The main route for progressing new and uplifted Standards which apply to all relevant Suppliers and which are likely to have a Published specification. Where these have an Effective Date, all relevant Suppliers will be obliged to have achieved compliance with these items by the given date as per the terms of the Catalogue Agreement. Changes in this route will be separated into big and small items and will fall into one of four categories:

• SRO priorities
• Legislative and Regulatory change
• Minor and Patch uplifts
• Other

These items will only be commissioned via the Roadmap and Suppliers are expected to incorporate any development cost within their agreed List Price. 

Opportunities for Suppliers to bid via open competitions to engage with NHS Digital and the change requestor to collaborate on the definition of specifications and to deliver certain changes early ahead of publication to the wider market where applicable. Changes in this route will fall into one of three categories:

• Alpha/Definition/FoT - opportunities for Suppliers to co-produce specifications before they are Published to all other relevant Suppliers through Managed Capacity and given an Effective date if applicable
• Other opportunities - opportunities for development of new Capabilities or standalone features which do not have to be delivered by Foundation Solution Suppliers and which may allow a Supplier to bring a new product to market and/or for existing products to be pulled in from specialist Suppliers rather than forcing additional development on a limited number of Suppliers.

Change requests which impact Standards and Capabilities which need to be progressed quickly outside of the usual change management principles. These will be commissioned separately, will likely have separate funding and will account for only a highly restricted volume of change meeting one of two criteria:

• National information or cyber security incidents as classified by the appropriate body
• Inappropriate, incorrect or missing drug or patient safety guidelines/alerts and other clinical safety issues and incidents as determined by an appropriate body

This is the status associated with specifications for a new or uplifted Capability or Standard which are still going through definition and elaboration with stakeholders.

• • Draft specifications will be released to Suppliers for review via the Confluence Roadmap page and iterated as often as possible
  • There will be opportunities for Suppliers to engage in the definition of Draft specifications
  • Suppliers can begin development when a specification is at Draft status, although they do so at their own risk

At Draft status there will be a Supplier facing Roadmap page on which detail of the specification is released as it becomes available.

An open competition is the mechanism used to initiate an Opportunity Item. It may be run against Lot 2 of the GP IT Futures Framework or progress via an alternative mechanism. It is a way of engaging Suppliers in change and the parameters and characteristics of each competition will be defined on a case by case basis

It will also be used as a 'status' on the Roadmap to indicate to Suppliers that a particular change item will be subject to an open competition procedure which they may wish to bid for. The date given against these items will indicate the anticipated date of when the open competition will be released.

This is the status associated with specifications for a new or uplifted Capability or Standard which are fully defined, agreed and signed off and are not expected to change. Where there is a need for minor or patch uplift, this will be handled as described in the Change Management Process and Roadmap Content Ancillary Document section. Suppliers would be expected to be working towards achieving compliance with a specification when it is given this status. There may be some Standards and Capabilities which do not progress beyond this stage in which case they would be advisory or reflect some other scenario where it remains optional at that point.

A checklist will be in place to ensure that before this status is awarded, the specification is adequately defined and ready for implementation with all necessary assurance, implementation and guidance documentation in place to enable a Supplier to complete development at minimal risk.

At this point a full version of the Confluence page will be released. In the case of uplifts to existing Standards and Capabilities, this will be a complete, refreshed version of the page e.g. if there is an uplift to Data Standards, the changes will be on or linked to from the relevant Roadmap page and are likely to only show the specific requirements which are changing until it is Published, when a full updated version of the Data Standards page with a revised version number will be made available and will sit alongside the Effective version.

This is the status associated with Standards with which all relevant Suppliers are required to have achieved compliance.

It is the status associated with Capabilities which have been included within the scope of a Framework request and hence which Suppliers are able to onboard Solutions against and sell via a Framework.

When the Effective Date is reached, the old Effective page will be replaced by the new one with an uplifted version number. The old one will be given a status of Retired and moved to a specific location on Confluence.

The date on which the Standard or Capability becomes Effective. An Effective Date will be given as a month and a year (rather than a specific day) and will always mean the last day of the given month i.e. an Effective Date of September 2019 means 30th September 2019. It is the date by which all relevant Suppliers will need to have achieved compliance with the change item.

It is recognised that in the case of some legislative or regulatory changes, there may be a specific date on which it comes into force. Where this is the case, this will be reflected accordingly in the materials released.

This is the status associated with old versions of a Capability or Standard which have been uplifted or replaced. These pages may be superseded by a new Published or Effective specification.

These pages will remain available for reference in a specific location on Confluence.

See entry for 'Level' in the Master Glossary.

This term describes the Standards with which a Supplier will need to have achieved compliance in order to onboard on to the Catalogue and be awarded a place on Framework 1. Due to the way in which the procurement, onboarding and the compliance process will work, the date on which Suppliers will actually join Framework 1 will differ. It is anticipated that the earliest date that Suppliers could join the first Framework is July 2019, therefore this is the earliest possible Effective Date of a Day 1 Standard. As there are Standards with Effective Dates at any point beyond this, Suppliers will need to have achieved compliance with these as a condition of joining Framework 1 i.e. if there are Standards with Effective Dates in July 2019, September 2019 and December 2019 and the Supplier is due to join the Framework in January 2020, then all these Standards are Day 1 Standards.

This is defined in the Change Management Process and Roadmap Content Ancillary Document section below

The GP IT Futures Standards and Capabilities Roadmap, known simply as 'the Roadmap', serves two primary purposes:

• • An overarching, summary view of ALL change requests relating to new and uplifted Standards and Capabilities regardless of which change route they will progress through. This will be published for all interested stakeholders to view. NB. All Roadmap items will also be represented via the pages on Confluence with the ability to sort and order to view those relevant to you.
  • The only method for commissioning mandated change progressing through the Managed Capacity route and therefore showing the standards with which Suppliers are obliged to maintain compliance under the terms of the Catalogue Agreement