Credit: Descrier/CC BY 2.0

The government has signed a six-figure contract to ensure details of coronavirus policy and response can be reflected in urgent out-of-hours updates to the GOV.UK website.

The Department of Health and Social Care has awarded a £380,000 deal to specialist digital content consultancy Scroll. Over the course of the engagement, which commenced on 4 September and runs until 31 March 2022, the London-based firm will provide the department with “an out of hours service for the content design of GOV.UK to reflect the latest updates in the government’s response to the coronavirus”.

According to the contract, this will include the delivery of a “content design-focused service tasked on specified Covid policy areas – such as [the] managed quarantine service”. The supplier will be expected to “ensure updates are worded in plain English with the public in mind”. 

Related content

• NHS Covid Pass looks to ‘next phase’ and improvement of user experience
• NHS Covid app: venue check-ins fall off a cliff as contact alerts continue to decline
• NHS Covid app: from 16 August exposure alerts will ask users if they have been fully vaccinated

In addition to delivering urgent updates, Scroll has been tasked with offering an “account management service to handle the transition from day work to the out of hours team”.

The company will “also need to support and advise the [DHSC’s] Covid-19 policy teams on the content design of their respective projects [such as] social distancing guidelines”, the contract added.

Scroll was previously awarded two similar deals, which ran consecutively and covered the period from 19 October 2020 to 3 September 2021.

The new contact is by far the largest, with the previous deals worth a cumulative total of £223,243.

Additionally, Scroll was awarded a five-month £55,000 contract in July to provide content design expertise to the DHSC’s communications team.

Founded in 2004, the company claims to have a “large core team of permanent employees”, supported by a roster of about 250 “associates”.