This G-Cloud 10 service is no longer available to buy.

The G-Cloud 10 framework expired on Tuesday 2 July 2019. Any existing contracts with Empowering Communities are still valid.
Empowering Communities

Early Intervention Referral and Management Desk

The Early Intervention Referral and Management Desk is a secure Multi Channel Solution where Teams and Organisations can receive secure, encrypted, online referrals, automatically populate a Management Desk, communicate with clients and record all interactions including emails. letters sent, phone calls made, face to face meetings and visits.

Features

  • Provides a single Safeguarding Gateway
  • Creates clear referral pathwys
  • Co-ordinated multi-agency responses
  • Manages Team and User Workloads
  • Enhances co-located teams and virtual agencies
  • Mobile friendly display compatible with tablets,iPhone and Android phones
  • Support and enhance Early Intervention work
  • Help identify repeat victims and perpetrators
  • Ability to interface with E-CINS Multi Agency Networking
  • Automatic backups in an ISO 27001:2013 accredited UK datacentre

Benefits

  • Enables delivery of Early Intervention techniques
  • Reduces the need for multi-agency meetings
  • Removes the barriers to information sharing
  • Analytics and management reports functionality
  • Fast, easy set-up and management
  • No hardware or software to buy or manage
  • Stand alone or integrated capability with larger projects
  • Free Help Desk, ticket support, with user guides/video tutorials
  • Non-commercially with no user licences and a low total cost
  • Streamlines management and support of victims and the vulnerable

Pricing

£5,975.00 an instance

  • Education pricing available
  • Free trial available

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 gary@empowering-communities.org. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 10

Service ID

5 4 9 0 0 9 3 2 1 0 2 5 4 7 3

Contact

Empowering Communities Gary Pettengell
Telephone: 01493 858768
Email: gary@empowering-communities.org

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
Our secure, Early Intervention Management Solutions can be used as stand alone systems or integrated and all link to the UK's most widely used multi-agency case management system. This enables service providers to manage, communicate and deliver tailored support to victims and vulnerable people in real time.
Cloud deployment model
Private cloud
Service constraints
None known at present.
System requirements
  • Use of web browser that supports TLS 1.2 and above
  • Internet connection

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
The Helpdesk Support Team can answer most questions or resolve most issues at first contact. Where a question or issue cannot be resolved immediately a ticket is created on our Helpdesk system with an assigned number and priority category which is agreed with the customer. The help desk service is included in the all inclusive annual subscription fee. It is staffed between 0800 - 1700 Monday - Friday, excluding Bank Holidays. tickets are monitored out of hours.
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
Onsite support
Support levels
Support levels are included in the annual subscription.

Telephone support between 8am - 5pm Monday-Friday (excluding Bank Holidays).

Monitored email support

Based on the assigned priority level of your log, Empowering-Communities Technical Support will take appropriate action to resolve your question/issue. That is, given the priority level, here's what we will do:

Priority Action To Be Taken:
. P1  Empowering-Communities Technical Support will work on the log full-time, including evenings and weekends, until it is resolved or an appropriate workaround is found.
. P2  Empowering-Communities Technical Support will work on the log full time during normal business hours until it is resolved or an appropriate workaround is found
. P3  Empowering-Communities Technical Support will work on the log during normal business hours. We will try to resolve the log within 3 days.
. P4  Empowering-Communities Technical Support will work on the log during normal business hours. We will try to resolve the log within one week.

Escalating Your Issue:

Empowering-Communities Technical Support has an Alert system in place, based on your log's priority level, that assures that your incident will receive proper attention by the appropriate people as well as other Empowering-Communities departments.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
We provide a consultation service which is included in the on-boarding process. This involves us meeting with key stakeholders and their partners so that we fully understand their vision and aspirations. We also look at what management reports will be needed. This process is carried out on and off site. Onsite training is provided to 'system' champions. User guides, webinars and video tutorials are all included in the on-boarding package.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
Scheme data can be extracted by the empowering-Communities Team or there is an option for all data to be deleted.
End-of-contract process
All Empowering-Communities solutions are based upon a non-commercial, all inclusive package. As a not for profit social enterprise we do not believe in long term contracts. At the end of your contract your data can be deleted of exported. We have never charged for this but to reassure our customers the contract states we will not charge any more than £1,500 for this service.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari 9+
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
Empowering-Communities systems are designed to be mobile friendly. There is no difference between using the systems via a mobile device or a desktop. 'Having our information on E-CINS, which can be accessed remotely, enables our Outreach Team to work outside of the office in
community settings thus providing significant cost and time savings’ Deborah Hooton, Service Manager, Rape Crisis Centre, Nottinghamshire.
Accessibility standards
WCAG 2.0 A
Accessibility testing
We use a service entitled Tenon.io to analyse the accessibility of our application
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
Each Early Intervention Referral and Management Desk has a built-in secure interface (API) with the National Multi-Agency Case Management System E-CINS. This means that any persons in need of multi-agency or more intensive single agency support can be passed through to E-CINS for full case management.
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
PDF
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
The Early Intervention Referral and Management Desk is fully customisable. Users can add in their own custom fields without the need of IT support. New custom fields are automatically added to management report exports. Organisations can brand the system with their own logo if required. The Empowering-Communities Team can assist with creating custom fields and bespoke management reports if required at no additional cost.

