Placecube Ltd

Digital Place for Blue Badges

Codesigned with councils and built on the open-source Digital Place, this specialist Blue Badge system is purposely designed for council efficiency. Enables residents to apply, provide evidence, pay, and book appointments. Supports council administration and automation of the Blue Badge process and integrates to the national service for badge production.

Features

• Well-designed forms for residents to apply and renew Blue Badges
• Case management and administration of Blue Badge applications
• Backoffice form supports assisted digital service by council staff
• Upload of documents and photos required to support an application
• Migration of historical badge data through ETL process.
• API integration with the national Blue Badges system
• Communications: the ability to send letters, email and SMS
• Automated renewal process and reminders
• Payment and appointment booking integration
• Management information reports to monitor and manage your workload

Benefits

• User centred form design improves application accuracy, reduces rework
• Efficiency of process improved through automation and supporting tools
• Handle exceptions and manual intervention with backoffice specific interface
• Capture and manage evidence in one place, improving efficiency
• Import of historic/existing badge data enables future seamless renewals
• All points of integration provided for necessary two-way communication.
• Automated notifications and letter production improves communication, reducing calls
• Automated expiry date and renewal reminder triggers improve efficiency
• Reports enable proactive prioritisation of actions and performance management
• Independence from proprietary software vendor ‘lock-in’ – taking back control

£30,000.00 an instance a year

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

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 jenny.dias@placecube.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

823777196924552

Contact

Jenny Dias
020 8895 6756
jenny.dias@placecube.com

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: Yes, but can also be used as a standalone service
• What software services is the service an extension to: Digital Place for Web Publishing; Digital Place for Customer Services; Digital Place for Building Digital Services; Digital Place for FOI, Complaints and Councillor Enquiries; Digital Place for Blue Badges; Digital Place for Commerce
• Cloud deployment model: Private cloud
• Service constraints: None
• System requirements: Computer with a browser

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Priority; Level Acknowledge Receipt (2); 1 09:00 –17:30 1 clock hour; 2 09:00 –17:30 2 business hours; 3 09:00 –17:30 2 business hours; 4 09:00 –17:30 24 business hours
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Phone support: No
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Standard Support included in annual subscription; Priority Level 1 – Critical means complete outage and/or inability of all users of the system to undertake any interaction with it and which has a severe impact on the client and its business and/or users especially, but not limited to, Catastrophic Fault or Catastrophic Service Failure.; Priority Level 2 – High means limited outage and/or limited or restricted use for all or part of the system by users with potential business impact.; Priority Level 3 – Medium means limited or periodic outage and/or limited or restricted use for all or part of the system by users with minimal business impact.; Priority Level 4 – Low means no outage and unrestricted use for all the system by users with no business impact.; Placecube provide a dedicated web-based support desk, available 24/7. Support hours are 09.00-17.30, normal business days as standard. Telephone, on-site or 24/7 extended support service can be made available at extra cost. Our support team are highly skilled, experienced professionals, who help troubleshoot problems.; We have an expert technical and content team who will optimise your Directory and build your in-house skills. Additional training beyond the standard is available at extra cost.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Our solution is ready-to-use and can be deployed at pace.; Firstly, we will work with you to discuss branding, design and the tools you want to use. We will then set up sessions to walk through the service, demonstrating the various administrative and end-user interfaces. You will have opportunities to practice, test and ask questions.; Once deployed, we provide a dedicated web-based support desk, available from 09.00-17.30, normal business days as standard. Telephone, on-site or 24/7 extended support can be made available for an extra cost. Our support team consists of highly skilled, experienced professionals, who can help troubleshoot any problems.; If you no longer wish to use the service, we can provide an encrypted archive of all client-owned data stored within the platform.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats: HTML
• End-of-contract data extraction: In the event that you no longer wish to use the service, Placecube can provide an encrypted archive of all client-owned data stored within the platform.
• End-of-contract process: Based on an agreed end-of-service date, we can provide a copy of the data as described above. We can hold the data for an agreed period, not exceeding one month (or as agreed with the client), and then delete all the data (unless we are legally required to retain it).

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: NONE
• Service interface: Yes
• User support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Description of service interface: Access through web browser over the internet
• Accessibility standards: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Accessibility testing: Third party testing, customer testing, internal testing
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: Through the API, users can view, create, edit and delete any entity their user account has permissions to perform those actions on.
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: HTML
• API sandbox or test environment: Yes
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: Colour scheme, logos, pages, navigation, features, forms, and content can be customised.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: Proactive monitoring and auto-scaling

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: All login requests and end user contribution activity.
• Reporting types: API access

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

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: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Supplier-defined controls
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: All data encrypted at rest using AES-256.
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type:
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
• Equipment disposal approach: In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: The platform provides built-in export tools for users to download a compressed archive of data.
• Data export formats: Other
• Other data export formats: LAR (ZIP)
• Data import formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data import formats: LAR (ZIP)

