The purpose of this report is to obtain approval to procure and award a new contract for the provision of wide area network (WAN) services for Herefordshire Council and its partners.

1                 To ensure that the service requirements for the Herefordshire WAN are competitively tendered, allowing time for a smooth transition of services prior to the end of the current contract on the 31^th March 2018.

2                 To ensure the new contract duration enables the opportunity for delivery of improved services and reduced costs of up to an estimated 15% on the current annual service charges. Any reductions identified may be reinvested to fund service improvements subject to agreement by the stakeholders.

Option 1 – Do Nothing: Under this scenario the council’s contract with Updata Infrastructure Ltd (Updata) would end on 31 March 2018, Updata would have due cause to cease the data connectivity services to the council and its partners. This option is therefore not recommended

Option 2 – procure WAN services for Herefordshire council only. This option would be a regressive step in relation to technology enabling integration between the council and other public service providers in the county. The objective to continuously aggregate services where feasible in order to benefit from economies of scale across public sector organisations should be maintained.   In addition the council would lose the contributions made by partner organisations for the core network. This option is therefore not recommended.

Option 3 (Recommended) – Re-procure the current contract and enable the inclusion of additional services to meet the needs to the council and partner organisations.  This would enable the council and NHS partners to continue to strategically facilitate the objectives associated to delivering efficiencies related to public sector spending by testing the market for better value, aggregating common services to benefit from economies of scale and by minimising ICT barriers to delivering a more seamless service to the communities that are served.