wants to change their career or retrain. It will be a service that values employer engagement, working with employers to understand and support their current and future recruitment needs.

Among the key objectives of JCS are:

• Creating a digital, universal and fully inclusive service; and,
• Providing high-quality personalised support to help people into work, support training and get on in work.

Requirements / Contract subject-matter:

DWP Digital teams are progressing digital activity which will underpin JCS and DWP is keen to explore third party solutions which could support this new digital service.

The engagement will cover a wide range of requirements. DWP has defined 12 areas of employment support which we are keen to explore suitable products for, including AI solutions.

JCS Employment Support categories:

The JCS ‘Employment Support’ categories are listed below:

• ES01 - Career advice
• ES02 - Career planning
• ES03 - Skills gap analysis
• ES04 - Financial planning
• ES05 - Career coaching
• ES06 - Learning / Training / Provision
• ES07 - Job discovery
• ES08 - Job market insights
• ES09 - CV support
• ES10 - Job application support
• ES11 - Application tracking
• ES12 - Interview support

DWP is conducting this preliminary market engagement to help develop the requirements and the strategy/approach for any future procurements for products/services that would align to the JCS Employment Support categories.

Following this preliminary market engagement, DWP may decide to run multiple procurements (with each procurement covering an individual or a group of Employment Support categories), either in parallel or in a phased approach, in line with the priorities of the JCS programme.

Suppliers are invited to participate even if they are only interested in specific components of the wider scope.

Due to the early stage of this engagement and the fact that it could relate to numerous separate procurements, there are certain aspects of any associated procurement activities that are yet to be determined. As a result, there are some sections of this notice which cannot be completed at this time. Where this is the case, we have stated in the relevant field that the information is “To be determined.” The following points are examples of areas that still need to be determined:

• Procurement procedure: will any resulting procurements be above or below the relevant threshold – to be determined.
• Is a dynamic market or framework being established – to be determined.
• Total Contract Value (estimated) – to be determined.
• Contract start dates, end dates and extension options – to be determined (please ignore the start date of 01/01/2027 and end date of 31/12/2027 that are showing on this notice).
• Publication date of the tender or transparency notice – to be determined.