Rail Delivery Group (RDG) Central Back Office (CBO) HOPS

RDG is a membership organisation that brings together the companies that run Britain's railway into a single team with one goal, to deliver a better railway. Modernising ticketing and improving the customer journey are top priorities for passengers and the industry.

The railway is the backbone of the economy, moving people and goods across the cities, regions and nations of Britain.

All of the passenger and freight rail companies are members of the RDG, as well as Network Rail and HS2. RDG provides services and support to enable our members to succeed in transforming and delivering a successful railway, benefiting passengers, taxpayers and the economy.

4.2 Industry Vision and Strategy

There are a number of ongoing industry and government reviews and strategies being developed around the future vision for Customers, ticketing and the industry.

The Williams Review is likely to bring about large-scale changes to the rail industry. Indications are that there will be a focus on improving accountability and ending the fragmentation of industry systems. Evidence from the review specifically calls out the ticketing system as an example of this issue being borne out.

Regardless of the future structure of the industry, Customers will need to use tickets to travel (or an alternative way to authenticate travel) and an organisation will need to guide stakeholders to develop a coherent Customer proposition. RDG has co-ordinated industry thinking in this area and established the following vision: 'Making travel the simple, easy and tailored experience that Customer's want', which is aligned to Customer outcomes within RDG's corporate strategic plan.

This aims to fulfil the government's objective to 'ensure that passengers across the network can use mobile phones, barcodes and Smartcards across almost all of the network'.

4.3 Smart Ticketing

There were 1.75 billion rail journeys across the UK in 2019, made with a ticket bought online, from one of the 2,500 ticket offices across the country, or by using their contactless credit or debit card as a token.

The UK Government defined standard for nationally accepted Smartcard ticketing in the UK is ITSO.

ITSO smart ticketing is a system that electronically stores a travel ticket on a microchip, which is then usually embedded on a Smartcard. This offers more convenience and flexibility for passengers, allowing seamless connections across different modes of transport and helping reduce ticket queues and crowding at transport interchanges.

In 2019, ITSO Smartcard tickets accounted for circa 7% of all ticket sales and circa 37% of season tickets.

4.4 Central Back Office (CBO)

The CBO is a rail-industry shared service, managed and operated by RDG to enable, support and innovate the use of ITSO-based smart ticketing solutions across multiple service operators' routes. This improves the TOCs' ability to provide flexible options, better passenger experience, and increased traveller mobility.

The CBO supports, or is interoperable with, all ITSO passenger rail schemes in Great Britain. It currently provides services to 14 TOCs and is interoperable with Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), ScotRail and Transport for London (TfL) back offices. Merseyrail is partially integrated with the CBO. Other rail organisations such as Open Access Operators may also be onboarded or integrated during the lifetime of the new contract. Third Party Retailers are supported via a separate HOPS, which is not in scope for this RFP, but may be a requirement in the future.

4.5 Smart Ticketing Hub Concept

The continued provision of ITSO Smartcard ticketing services to the industry is a priority for RDG in the forthcoming years. RDG has developed proposals to align its systems to the strategic direction of the industry, outlined in documentation such as the 'Easier Fares for All' report.

This strategy exploits the following opportunities:

1. To simplify the ticketing offer (Product types and fulfilment methods). At present, there are four main Product fulfilment methods:

• Paper (magnetic stripe credit card sized tickets);
• Smartcard (ITSO);
• Barcode; and
• Contactless/EMV (Europay Mastercard Visa).

The industry wishes to retire paper tickets. To achieve this, the smart ticketing media offering must be broadened to match the current paper ticket coverage that meets the needs of all demographics.

2. To support Account Based Ticketing (ABT), Pay-as-You-Go (PAYG), Smart Ticketing on Mobile (SToM) and the rail element of multi-modal travel, by bringing all 'taps' together in a single place and processing them consistently.
3. To improve the collection and analysis of rich data.
4. To simplify Customer access to a personalised rail service to meet their intersecting travel needs.

The Smart Ticketing Hub is part of the wider fares and ticketing strategy and will manage the acceptance and verification of Products across the National Rail network irrespective of ticket media, issuer or location, with a focus on ensuring:

• All verification methods are supported.
• A combination of local data and that provided within the smart media provides enough information to determine whether the smart media contains a Product that is valid for travel.
• All information is collected and made available to operators to facilitate operations and customer services.
• Interoperability to ensure a passenger's entitlement to travel and media can be used widely, thus inspiring trust and journey transparency.
• A simple and consistent Customer experience across operators and devices.

The Smart Ticketing Hub architecture must be modular in design, to allow the industry to deliver:

• Flexibility of Product and service provision for passengers in line with future fares industry reforms.
• Simplicity of passenger choice and ease of use, straightforward operational services for Participant staff and simplified service provision for RDG.
• Future-proof through new functionality development using a common platform and in line with th…