Civica UK Limited

CivicaPay Education

CivicaPay education is a Cashless school payments system comprising online payments, income management and dinner money management. For Primary schools and secondary schools, Multi-academy trusts and Local Authorities. Manage products and items and communicate with parents via SMS and email. The system is comparable to ParentPay, ParentMail, SCOPay, iPayimpact, eduSpot.

Features

  • Cashless Catering Integration- Children no longer need cash at schools
  • Internet- eCommerce, Credit / Debit Cards, 3D Secure
  • Mobile payments- Laptops, smartphones, tablets
  • Notifications- Low balances, trip management, communication via SMS and email
  • Automatic and manual payment top-ups, balance updates, catering balance
  • Regular Payments- Recurring Card Payments
  • Management Information- Operational and User-definable.
  • Meals- Meal history, Meal ordering
  • Dashboard- Interactive dashboard, key data and actions, parental access
  • Secure Platform- Fully hosted, PCI DSS/PA DSS compliant

Benefits

  • Third Party Integrations- Acquiring, MIS Data, Cashless Catering Integration
  • Cashless Catering Integration- Civica cashless Catering, Civica Cloud Cashless Catering
  • Deposit and installment payments for high value trip items
  • Transfer catering balance between children
  • Multiple parent and pupil registration
  • Schools admin- create and manage users, manage parent registrations
  • Process refunds and chargebacks
  • Self-service facilities support increased collection rates
  • Reporting- activity summary, low balance alerts
  • Communications- automatically sends email and SMS message to parents

Pricing

£150 a licence a year

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at g-cloud@civica.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

5 3 2 5 9 5 4 3 4 5 8 8 3 9 4

Contact

Civica UK Limited Civica UK Limited
Telephone: +44 (0) 3333 214 914
Email: g-cloud@civica.co.uk

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Hybrid cloud
Service constraints
Civica operates a 24 x 7 x 365 service unless the Service needs to be taken down for emergency or urgent maintenance. Civica will give the customer at least 5 Working Days’ notice of changes to maintenance hours. In the case of emergency or urgent maintenance, Civica will give the Customer as much notification as reasonably possible and endeavor to restrict the period to hours that are outside normal working hours. There are no periods of depreciation to the service.
System requirements
  • Access to Internet required for school management module
  • Minimum 2mb recommended, 4mb bandwidth to access the service
  • Licensing based per school or local authority not per pupil
  • All browser communication are TLS 1.2 protected

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Each request is allocated a priority as follows:

1. Business Critical impact
2. Major Operational impact
3. Minor Operational impact
4. Minor Operational inconvenience
5. System Operation not impeded

The support desk will provide an initial response to all support calls within 4 hours of receiving a request, during the working day.

The support desk is open between the hours of 9.00am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
No
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
No
Support levels
Civica will respond to application related incidents as below and will take all reasonable steps to achieve a resolution within target timescales.

Civica will respond to incidents relating to availability of cloud services in an accelerated timeframe: Level 1 - 2 working hours - 1 working day. Level 2 - 2 working hours - 5 working days. Level 3 - 2 working hours - 30 working days. Level 4 - 2 working hours - 60 working days. Level 5 - TBA

Civica provide experienced front line support analysts that are dedicated to the CivicaPay support desk. The Civica system is a hosted system so the hosted support is provided from within the overall system costs.

The Hosted system is monitored 24/7/365 days a year with site engineers on call 24/7/365
Support available to third parties
No

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
Civica will provide a set of questionnaires for a prospective client to complete. These questions provide the information required to on-board a Council/MAT/School with the modules and functions described.
• The Civica implementation consultant enables the test Education Payment Portal for the school and sets up the initial administration user based on the system questionnaire responses.
• Training Video’s and documentation is provided to the users of the system.
• The new admin users would be able to set up new school trips, after school clubs, uniforms etc., in the schools test system.
• Users then can test payments by selecting school meals or other items or services and pay for then using a set of test debit card and credit card numbers.
• The hosted tests system API’s will be made available to the Cashless catering third party to construct and test the integration.
• Payments for school meals would be made in the test system by the school so that the cashless catering can test there integration.
• The Civica implementation consultant would instigate the initial down load of the schools MIS pupil and parent data

The tested system is on boarded to live on an agreed date
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
Data can be extracted in agreed formats. Data volumes over 50GB will require an individual extraction plan including agreement on extract media.

After contract termination all live client data will be deleted. All customer specific backups will be destroyed.

