Delivery partner for online passport application services.

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done HM Passport Office has an organisational goal to create an integrated, digital-by-default service for customers who need to apply, renew or replace passports. This will reduce the 35 million documents and pieces of paper that HM Passport Office and its partners handle annually to the single digit millions by 2020, by receiving over 90 per cent of passport applications online. The Project started life as one of the GDS Exemplar suite of digital projects. We continue to have a close relationship with GDS through collaboration on GOV.UK content and their ongoing assurance of our delivery against their Digital Service Standards. Problem to Be Solved The existing service accommodates a single customer group - adult renewals aged 26 years and older. HM Passport Office's plans are to extend this to all customer groups, both in the UK and abroad, in order to achieve the strategic organisational goal of 95% transactions online by 2020. The current delivery approach needs to be scaled to support this ambition, without sacrificing the user-centered approach already established. Delivery should also adhere to the GDS Digital Service Standards. Who Are the Users As a passport applicant, I need an easy way to provide a passport photo that meets international standards, and to provide supporting documentation in support of my application. Early Market Engagement HM Passport Office have carried out analysis on which aspects of the transformation programme to ‘buy or build’. Certain aspects (eg. document handling and appointment booking) will likely involve teams integrating with shared or 3rd party solutions. The current team has been up and running for 2 years with great success; this is therefore a relatively mature programme and suppliers should expect to work alongside colleagues from other organisations and deliver to an established platform. Work Already Done The online renewal service has been available to renew passports for adults aged 26 and over since June 2016. There is a stable platform, with update releases several times each week. User Research and design efforts are mature, and there is a significant amount of research and knowledge available in terms of product discovery. Existing Team There are currently two cross-functional teams working on these services and capabilities. HM Passport Office anticipate the supplier team will manage these existing capabilities, as well as build new ones for the provision of shared services from this platform. Current Phase Beta Work Location Central London (near to Victoria / Westminster/ Fleet Street) Working Arrangments We expect the supplier to work collaboratively with the existing in-house cross-functional teams who are transforming how applications are submitted and processed by HM Passport Office. There should also be a focus on evidence-based skills transfer between the supplier and the civil servant members of the team. Work is based in London, and will involve the supplier being on site for at least four days per week to work collaboratively with HM Passport Office teams. Travel and expenses remain the responsibility of the supplier. Service design and development must align with the HM Passport Office strategic technical architecture and technologies. Security Clearance SC clearance is required. HM Passport Office will support the clearance process. Additional T&Cs Breakpoints to assess progress and quality will be set at the end of alpha and beta phases. Skills & Experience Have demonstrable experience of successfully understanding user needs and designing services to support them. Have demonstrable experience of user centric development and how this is balanced against business and technology considerations. Have demonstrable experience of successfully integrating systems via APIs, including on-premise and other cloud-based services. Have demonstrable experience of successfully delivering digital solutions that collect and manage personal and/or sensitive information with appropriate controls and protection. Have demonstrable experience of successfully working with other suppliers/3rd parties/other partners in the delivery of public sector digital services; Be able to mobilise the required multi-disciplined team to begin engaging on 06/05/17 Have demonstrable experience of successfully assessing Discovery phase outputs and iteratively developing and improving them using Agile methods and practices. Have demonstrable experience of working in Continuous Delivery environments Have demonstrable experience of working with HMPO technology stack (Java, Node.js, MongoDB, AWS, Puppet, RabbitMQ) Have demonstrable experience of supplying cross-functional agile teams to deliver defined outcomes Have demonstrable expertise in automated testing and DevOps approaches Demonstrable depth of resource and expertise in supplying the following roles: delivery lead, agile BA, developer, QA, lead developer/architect, bring experience of tight contract testing and component level testing. Capable of delivering high quality services with automated testing processes. Able to build and influence our current build pipelines to support organisation maturity, this should include, automated security testing, code quality assurance, smoke testing and using containerisation to support deployment. Able to communicate effectively with technical architecture and solve issues amongst complex integrations. Have demonstrable experience of successfully assessing Discovery phase outputs; iteratively developing and improving them using Agile methods and practices. Good knowledge of AWS, Java8, REST/JSON, HATEOAS, Postgres and MongoDB. Knowledge of working with Payment Systems. Able to work within automated config management environments using Puppet. Knowledge of ELK/Grafana and able to design metrics and monitoring dashboards. Nice to Haves Have demonstrable experience of delivering digital solutions that meet Level AA of the W3C WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards Have demonstrable experience of successfully and collaboratively working, coaching and sharing knowledge with Public Sector client teams, particularly those with limited agile development experience. Have demonstrable experience of successfully integrating digital solutions with Government platforms, such as Government Gateway, Verify and Notify Have demonstrable experience of working on services which go through government Service Assessments Have demonstrable experience of working with Policy and Business Architect teams to generate requirements Have demonstrable experience of working in multi-team agile delivery programmes Have demonstrable experience of thought leadership in agile public sector delivery Have demonstrable experience of Transformation programmes and replacing legacy systems Have worked with photo processing systems, in particular the tuning and monitoring of user uploaded photos. Good understanding of securing files coming in from the public domain. Experience working with API gateways. Best practice in microservice design principles. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria Approach and methodology – reporting delivery speed, clear communication, risk management Value for money - Support model, resource costs, estimating, sizing Team Structure – reporting lines, performance reviews Managing backfill Ability to identify poor performance in a team Track record of delivery Cultural Fit Criteria Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers Transparent and collaborative when making decisions Have a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Written proposal Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 15% Price 25% Questions from Suppliers Budget range £750k to £1.6m per annum.