Overview

Organisations may have provisioned and maintained sponsored NHSmail accounts for community organisations such as Social Care sites, Pharmacies, Optometrists, GP Locums, Independent Midwives and Dispensing Appliance Contractors, which they have a close working relationship with, commissioned or otherwise.

In some instances, an organisation may decide to no longer continue providing support to these accounts, whether this is due to a decision to not renew the commissioning of services or the relationship with the organisation changes, for example. These NHSmail accounts, if they are eligible, can be transferred to the National Administration Service (NAS) to be administered centrally.

Eligibility

This process is designed to transfer NHSmail accounts that belong to sectors currently supported by the NAS, and furthermore, only if they would qualify for central management. Therefore, the following sites/users would not be accepted:

• Generically named user accounts (if these are being used as shared mailboxes, please follow the shared mailbox conversion process before submitting an account as part of this transfer process).
• Users not belonging to a relevant specialism supported by the NAS (Social care, Pharmacy, Optometry, Dentistry, Independent Midwives, GP Locums, Dispensing Appliance Contractors (DACs))
• Sites that are not DSPT compliant.
• Staff not providing direct patient care, for example head office, HR
• Those without a registered UK mobile number
• Numbers of users that exceed a NAS managed site’s allowed provision of user accounts
• Optometry multiples (for example Boots, Specsavers, Vision Express.)
• Accounts that would be ineligible based on the Acceptable Use Policy or Access Policy (e.g. if a user already has a centrally funded secure email such as gov.uk)

Considerations

• It is the responsibility of the initial hosting organisation to communicate with the existing NHSmail users being targeted by this process, and ensure they are aware of the process and timescales.
• This includes providing resolutions to affected users who are not eligible; whether this is providing them contact details and next steps to transfer to another NHSmail organisation or continuing to administer their accounts.
• To ensure NHSmail accounts are not deleted prematurely, and thus causing a clinical risk or result in catastrophic data loss, please ensure that accounts are not marked as leavers; the desk will transfer accounts if eligible.
• It is the responsibility of both the local organisation that created and administered the accounts, and the account users themselves to ensure that any residual data or access to data, that they have no legal right to retain, including Patient Identifiable Data (PID), is removed before a transfer to the NAS takes place.

       More information can be found here:
       User Policy Management: Marking an NHSmail Office 365 user as a Leaver
        Leavers and Joiners Guide

Process

1. If you are a Primary or Local Administrator (PLA/LA) for your organisation, please download and complete the Legacy Transfer form linked to below.
2. Raise a ticket via Service Now using the Legacy transfer option and attaching the above form
3. The Operations team will evaluate your application and process all eligible users. The LA/PLA that raised the request will then be contacted to confirm which accounts have been successful and which have been rejected.
4. For rejected accounts, please make the necessary arrangements to either continue to administrate, or handover effectively to another organisation.