Duo of firms picked for year-long deals

The Government Digital Service has awarded £800,000 contracts to two suppliers to provide SMS messaging services for the GOV.UK Notify platform.

London-based Mobile Marketing Group and Surrey firm FireText both signed year-long contracts with GDS on 18 January. The two companies will support public sector organisations in sending text messages via the GOV.UK Notify messaging tool.

“GOV.UK Notify is a multi-channel digital communications platform that UK public sector service teams can use to send emails, text messages, and letters to users of their service,” GDS said. “These messages will typically be status updates, requests for action, receipts of applications or supporting information, and reminders.”

Notify is used by 164 public sector organisations to deliver messages to citizens about 553 different services. Since its launch in 2016, it has been used to send a total of 33.3 million SMS messages, as well as 230 million emails.

Daily SMS totals often exceed 100,000, and on Friday 27 January Notify sent 197,000 text messages.