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Contract with specialist firm covers programmes on ‘managing information’ and ‘running large meetings’

The Department for Work and Pensions has signed a six-figure contract for a specialist firm to provide training on Microsoft Teams technology for about 100,000 civil servants.

Newly published procurement information reveals that, at the start of this month, the department entered into an initial one-year deal with Symity: a Reading-based company dedicated to supporting organisations in their use of Teams – particularly those that have deployed “unified telephony and meeting room solutions”.

The contract-award notice indicates that the engagement, which will be worth at least £166,900, will cover “M365 (Microsoft 365) training and adoption” activities. The deal will see the IT firm deliver three training modules. 

The first two of these will each be dedicated to aspects of “managing information essentials”. These strands will run, one after the other, over the course of the next nine months. 

The third module, dubbed “running large meetings” will be run thrice, at quarterly intervals beginning in November. 

The content of the training will be jointly developed by Symity and the DWP, and delivered by the supplier both in-person and virtually. Once the initial one-year term of the engagement has elapsed, the department has the option of extending the deal by a further six months.

The contract states that the tech firm has been retained: “To design, build and deliver training courses and develop adoption material for circa 100,000 staff within DWP [and] co-create, build and deliver optimal length live virtual trainer led sessions, delivered based on an agreed timetable. Each course session will contribute to the completion of closure reports based on the agreed success measures with the DWP team.”

According to Symity’s website, the company is “one of the world’s most experienced and efficient enabler of complex Microsoft Teams phone, contact centre and Microsoft Teams Rooms with successful deployments in over 40 countries”.

“We bring together Microsoft Teams phone systems, contact centre and meeting room products to create a single seamless communication solution for your entire organisation,” it added.

Sam Trendall is editor of  PublicTechnology. He can be reached on  sam.trendall@dodsgroup.com.

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