Supplier sought to expand online platform to new agreements 

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The Crown Commercial Service is planning a £300,000 revamp of the online platform through which civil servants can book business travel.

The Digital Travel Solution (DigiTS) website, which launched last year, allows officials to book rail and air travel, hire venues, and arrange accommodation and other travel-related services. The site covers several commercial agreements, and allows users to connect directly to the booking platforms of CCS-approved suppliers. 

The procurement agency is seeking an external provider to fulfil a programme of work to fix a number of issues with the site, then expand it to cover some new frameworks.

The first phase of this work will cover “critical service improvements… and design [and] architecture fixes”. 

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This will be followed by integration work to extend the platform to allow users to book suppliers via the RM6013 Public Sector Vehicle Hire framework. The final phase of the project will see lot two of the Public Sector Global Travel and Venue Solutions framework added to DigiTS. That framework’s first lot is already served by the site.

The project, which will last four or five months in total, has an overall budget of £280,000 plus VAT, and is due to get underway on 21 February.

Suppliers are invited to bid for the work until midnight on 23 December.

The contract notice for the initial construction of DigiTS was first published in December 2017 – before being very swiftly withdrawn and reissued a couple of weeks later. The opportunity attracted bids from 12 suppliers, although there is no detail on the Digital Marketplace of who ultimately won the contract the fulfil the £200,000 development project.