There is an additional charge for providing individual backup services.
End-of-contract process
At the end of the fixed term period, Civica will provide 3 months’ notice of termination offering the option to renew for a further fixed term or, following completion of a service termination form, an exit plan will be agreed including data extract arrangements.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
  • Opera
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
All the functionality that is provided on desktop service is available on mobile devices. The mobile solution is self-rendering and will display correctly on any sized device screen. The system is tested to operate with all the main Apple, Android and Mobile windows browser applications. The mobile pages will, as closely as possible, replicate the styles and colours of the organisations web site.
Service interface
Yes
User support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Description of service interface
Civica provides a browser accessed, staff interface module for managing the catalogue of meals, trips and items for sale offered to parents. Running reports on sales, managing parental access to the system.
The system incorporates and automatic interface to the schools MIS system for automatic upload of Pupils and parents details. Updates are done on a daily basis.
Accessibility standards
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Accessibility testing
Civica Pay is designing and building its web applications and site in accordance with WCAG 2.1 AA, which describes how to build websites for assistive technology.

Civica is carrying out its initial testing for WCAG compliance using SortSite - Accessibility Checker and Validator
SortSite checks sites against W3 WCAG accessibility standards, and compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. These checks assist in finding problems stopping disabled users from using a web site.

Civica is also testing to ensure that the finished product is compatible with a selection of popular assistive applications such as ChromeVox, Window eye, Dragon, Naturally Speaking, JAWS and Voiceover screen reader software
API
No
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
Civica can work with each education provider to create a bespoke customisation of the CivicaPay solution. The scope of the customisation will be discussed on a case by case basis and priced separately and adds an additional fee.

Scaling

Independence of resources
Underlying hardware is dynamically allocated and balanced using VMware Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS). DRS ensures virtual servers are allocated the appropriate physical hardware resources at all times. DRS also enables virtual servers to be migrated to different physical hardware so system availability is maintained during planned or unplanned maintenance. Storage is allocated via a flash storage array capable of maintaining high IOPS throughput.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
Civica Payments support desk can supply user metrics on request
Civica Payments is currently developing an online dashboard to enable users to access, amongst other functions, there usage metrics. Release of this function is set for 2021.
Reporting types
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
Physical access control, complying with another standard
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach
A third-party destruction service

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Export files are created by the hosted system and then automatically transferred to a set directory within the organisations network by SFTP.
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
1 Fixed Width text format
Data import formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data import formats
  • Fixed Width text format
  • HTML

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • Other
Other protection between networks
In addition to all access being TLS V1.2 as a minimum. An organisations Outfacing IP address is required to be white listed by the Hosted network to allow the Staff browser access through to the sign on and validation process.
Data protection within supplier network
IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
Civica’s standard core hours are 7am-7pm, Monday to Friday (excluding UK Bank holidays). Access to the service (remote access to data centre, domain names, network connections, IP addresses, hosted software and equipment) during core hours will have an uptime availability of 99.99%
Approach to resilience
Available on request.
Outage reporting
Infrastructure related scheduled maintenance will not occur between 07:00 and 19:00 Monday to Friday excluding English Bank Holidays. Maintenance will be arranged with a minimum of 3 working days’ notice, and will include a detailed description of the planned works, planned outcomes, and a detailed back-out plan, unless otherwise stated.
Unplanned outages will be notified via the Civica Service Desk.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
The Civica Payments system has a large number of permissions to enable a user to be joined to set of permissions that restrict the user to have only access to the parts of the system they require to take payments and or manage the system parameters, read reports etc. In practice a set of user groups is set up, permissions set against a specific group and then specific users added to a group. When a user signs into one of our browser modules the system will then only display what they have permission to see and then do.
Access restriction testing frequency
Less than once a year
Management access authentication
Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users have access to real-time audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users have access to real-time audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
How long system logs are stored for
At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
Alcumus ISOQAR
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
06/12/2017
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
N/a
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
Yes
Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
Trustwave
PCI DSS accreditation date
23/07/2019
What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
N/a
Cyber essentials
Yes
Cyber essentials plus
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
  • Cyber Essentials
  • ISO 22301
  • Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA DSS)

