Provision of a Service Desk

The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is issuing this notice to notify the market to that we are engaging with suppliers on the Technology Services 4 (RM6190) to help shape a pending tender process for the provision of a fully managed Servicedesk.

The current contract that Ofsted has for providing this service is due to end in March 2027 and Ofsted are looking to start pre market engagement with suppliers in the market.

Ofsted intends to appoint a supplier to deliver a fully managed Servicedesk that will be the single point of contact for circa 4000 individuals to report IT issues, raise queries, submit requests, and where possible have them resolved at first contact.

Our Service Desk provider will be responsible for:

• supporting a range of home, office, and remote based users, using the Ofsted-owned ServiceNow instance to log contacts via multiple communication channels, including telephone, service portal and webchat

• logging, categorising, and prioritising all calls, carrying out initial investigations and resolving at first contact wherever possible, and providing clear and effective communications to Ofsted users and support teams

• co-ordinating the delivery of services provided by multiple support teams to ensure response times and SLAs are met, escalating when necessary

Ofsted is therefore looking at running a procurement exercise, starting as soon as is practicable in 2026, for a supplier to provide this service.

Our chosen route to market will be via GCA (formerly CCS) Framework Technology Services 4 (RM6190) Lot 3a End User Services (lower value and complexity) and engagement is currently limited to suppliers on this Framework.