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: We aim to provide at least a 99.9% uptime service availability level. The service is fully resilient, with no single points of failure throughout the technology stack. The service comes with a 4-hour recovery time objective (RTO) and a 1-hour recovery point objective (RPO). This means that in the event of a major loss of infrastructure, the service would be available again within 4 hours, with a data loss of no more than 1 hour.; Availability excludes agreed scheduled maintenance events, customer-caused or third party-caused outages or disruptions, or outages or disruptions attributable in whole or in part to force majeure events. Any service-impacting planned maintenance work is always performed outside of UK business hours, with adequate notification to our clients.; Incremental database backups are taken continuously throughout the day, configured with a 35-day retention period, with support for point-in-time restore within that period. The file storage solution is backed up daily and offers support for point-in-time restore. Backups are stored across multiple data centres and are fully encrypted.
• Approach to resilience: Redundancy across all application tiers, spread across multiple physical data centers.
• Outage reporting: Support platform where service outages are reported and customers are added to the ticket and emailed the details.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: The security requirements of each business application are determined by a risk assessment.; The access rights consider:; Classification levels of information processed within application ensuring consistency between the classification levels and access control.; Data protection, privacy legislation and client contractual commitments regarding access to data or services; The “need to know” principle (i.e., access is granted at the minimum level necessary for the role); Everything is forbidden unless expressly permitted,; Users privileges needed to perform their roles, subject to it being on a need-to-use and event-by-event basis.; User access requests are subject to formal authorisation and to periodic review
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • 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: Certified by British Assessment Bureau
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: First certified 12/10/2010 recertified 26/02/2024
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: Physical location, which is covered by Hosting Partner
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

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: We follow ISO 27001 standards, policies and procedures encompassing all the Controls in the standard. We are audited by third party organisations, against the standard, annually.; Roles and Responsibilities have been defined and have the full backing of Management. The Chief Security Officer, and the Information Security Officers are responsible for and have the authority to implement the overall direction of all security functions within the organisation, both physical and digital. ; All Staff and associates are contractually bound to adhere to the Company's ISMS

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: Each individual project has its own Configuration Management Database (CMDB), describing all Configuration Items (CIs) . The CMDB is maintained as a Git repository describing current and historical state of all CIs. Whenever a change is made within an environment, manually or automatically, the CMDB repository is updated to reflect the change. ; ; Change requests are reviewed by project lead/Line Manager Comments, questions, revisions, and updates are recorded, a full assessment is carried out, and the Change approved or rejected.; Tests for both successful change deployment, and successful rollback are reviewed, modified and implemented.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: Amazon GuardDuty continuously monitors our hosted services for malicious activity which sends alerts through Slack to allow us to detect unusual activity within the infrastructure.; Placecube implements BitDefender providing malware and antivirus protection on devices and includes risk analysis providing insight into vulnerabilities on a per device basis. BitDefender also provides web filtering.; Barracuda proactively scans emails for phishing emails, malware, sanctioned content etc, and quarantine emails. ; External services monitored include:; HMRC Employment Law/Security; ECSC Information/Security/Cyber; NCC Group Information/Security/Cyber; NCSC Weekly Threat report; NHS Digital cyber alerts channel Weekly Threat report; PDS National Management Centre Real Time Cyber alerts
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: Services are monitored continuously, with alerting to the support team. The support team will assess the potential compromise and undertake corrective action according to the severity threat level.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: Managed through our support desk. The CSO, ISO and Management ensure appropriate action taken in accordance with ISO27001 Incident management policy.; Incident reports are communicated to interested parties via email or through the service desk.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: No

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  All employees and associates/contractors work from home, eliminating the need to travel to and from work. Travel to attend face to face meetings is undertaken only when absolutely necessary and journeys made via public transport, unless impractical to do so.; ; We use technology and digital tools to conduct our business, reducing the use of paper and printing. Supplies are procured from environmentally friendly sources. In an effort to tackle economic inequality we recycle computer equipment and mobile devices to benefit those most in need.; ; We encourage employees to adopt environmentally sustainable working practices and to contribute ideas as to how we improve.; ; We have ceased the use of ‘branded goodies’ at conferences and are exploring more environmentally friendly approaches.

  Tackling economic inequality

  We work collaboratively and ensure that our clients never pay twice for the same development, actively promoting re-use, and repeatable services.; ; Digital Place is open-source, and non-proprietary, meaning that our customers can choose to resource new digital projects internally, or through local supply chains. Our promotion of local economic opportunities extends beyond the confines of the Authority, for we actively encourage collaboration by making the platform free to use for partner organisations and community groups. The product can be shared at no additional cost - delivering real economic gain for the public purse.; ; Supporting the development of strong integrated communities, through the use of the Digital Place Platform delivers a meaningful impact on local employment and economy – benefiting the wellbeing of those communities.; ; In an effort to tackle economic inequality we recycle computer equipment and mobile devices to benefit those most in need.

  Equal opportunity

  Placecube embraces diversity, inclusion, and equality through our people. Our actions, supported by our various policies and processes enable this. We are committed to the Living Wage movement, are Disability Confident, and support the Armed Forces Covenant.; We recognise that the social value of place-based, connected, local public service can transform the lives of the most vulnerable in communities and make best use of the public purse, so that ever tightening resources can be focused on priorities and not duplication.; We contribute to the public sector and the not-for-profit sector through our free-to-use open knowledge exchange platform. Through Knowledge Hub, we contribute to best practice sharing and collaboration, supporting sector-led improvement, knowledge retention and skills development.

  Wellbeing

  The company and its leadership team are focused on the mental health and wellbeing of all our employees, clients, customers, partners, and suppliers, which has a positive impact on productivity and wellbeing. We have appointed several Mental Health First Aiders to support our objectives

Pricing

• Price: £30,000.00 an instance a year
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

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 jenny.dias@placecube.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.