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
ISO/IEC 27001
Information security policies and processes
In order to provide a wide range of services to public and private sector organisations, Civica maintains an active information security programme. This programme requires regular internal and external audit inspection of both physical and logical data protection structures. The policies and procedures are aligned to ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications.
The Civica Payments data centres also comply with the processes and security requirements set out in the Payment Card industry Data Security Standard. The PCI DSS requires as part of compliance that data and security policies are known and followed.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Configuration and change management approach
All hosted assets metadata is stored in a Configuration Management Data Base. This data base is access controlled to authorised staff only. The CMDB provides information essential to the secure hosting of client critical services.
Civica's Change Management process ensures that all changes are considered and planned, and appropriate, and that there is a clear audit trail of all changes.
Vulnerability management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Vulnerability management approach
Civica has vulnerability management processes in place for ISO27001 and PCI-DSS. These processes are externally audited on an annual basis to ensure continued compliance.
For external vulnerability scanning, Civica employs the services of an external ‘CHECK’ approved provider to perform an annual penetration test against the external management IP interface. Supporting this, Civica is also certified to the CESG approved Cyber Essentials scheme. For high value financial hosted system, Civica also maintains a PCI-DSS v3.1 certification. In scope systems are subject to month internal and external vulnerability scans as well as a full penetration test twice a year.
Protective monitoring type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Protective monitoring approach
Civica take a proactive approach to information security through a process of continual monitoring and review. As part of a documented risk assessment methodology to identify and manage information security risks a dedicated security team update the risk register monthly.
Civica has a network monitoring solution in place ‘OpsView’ as well as a full antivirus and anti-malware solution. These technologies check the hosted services for errors, infections and unexpected network traffic and are support by Cisco IPS/IDS at the perimeter layer. This monitoring service provides defence in depth, against compromise, by detecting infections and suspicious networking activity within the environment.
Incident management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Incident management approach
Civica have developed an Incident Management process (PRM07) under ISO 20000 standards which details both the Incident and Service Request Management processes.
The Civica Service Desk manages end user Service Requests, Incidents and Requests for Change (RFCs) which can be logged by e-mail, telephone and web portal.
Monthly customer reports will detail incident information.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Conforms to a recognised standard, but self-assessed

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Social Value

Fighting climate change

Fighting climate change

Civica’s Environment and Social Governance (ESG) committee provides focus for ongoing development and implementation of our environmental policy, supported by our ISO 14001 standard. We commit to working with staff, customers, suppliers, contractors and partners to recognise and reduce our environmental impact. Simultaneously we’re optimising our services to support environmental and community initiatives.

We support fighting climate change by:
- Helping employees reduce their environmental footprint at work. Initiatives include: recycling facilities across our offices, single use plastic reduction, timer switches for office devices, cistern water saving devices, installing LED lighting when refreshing offices, WEEE recycling all hardware, print reduction, phone and printer cartridge recycling, FSC certified paper; weekly employee communications encouraging and advising employees on positive approaches to reduce carbon. Employees have carbon saving benefits such as cycle to work scheme.
- Socially responsible purchasing, sustainable procurement, reduced consumption.
- Selecting suppliers, goods and services that demonstrate sustainable, socially responsible, ethically sound standards.
- Leading by example via activities such as: reducing single use plastic consumption by 70% within the next 5 years; prioritising use of green energy; promoting recycling through ‘Zero to Landfill’ and ‘Zero Print’ schemes; working towards carbon neutrality with workforces and facilities over the next 10-years.
- Creating software with sustainability in built in; net-zero is a key theme in our product roadmaps.
- Partnering customers to co-create public services fit for the future. Civica's NorthStar innovation lab creates physical and virtual opportunities to jointly explore trends and technologies supporting customers Net Zero ambitions.
- Meeting/exceeding environmental legislation through ISO audits.

We have a Carbon Reduction Plan and commitment to achieve Net Zero by 2040 (latest). We are reviewing our energy mix, materials we use and working with partners to begin to plant a ‘Civica Forest’ whilst maintaining awareness of the Greenwashing issue.
Covid-19 recovery

Covid-19 recovery

In the spring of 2020, Civica were an early signatory to the C-19 Business Pledge. We focused on safeguarding our people and communities and ensuring the successful ongoing provision of our business-critical software and services.

Supporting customers: Alongside business as usual for our customers, we have worked hard to support the national and local level response through practical, innovative and updated software capability. We have delivered a range of new capabilities quickly, such as those listed below, and continue to provide system advice, configuration and data insights to ensure effective action.
- COVID-19 App (the first of its kind in the UK and Ireland) was developed and launched with the Northern Ireland Department of Health, and helped reduce the pressure on the 111 helpline.
- Developed local track and trace solution for London Borough of Redbridge, enabling it to support localised contact tracing/escalations.
- Community Helper software - built on the iCasework platform to help local authorities co-ordinate rapid support for vulnerable people while minimising safeguarding risks.
- Our Trac e-recruitment software was used to help NHS recruiters get the right candidates into posts quickly and fast-track DBS checks.
- Supporting social housing tenants - assisted teams to re-focus resources and provide vital support to tenants.
- Supporting Revenues and Benefits teams - software solutions for the two largest UK government measures, Business Rates Grant fund and the Council Tax Hardship fund.

Supporting employees: We proactively provide guidance and support for our people, from keeping remote workers engaged, to our mental health champions and free-to-access Employee Assistance programme. We have adopted a blended working model enabling colleagues to work safely and flexibly at various locations and hub offices, enhanced how we communicate, and continue to look for new ways to share ideas and inspiration.
Tackling economic inequality

Tackling economic inequality

Create opportunities for entrepreneurship and help organisations to grow. Civica is committed to working with its customers to deliver value into the community by supporting young people, D&I ref?, developing skills and mentoring businesses to attract inward investment and growth that brings with it employment and skills.