Scaling

Independence of resources
The back-end IT infrastructure has been designed to allow quick and easy scaling of the system. There are load balancers in place to ensure system availability at times of high usage.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
Each month managers are sent a report showing active users within their team and their last login date. Within the system itself users have the ability to produce reports on how the system is being used down to a team/user level. Specific Bespoke Reports can be produced upon request in conjunction with Customers and Empowering-Communities.
Reporting types
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Conforms to BS7858:2012
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
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
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
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
Equipment disposal approach
Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
There is a self service csv export for management report data.
Data export formats
CSV
Data import formats
CSV

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
From our SLA: System Availability: We aim for 99.9% uptime and so far have achieved this. We also have a service level agreement with our data centre providers who also aim for 99.9% uptime.

The Customer has the right to terminate the agreement if the staff based functions outlined in this agreement are not carried out as agreed in this agreement and only after evidence of poor performance has been given to the Service Provider on at least 3 separate occasions and the Service Provider has been given every opportunity to resolve the situation.
Approach to resilience
Information is available on request as we do not want to make this information public.

We are able to present historical evidence of service availability upon request.
Outage reporting
Empowering-Communities would notify users by utilising Email Alerting.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
2-factor authentication
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Yes, assured by independent testing of implementation
Access restriction testing frequency
At least once a year
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • 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
Between 6 months and 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
The Certification Group Limited
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
12/12/2016
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
Nothing
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
  • Cyberessentials
  • Cyberessentials Plus

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
As Empowering-Communities applications such as E-CINS and EC Connect are used to process Police and Government protectively marked information our Infrastructure has to meet certain security standards and is required to undergo stringent security audits. In relation to the Police Service these are done as part of Police Assured Secure Facility (PASF) audits.

As the data processors Empowering-Communities have implemented an Information Security Management System (ISMS) which includes an accreditation document set describing how Empowering-Communities has implemented the above measures and other controls, e.g. Incident reporting. This is known as a Risk Management and Accreditation Document Set (RMADS) As part of the RMADS, Empowering-Communities provides technical assurance that their solution is secure by undertaking a formal penetration test.

Empowering-Communities employ the services of a specialist CISSP, CCSP security advisor with experience of working within the business area of the Home Office, Police, Border Force and Security services.

Empowering-Communities maintain security associated documentation and processes to assist and support audits and information security assurance processes.

This includes:
Staff vetting to NPPV Level 3
Penetration tests are undertaken in line with the CESG CHECK Scheme.
Participation and support of the National E-CINS Security Working Groups (SWG)

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
A full configuration and change management process has been developed as part of our ISO27001:2013 accreditation. This includes separate systems for development, testing and production.
Vulnerability management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Vulnerability management approach
A full vulnerability management process has been developed as part of our ISO27001:2013 accreditation. Automatic emails and alerts are received to inform of the discovery of new vulnerabilities. These alerts are from recognised vulnerability management sources such as OSSIM, OTX and Qualys.
Standard patches are installed on monthly basis, with a process for implementing emergency patches quicker.
Protective monitoring type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Protective monitoring approach
Empowering-Communities utilise the AlienVault USM (Unified Security Management) platform to cover all 12 Protective Monitoring Controls (PMC) needed to achieve GPG 13 compliance.We have put in place a number of applications to interactively monitor and alert on IT infrastructure and network status.E-CINS has Comprehensive Network Protection. The E-CINS network is constantly monitored and undergoes frequent threat assessments to ensure data protection.We also have an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) that monitor network traffic for malicious activity.
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
A consistent and effective approach is applied to the management of information security incidents. Responsibilities and procedures are in place to handle information security events and weaknesses effectively once they have been reported.
Where evidence is required, it is collected to ensure compliance with legal requirements.

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

Pricing

Price
£5,975.00 an instance
Discount for educational organisations
Yes
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
We offer a 6 month no risk trial. If they decide to continue after 6 months we raise an invoice to cover a 12 month period from when the pilot started and if they decide not to continue we can switch the system off with no costs incurred by them.

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 gary@empowering-communities.org. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.