Legal case management system
The proposed contract for the above will be between £5,000
and £74,999.99.
Legal Services have agreed that it is appropriate that this
requirement be waived for the following reason(s):
A Obtaining three price quotes is not appropriate
4. DETAIL
I can confirm that, despite non-compliance with the requirement to
seek at least three quotes, the award of this contract to the above
supplier will be best value for the Council for the following
reason(s):
A contract was awarded to Iken in January 2019. Iken is a market
leader in local authority case management systems. Legal have been
unable to identify equivalent desktop local government Legal case
management system suppliers. Competing suppliers of this form of
service have entered the market with cloud based solutions which
are available to procure via cloud software framework agreements
(e.g. the Crown Commercial Digital Marketplace). The Legal team has
investigated using a cloud based system in the alternative,
including viewing a demonstration of cloud based online legal case
management software and consulted with Devon County Council’s
legal team which is moving onto a cloud based supplier after a
lengthy procurement process. Cloud based legal case management
software appears to not yet be a suitable alternative for our team,
the systems are not yet fully developed so as to provide an clear
benefit to officers in the Legal team, and are a substantial uplift
in price from our existing desktop solution and which, we
understand, will not deliver comparable savings from freeing up
server space and ICT officer time. The contract with Iken
demonstrably represents good value for money versus cloud-based
solutions and any move to an alternative desktop system would
invoke transfer costs, would be designed for a private sector,
rather than public sector, workplace, so may not be fit for purpose
and place extensive pressures on officer time.