We support innovation through our NorthStar innovation lab, a company-wide initiative focused on enhanced client outcomes by applying fresh ideas on data, automation and new technologies. We work with our customers to co-create public services that are fit for today and for the future. Our Civica NorthStar innovation lab creates physical and virtual opportunities for us to jointly explore trends and technologies.

Create employment and training opportunities
Civica is a member of the 5% Club, and aims to have 5% of its UK work force as either apprentices, graduates or work experience students by the end of 2025. We employ apprentices and graduates into a number of different disciplines and locations, with a focus on ensuring they are long term employees of Civica.

Support educational attainment
Learning and development is at the core of the Civica Quality Management Framework. We believe in investing in our people and are proud of our Investors in People Gold accreditation and in being a top rated Glassdoor Employer.

We run our own Civica Academy for employee development and skills enhancement, which delivered over 220,000 hours of training during 2021. We provide our own apprenticeship programme (team leader level 3) for our aspiring and current managers that are considered stars of the future.

We are working on building some new apprenticeship standards such as the UX degree apprenticeship. This will benefit not only Civica’s Digital Team but all companies and customers that need UX talent.
Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

Civica is a 2022 Financial Times Diversity Leader and is ‘Gold’ Investors in People accredited, demonstrating our commitment to promoting equal opportunity by tackling inequality in employment, skills and pay in our workforce. We proactively implement equal opportunities for employment and personal development among diverse groups and local areas, and ensure rights for all staff are always protected. This is led by our Group Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) team, championed by our CEO who is also our Chief Diversity Sponsor. The strategy and policy manages:
- Interview training, focusing on unconscious bias/equal opportunity.
- Anonymising CVs and ensuring interview panels represent minority groups.
- Using a decoder to ensure job advertisements use gender and culturally neutral language.
- Attracting/recruiting from minority backgrounds/disadvantaged groups across the organisation, especially into under-represented areas.
- Advertising vacancies in a wide variety of places and diversity/disability portals (including; BME jobs, Disability jobs and LGBT job sites), to increase gender diversity and ethnicity.
- Company-wide Diversity & Inclusion network, including affinity groups relating to under-represented groups.
- Mandatory Diversity & Inclusion training for all staff.
- Pay equity reviews addressing inequality and UK gender pay gap.
- Flexible Working to encourage higher uptake for women, working parents and disabled groups.
- Partner with a social innovator company to help recruit and support employees with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

We gather and analyse data on our performance from regular surveys such as ENPS, IIP, Pulse survey, employee engagement surveys.

Our D&I team monitor the take-up, use and effectiveness of our measures, such as the number of new recruits from minority backgrounds, women, parents and diverse groups, and provide statistics for our Annual Review on performance against targets. For example, we report on the number of people attending training sessions and the split of male to female attendees.
Wellbeing

Wellbeing

Civica actively promote a mentally healthy workplace and workforce through our 40+ Mental Health Champions (MHC) and our ‘Health and Wellbeing’ policy, encouraging a flexible and realistic work/life balance. We integrate mental health and general wellbeing in all that we do from recruitment and ‘First Impressions’ to appraisals and strategic management.

Our ‘Health and Wellbeing’ policy and programme for all employees provide a foundation to support both the mental and physical health of our staff. Examples include:
- Employee Assistance Programme and online Wellbeing Hub, which provides 24/7 access to websites, e-mail, phone and face-to-face counselling on all personal issues.
- Aviva DigiCare+ Workplace App providing external mental health consultancy.
- Mental Health Champions who support colleagues’ wellbeing in the workplace.
- RedArc Personal nurse service.
- Management Coaching - managers are trained in GROW (Goals, Reality, Options and Will) and in being Health and Wellbeing Advisors, supporting employees with mental/physical health needs.
- Health assessments/advice aimed at improving physical health.
- Cycle to Work scheme to aid physical and mental health.
- Weekly fruit drop for offices, encouraging a healthier diet.
- We provide free eye tests for all VDU users, encourage staff to take advantage of NHS flu vaccinations services, and support people wishing to use the NHS Stop Smoking Service.

We also support our customers’ and communities’ physical and mental wellbeing through: Employee ‘Donate-a-Day’ to local charities; Local events organised through “Charity Champions”; Directors providing guidance to local community health and wellbeing projects; Supporting social housing tenants to re-focus resources and provide vital support to tenants.

Suppliers/subcontractors are subject to Civica’s Sub-contractor Selection Process as defined in our ISO9001 Quality Management System, which includes criteria for assessing health and wellbeing policies and their promotion.

Pricing

Price
£150 a licence a year
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
No

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at g-cloud@civica.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.