The department has picked a provider to deliver digital and manual services for ingesting information over the course of a major contract that could last as long as eight years

The Department for Work and Pensions has signed a £125m long-term deal for a supplier to sort all incoming postal and email communication from citizens and provide a range of other digital and manual services for managing documents.

As of 30 July, the DWP has entered into an initial six-year contract with specialist firm Restore Digital. The agreement, which can be extended by up to two further years, is intended to offer “an end-to-end document management process”, according to a newly published commercial notice.

This process encompasses several elements, beginning with “envelope-level sortation where the supplier will undertake a high-level envelope sortation of all items received from citizens”.

Sorting will be based on a system of “1,100 non-geographic postcodes” created by the department.

“This high-level sortation facilitates finer sortation required at business unit and document level aligned to the DWP business rules,” the contract award notice says.

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The mail-sorting provision will be supplemented by “a digital mailroom service where the supplier will undertake post opening, document sortation, scanning, indexing and digital ingestion of all DWP’s inbound written and electronic communications from citizens”. Restore Digital will be expected to provide all necessary software licences required to support this service, “such as those required for optical character recognition to index items that are scannable and readable”, according to the notice.

The final core element covered by the contract is “a records management service where the supplier will manage all DWP hard-copy document storage from the perspective of both a short-term, post-scan storage, and a longer-term hard-copy storage”. This will require the firm to deliver services to ensure “the secure storage, intake, maintenance, retrieval, and destruction of all DWP’s existing hard-copy citizen, staff, and corporate records”. All this activity must comply with the department’s formal policies on data retention.

According to a requirement specification released last year, the department stipulated that “to avoid any delays in handling and processing of items relating to DWP’s vulnerable citizens, likely to be incurred by any redirections, the DWP requires the MOU (Mail Opening Unit) to remain inside the Wolverhampton catchment area” where it is currently based.

The department originally estimated that the deal would be worth £86.2m, plus VAT, to the chosen provider. With the contract now signed, this value has risen to £105.5m – equating to about £126m, once tax is included.