The change request will need to be aligned to the Capabilities and Standards Model to determine whether it is:

• a new Standard or Capability
• a change/uplift to an existing Standard or Capability
• a replacement of an existing Standard or Capability

This assessment will also consider which of the Capabilities and Standards are impacted by the change request. This is crucial information for Suppliers as it will determine which Roadmap items they need to be most aware of based on the Capabilities which their Solution supports. This information will be set out on the Roadmap and applicable Confluence pages. An additional element of this to be considered alongside the sizing/complexity assessment is the iteration of the version number and whether the change request constitutes a major, minor or patch uplift to the impacted Standards and Capabilities. The definitions and approach to versioning and patch, minor and major changes are set out in the section below.

The change request will need to be assessed against other known work items to consider any alignments and dependencies with other work which is on the Roadmap or is progressing through the change process. Dependencies may impact the change route and timescales for delivery and commissioning of the change. Alignments may mean that the change is not required or can be merged with other work to prevent duplication of effort. These details will be provided, where known, by the change requestor in the change request form and will then be validated by the Digital Care Services Change team and a subject matter expert review group. Where applicable, any necessary details will be highlighted via the Roadmap. It may also be necessary to consult with Suppliers via the RFI mechanism on this aspect of the assessment process.

Any key timescales, deadlines and required Effective Dates associated with the change request will be considered along with the reasons for these. The validity of an Effective Date will need to be verified and a objective rationale for the date will need to be provided e.g. legislative or regulatory changes, hard dependencies. This information will be made available to Suppliers where possible.

All mandatory changes in the Managed Capacity route will have an Effective Date. However there will also be items in this route which are Published but do not have an Effective Date. Incentives for delivery of the change may be offered for items with or without an Effective Date. This aspect of the Full Assessment process will be an initial consideration of these dates which will then be confirmed following the completion of the assessment process. For items which are likely to progress via Opportunity Items, then this will consider the timescales and parameters for the commissioning and competition process and there would then be a reassessment and setting of a final Effective Date for all relevant Suppliers should the change then move into Managed Capacity. Timescales and delivery dates for Urgent Changes are likely to be considered and discussed outside this assessment process on a case by case basis.

An additional part of this may also include the consideration of incentives and if and when they may be applied to the change.

Suppliers will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the achievability of Effective Dates assigned to items in the Managed Capacity route ahead of the Framework Contracting Vehicle in which they are due to become Effective and will be consulted via the appropriate mechanisms in any case.

Opportunity Items and Urgent Changes are likely to have additional and separate funding beyond the List Price set by Suppliers. The amount and source of this funding will need to be agreed as part of determining the parameters of the Opportunity Item or commissioning an Urgent Change.

Any resource and capacity required by Suppliers for development of Managed Capacity items will need to be covered under the List Price agreed at the start of a FrameworkContracting Vehicle, although it although it should be noted that the Catalogue Agreement does not restrict the ad hoc resetting of the List Price subject to the conditions set out in the Commercial Standard and the Framework Contracting Vehicle Agreement if required. Managed Capacity items will only be commissioned via the Roadmap and may not be funded in any other way, particularly in the case of regulatory or legislative change. However, there will be some items in the Managed Capacity route where incentives are available to Suppliers to encourage delivery of the change within a bounded time period. Incentivisation may be offered whether the change has an Effective Date or not. As per the Change Management and Roadmap Content ancillary document, a list of Standards for potential incentivisation will be maintained by the Catalogue Authority.

Some draft guidelines for when an incentive may be attached to a particular change item have been compiled as follows:.

No incentives are likely to be offered if:

• Suppliers have already been funded for the change by an alternate mechanism (with the possible exception of Opportunity Items dependent on the arrangements for the Opportunity Item)
• There is insufficient time between the start of a Framework Contracting Vehicle and the Effective Date of the change item and/or in the case of the first FrameworkContracting Vehicle, the Effective Date is before the Framework Contracting Vehicle must go live (e.g. January 2020) 
• The change has been mandated via other mechanisms e.g. ISN or legislation/regulation

Incentives may be offered if:

• It is an important change with high perceived Supplier difficulty
• The Effective Date is well into the future, but significant benefit to the Authority is identified
• The item falls into the Managed Capacity - Other category and there is no set Effective Date, but there is significant benefit to the change and the Authority would like to encourage Suppliers to deliver the change during a certain bounded time period

Digital Care Services are looking to avoid commissioning single large change items, instead aiming to chunk up work into smaller deliverables to offer greater flexibility to Suppliers in how they deliver work and to ensure that all available capacity is not taken up by a single item. Therefore an assessment of the size and complexity of the change will be required. It is recognised that Suppliers have different systems and architectures and therefore what is a small change for one Supplier, may be a big change for another. Therefore it will be necessary to seek Supplier input on this aspect of the assessment process.

Suppliers will be engaged using the RFI and Feasibility Assessment routes and/or any other appropriate commercial mechanism as required to gain input on this aspect of the assessment process.

The change request will be assessed against the criteria set out in the Change Management and Roadmap Content ancillary document to determine whether it may be classed as an Urgent Change and hence progressed via that route.

