The Appeals Service in Northern Ireland (TAS) has engaged Belfast-based tech firm Civica to transform its digital services.
Civica has agreed to an initial £3.4m five-year deal. The company specialises in software, technology and outsourcing services. It will provide an automated digital platform which will remove much of the TAS’ existing manual transactions.
Civica already works with a number of other NI commercial organisations and public bodies, such as the PSNI. In 2019, the firm released a report calling for increased digitisation of public services in Northern Ireland, suggesting that the country had reached a tipping point.
TAS provides administrative support to tribunals which are set up to hear appeals against decisions made by the Department for Communities. These relate to personal independence payments and child maintenance, regarding HM Revenues and Customs, the NI Housing Executive and the Rates Collection Agency.
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The agency has 130 staff in Belfast and Omagh. It receives a high volume of enquiries, with 12,000 tribunal session records and 10,000 live appeal records at any one time, and requires a new automated system to support the case management of various appeals.
The Irish News reported that Civica secured the tender following a competitive process.
The online document management it will implement supports the TAS paperless agenda as all appeals packs will be available online for download, rather than having to be printed and posted.
Data analytics will be improved, helping users to connect data across systems, showing an individual's full appeals history and meeting the service's increasingly complex reporting requirements.
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Mark Owens, managing director at Civica Northern Ireland, said: “We look forward to delivering an improved digital platform for all service users and remain fully committed to transforming the way public services operate via increasing cloud, data and digital innovation."
Civica's Belfast operation is part of the wider Civica Group, which supplies more than 3,000 major customers in 10 countries.
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Source: The Irish News
