The Ministry of Justice, through His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), is undertaking preliminary market engagement to support consideration of a potential legacy archive recovery and digitisation requirement relating to historic index records currently held on obsolete media. HMCTS holds a substantial archive of historic index records, primarily across microfiche and cassette media. The current estimated scope includes approximately 20,000 microfiche sheets containing around 2 million records, and 658 cassette media units containing around 6.5 million records. The total estimated archive is therefore approximately 8.5 million records. There are also historic records held in books, although these are currently considered lower volume and lower priority than the microfiche and cassette records. The current arrangements rely on legacy physical and digital media, manual search activity, local operational knowledge and ageing technology. This creates challenges around retrieval speed, consistency, resilience, future access, preservation and the continued availability of the underlying information. HMCTS is therefore exploring market capability that could support the controlled recovery, digitisation, extraction, validation, indexing and searchability of these historic records. The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to improve HMCTS’ understanding of market capability relating to: • inventory, cataloguing and condition assessment of microfiche and cassette media; • technical discovery of cassette formats, data structures, hardware or software dependencies and recoverability; • high-resolution microfiche digitisation; • recovery and extraction of data from cassette media; • image enhancement, OCR, intelligent data extraction and confidence scoring; • creation of a common target data model across recovered and digitised records; • validation, de-duplication, exception handling and quality assurance; • secure repository and search capability, including access controls, audit logging and reporting; • service transition, user guidance, business change and benefits tracking. Through this RFI, HMCTS is seeking to better understand: • available market capability and supplier capacity; • how relevant services are normally delivered, for example through specialist digitisation services, legacy media recovery, data extraction, repository/search solutions, managed technical services, consultancy, integration support or mixed delivery models; • indicative discovery, pilot, implementation and delivery approaches; • potential commercial models, procurement routes and phasing options; • legal, data protection, security, records management and information assurance considerations; • indicative costs, cost drivers, timescales, dependencies and delivery risks; • the extent to which existing storage, records management or archive services could support or influence a future delivery route. This RFI is deliberately focused on market capability, technical feasibility and delivery evidence. HMCTS is not asking suppliers to design the future service or make policy, legal, retention, disposal or public access decisions at this stage. Any future capability would need to operate within appropriate HMCTS governance, records management, data protection, security, information assurance, auditability and access control arrangements. This RFI is an evidence-gathering activity only. It is not a request for a quotation, proposal or tender, and it should not be treated as a commitment to any future procurement. The issuing of this RFI does not commit HMCTS or MoJ to procure any services, software, data platforms or solutions; does not indicate any supplier preference; and does not create exclusivity or advantage for suppliers who respond. Responses will be used solely to inform HMCTS’ understanding of the market, possible future delivery options, recoverability of legacy media, business case development, affordability, assurance considerations, commercial strategy and potential next-stage routes.

Procurement Act 2023

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), through His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), is interested in understanding the market’s capacity and capability to support the potential recovery, digitisation, extraction, validation, indexing and searchability of historic records currently held on legacy media, including microfiche and cassette media. The purpose of this notice is to enable suppliers to respond to the RFI. Interested parties are required to complete the following actions: 1. Register for an account through the MoJ Sourcing Portal at https://ministryofjusticecommercial.bravosolution.co.uk 2. Navigate to the left side menu and click on 'PQQs Open to All Suppliers' > find and click on 'PQQ_628 HMCTS Legacy Archive Recovery and Digitisation Request for Information’ - No response is required at this stage other than expressing an interest to access the RFI documentation and questionnaire. 3. Suppliers must express an interest by clicking 'Express interest' and will then be able to view the detail relating to market engagement. The questionnaire is located in the Technical Response section of the PQQ. Please return responses or questions via the messaging function. Indicative timeline 25th September 2026 (Questionnaire issued and UK2 notice published) 22nd October 2026 deadline for final clarification questions 30th October 2026 (Deadline to submit responses to questionnaire) The PQQ_628 HMCTS Legacy Archive Recovery and Digitisation Request for Information is being used as a mechanism for the RFI and no feedback or responses to engagement will affect your ability to tender for contracts in the future. Responses are not evaluated. Nothing in this notice constitutes a commitment by HMCTS or MoJ to commence a procurement or award a contract. Suppliers are responsible for all costs associated with preparing and submitting a response. HMCTS and MoJ will not reimburse any costs incurred through participation in this market engagement. Suppliers should base their responses on the information reasonably available to them at the time of submission. The Engagement deadline in this notice reflects the closing date for questionnaire submission by Suppliers.