News: 1613038528

The UK government has made a £2bn contract award for "Digital Outcomes and Specialists" as part of a one-year framework agreement.

The deals, agreed by the Cabinet Office's Crown Commercial Service, were developed to attract suppliers to "help research, test, design, build, release, iterate, support or retire a digital service," according to a [1]contract award notice .

[2]

The government-wide agreements are to be made available to UK public-sector bodies. It is set to last for an initial 12 months with an optional 12-month extension.

The total value of the deals is valued at up to £2bn, but the government was at pains to emphasise this was only an estimate. "We cannot guarantee to suppliers any business through this Commercial Agreement," the contract notice said.

[3]

The award has been split into four lots. The winner of the first lot, with a value of £140m, is Browser London, a Shoreditch-based company which claims to be a "specialists in user-led digital experiences, products and apps".

Lot number two goes to Xonetic, a company which claims to "harness digital energy", in a deal currently calculated at £575m. The lot is looking for agile coaches, user researchers, front-end developers, business analysts, designers, and developers among many others.

The third lot has been won by Super User Studio, a digital design agency based in the City of London. For its contract of up to £5m, it should carry out user research to help "inform the development of all government digital services".

Lastly, a company called Users Needs Ltd, based in Nottingham, has won a contract for up to £20m for something called "User Research Participants".

According to the contract notice, that means research to "develop a deep knowledge of who the service users are and what that means for the design of the service" and more. Users Needs Ltd was incorporated in 2018. Most recent accounts [4]recorded a turnover of £42k and it employs one person, director Shila Odedra, seemingly [5]a former lead user researcher at tax collector HMRC . Users Needs Ltd has yet to build a website.

[6]

Crown Commercial Services takes a 1 per cent commission on all public sector spending that is routed through the frameworks it organises. ®

Get our [7]Tech Resources



[1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:070717-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_business/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YCUOTTlPnSWLY-UiJjFe9gAAAFQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_business/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YCUOTTlPnSWLY-UiJjFe9gAAAFQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11509382/filing-history

[5] https://hmrcdigital.blog.gov.uk/author/shila-odedra/

[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_business/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YCUOTTlPnSWLY-UiJjFe9gAAAFQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/