Decision details

The Council have been utilising an Electoral Registration and Elections Management System since 2009 which enables the Council to co-ordinate and conduct elections and referenda on behalf of the Council’s Returning Officer.
This system has been provided by the same service provider since 2009 and it has been decided that the Council needed to tender this opportunity and test the market to ensure the Council had the best solution for our needs whilst also seeking to achieve best value for money.
The Council used the open procedure route and advertised the requirement on both Supply Hertfordshire and Contracts Finder.
The Council evaluated the tender returns on both price and qualitative criteria with Price being 30% and Quality 70%.
The Council received 3 bids (2 from the same Provider) with Xpress Software Solutions Ltd showing their solution offered the best value money against the evaluation criteria.

To award a 5-year contract to Xpress Software Solutions Ltd for the supply and maintenance of an Elections Management System.

Option 1 -
Continue with the current Provider.
Option 2 -
Tender the opportunity to the open market.
Option 3 - Tender the opportunity via a Framework Agreement.
It was deemed that the Council needed to test the market as we have been with the service provider since 2009 so we wanted to compare the current solutions against the market.
None of the Framework Agreements were suitable so we decided to tender via the open market (option 2).