Purpose

This report recommends
approving the commissioning and procurement strategy and route to
market for the procurement of the Council’s Liberty Create
Low Code Platform contract.
 
The contract with the incumbent
supplier ends in March 2026. It is therefore necessary to procure a
new contract.
 
The Liberty Create Low Code
Platform has provided the foundation to build a wide range of
applications for services including, housing, Council forms, blue
badges, streets and more. The technology really proved its worth
during COVID, enabling the Council to quickly build and develop end
to end products, community and business support
applications.
 
The existing contract does not
allow for any further extensions. Our current contract for the
Liberty Create Low Code Platform expires on 28 March
2026.
 
There is a continuing
requirement to use the Liberty Create Low Code Platform to continue
to improve online services throughout the Council. For each online
process that is built on the platform there will be a positive
impact upon services in the council, as they will be built in a
user-centred way, designed to minimise processing tasks by making
use of good data management, automation, and collaboration between
teams. This should reduce the time it takes to resolve
cases
 
Failure to have entered into a
new agreement before the current agreement ends will result in the
Council being unable to access the Liberty Create Low Code
Platform, which would mean the Council would have to rebuild all
applications on the new chosen platform.
 

Content

For the reasons as detailed in
the report and appendix, the Cabinet Member for Finance
AGREED:
 
To approve the procurement
strategy set out in this report for the procurement of the
Council’s Liberty Create Low Code Platform contract for a
maximum duration of 5-years (3+1+1) from 29 March 2026 until 28
March 2031 with an estimated total value of
£1,365,000.
 

Reasons for the decision

The Council took a bold and
strategic approach to invest in new digital technologies that set
the Council on a path to being a leader in digital, with
significant benefits being delivered using innovative and
award-winning technology platforms.
 
The Liberty Create Low Code
Platform has provided the foundation to build a wide range of
applications for services and therefore renewing it is essential
for business continuity. It is currently the main platform for all
household waste services (from collection schedules and bin
maintenance to ordering bulky waste and signing up to the garden
waste service), all contact centre processes and enquiries
(including out of hours), all Registrars services (booking
appointments for registering births, marriages, civil partnerships,
deaths and ordering certificates), booking appointments for
homelessness clients. It is also the platform used by the licensing
services to manage their relationships with a range of clients,
from those needing skip licences or other road licences, to those
looking after animals – allowing them to easily renew and pay
for licences. Many other services have had apps built to allow them
to do case management, from the fostering
enquiry team, to the school admissions appeals team, to the
street naming and numbering and land charges team. See diagram on
p.10 for the current lowcode
application landscape at Croydon.
 
The existing contract does not
allow for any further extensions. Our current contract for the
Liberty Create Low Code Platform expires on 28 March
2026.
 
Croydon Digital Service (CDS)
have developed a team of highly skilled developers to work
collaboratively with services to design solutions that meet their
needs and are designed around the needs of the customer. The
benefit of the Liberty Create Low Code Platform include:
 
·        
Reduced costs compared to the licence costs of
legacy systems
·        
The ability to work in an agile way, releasing
system functionality within days or weeks rather than months, and
crucially the ability to quickly adapt based on user
feedback
·        
Designing end to end solutions around our customer
needs, not being restricted by ‘off-the-shelf’
products.
 
Over the last few years, CDS
have built up a significant number of skills and knowledge,
resulting in them accelerating the speed of delivery and the
sophistication of the applications they build.
 

Alternative options considered

Alternative options were
considered when reviewing this re-procurement.
 
CDS Commercial Contracts
Manager and a Senior Strategic Procurement Specialist have
researched online and on G-cloud to look for an alternative
solution and commercials related to the solution. Once the
parameters are input into G-cloud, there was only one alternative
solution, which was the Power Platform/Microsoft Dynamics 365
option.
 
This Microsoft solution is
currently being researched by the Transformation team, and it will
take the Council 2-4 years to migrate away from Low Code into
Microsoft.
 
It is also worth noting that
the Council migrated away from Microsoft to avoid increasing
licencing and hosting costs from Microsoft and to also improve
online services for residents.
 
The options considered to
deliver the procurement, including their respective costs &
benefits are included in Appendix A, Gateway 1 Business Case,
Section 2 part of this report. The potential tendering routes to
then procure the recommended option are included in Gateway 2 Route
to Market, Section 2, of Appendix A.