The high priority strategic changes for changes for the next period and in particular the next Framework Contracting Vehicle will be identified by the NHS England CCIO with the support of the NHS England Senior Responsible Owners (SRO) group. This will set the most important changes for the subsequent time period and indicate the desired Effective Date by which Suppliers will need to have achieved compliance. The SRO priorities form one of the categories of work items within the Managed Capacity change route and this information will be shown via the Roadmap. Change requests progressing through the Opportunity Items route may also be identified as SRO priorities and this will indicate that these items are likely to be progressed as a priority. 

The change items which have been identified as key strategic priorities by the SRO group will and published via the Roadmap in advance of a Framework Contracting Vehicle opportunity being issued to allow for Suppliers to Suppliers to analyse the ask, assess the feasibility and set a suitable List suitable List Price to account for the development work required. Where Suppliers wish to challenge these items and the Effective Dates given against them, then this will be taken on board and fed back to the SRO group where the reasoning is justifiable and material.

As described in the Principles section, changes impacting Standards will be handled differently to those impacting Capabilities due to the way in which they are linked to the Catalogue Agreement and FrameworksContracting Vehicles. As such and given that Standards and Capabilities are linked, it is necessary to assess whether a change to a Standard has a significant impact on the scope of one or more Capabilities. This is known as the Materiality assessment. To summarise:

• Standards are linked directly to the Catalogue Agreement and Suppliers must maintain compliance with Standards as per the terms of that agreement. As such, Standards can be introduced independently of the FrameworksContracting Vehicles.
• Capabilities are linked directly to the FrameworksContracting Vehicles, therefore any change which introduces a new Capability or alters the scope of an existing Capability in a significant manner can only be introduced along with a new Framework Contracting Vehicle opportunity, although may be published at any point.

The majority of Standards are linked to Capabilities (and vice versa), therefore a key part of the change assessment process is to establish which Standards and Capabilities the change will impact (as set out above) and hence if there is a material impact on the scope of one or more Capabilities. The main principles of the Materiality assessment are as follows:

• Each change will be treated independently with respect to the Materiality assessment process i.e. if there have been previous changes impacting the same Capability within the life-cycle of the FrameworkContracting Vehicle, this is of no consequence
• If changes are merged for some reason then this should be reassessed as a whole as a new work item

The Materiality assessment is only applicable to items in the Managed Capacity change route. It is anticipated that only a limited number of changes would be considered as material and the Opportunity Items route could be used as an alternative for delivery in some cases to progress the delivery of a Capability prior to a new FrameworkContracting Vehicle. This is a subjective assessment in which stakeholders will be involved as required, but the following diagram sets out some guidelines and key aspects which should be considered as part of this:  

The table below summarises the content of the process set out above.

The consequences of these outcomes are as follows:

• If the change DOES NOT have a material impact on the scope of a Capability, then it can be introduced at any point irrespective of Framework Contracting Vehicle life-cycles with fair warning, likely via the Managed Capacity route as per the terms of the Change Management and Roadmap Content ancillary document
• If the change DOES have a material impact on the scope of a Capability, then it can only become Effective when a subsequent Framework Contracting Vehicle opportunity is made available for Suppliers. However it may be that the change could follow the Opportunity Items route ahead of this and there is no restriction on developing and issuing a Published specification such that Suppliers can begin working towards it in advance of supporting it via the next Framework Contracting Vehicle if they wish to do so. 

This is the checklist to ensure that the specifications for a change are adequately defined, implementable and in a suitable format, as well as being supported by the relevant accompanying documentation, such as assurance processes/approach, implementation guidance and plans for business as usual operations, ahead of it being given a status of Published. This is to ensure that Suppliers can select the item with full information available to them and that any delays to address clarifications with the specification or to agree and set up assurance processes is minimised.

The detail of this checklist is still in elaboration and will be added in here in due course. However given that draft specifications will have been made available for Suppliers ahead of this point and some items will have progressed through the Opportunity Items route ahead of being published via Managed Capacity plus the fact that the Digital Care Services Change team will have been monitoring the progress and development of the change, it is anticipated that this should be a fairly light touch process.

These are the guidelines which govern which items a Supplier can select from the items listed under Managed Capacity on the Roadmap. The key principles here include the following:

• Suppliers must ensure they are meeting their obligations with respect to the Catalogue Agreement and any Effective Dates set and must ensure they have capacity and resource available to do so 
• Suppliers must prioritise work on those items categorised as 'SRO priority'
• Suppliers must share their delivery plans detailing how and when they will meet their Roadmap obligations with NHS DigitalEngland
• Suppliers can choose to target incentives for early delivery and Opportunity Items should they wish to do so, on the basis that it will not compromise their ability to meet Effective Dates and remain compliant with the Catalogue Agreement. Account managers should be informed of any intention to target these items
• Big and small items should be worked on in parallel and items can be selected individually or in groups based on Supplier development plans, capacity and methodologies 
• Suppliers must inform their account manager at the earliest opportunity when they are selecting a new work item, changing what they are working on and/or where delivery timelines and the ability to meet Effective Dates is at risk.

These guidelines are not yet confirmed and will be elaborated and uplifted in due course if required.