Re-development of eGAR (Electronic General Aviation Report) online submission portal

Tender description

Summary of the work The redevelopment of Border Force’s ‘Electronic General Aviation Report’ submission portal. The project is to start from Alpha stage of its development, using the previous project as a POC. The new portal must both pass all GDS assessments and spend control procedures in order to meet a legislative deadline. Expected Contract Length 24 months Latest start date Monday 12 June 2017 Budget Range Budget Range of between £0.5m £1.5m over two years (excl VAT) Why the Work is Being Done Border Force is putting many of its existing processes online, so as to make them quicker, cheaper, and more efficient. eGAR submission is one such process. A previous iteration of the eGAR submission tool acted as a proof of concept. Border Force now needs a new team to redevelop the tool from the Alpha stage, using open source technology, tried and tested methods of data ingest and recognised user research methods. To ensure that an easy to use product is produced which passes all GDS assessments and spend control procedures. There is a tight deadline driven by legislative changes. Problem to Be Solved Presently, there are 3 different methods for submitting a GAR (General Aviation Report). The overall process, from obtaining the information, to depositing it in a central database, involves lots of manual processes. Border Force wants to bring the GAR submission into one place, in the form of the eGAR online tool. The previous iteration of the tool acted as a POC and needs to be redeveloped with a focus on user led iteration with improved bulk upload functionality. Any redevelopment of the tool must therefore meet all GDS Service Standards and pass GDS assessment at each stage of development. Who Are the Users General Aviation (GA) is defined as any (non-military) aircraft not operating to a published schedule. There are 90,000 GA flights made into the UK every year. All GA flights must submit a GAR. GARs are used by GA flights to notify Border Force and/or the Police of their arrival into the UK. GARs must contain information such as aircraft type, passenger / crew personal details, arrival / departure times, etc. GA flight operators and pilots – the Users – need one central, online means by which they can submit their GAR. The tool must be quick and easy to use. Early Market Engagement A previous iteration of this tool already exists, built by an external supplier. In terms of identifying a supplier to undertake the redevelopment of the tool, however, there has been no early market engagement. Work Already Done A previous iteration of this tool already exists, built by an external supplier, which was a proof of concept. There are already well defined Functional and non functional requirements together with user research which can be used as a starting point. However more work with users will be necessary to ensure that the new development is truly user led. Any new iteration of the tool must begin at the Alpha stage of development, and must meet the 18 GDS service points outlined in the GDS service manual. Existing Team 1 x internal project manager 1 x Internal Product Owner 1 x Internal Service Manager Current Phase Alpha Skills & Experience • • Proven experience building easy-to-use web-based / mobile applications • • Proven experience building services on AWS • • Proven experience conducting and documenting user research, and iterating project work accordingly (test driven development) • • Proven experience delivering projects using the agile project management methodology • • Demonstrate understanding and ability to deliver digital services/products to the Government Digital Service standards • • Demonstrate a successful approach to completion of required GDS Service Assessment, Security Health Check, Penetration Testing, Service Readiness, and release reviews as part of quality and acceptance tests. • • Proven ability to support and improve the solution once live • • Development solely using Open Source products or products which IPR will vest with the HO upon delivery Nice to Haves • • Previous successful experience delivering digital services within Government • • Proven track record of building services with robust disaster recovery plans in place • • Proven track record of building services automated testing procedures. • • A track record of successfully delivering IT projects within public sector organisations • • Previous experience of working successfully with provisions for an offline user interface • • Knowledge of Java 8, Scala, Spring Boot, NodeJS, HTML5/CSS, Docker and Kubernetes, SOAP, REST and GitHub • • Use and knowledge of an existing DB flavour already used in the Home Office e.g PostgreSQL, or NoSQL DBs such as MongoDB. • • Use and knowledge of GitHub, GitLab, Drone, Jenkins • • Experience of Home Office Forms (an open source project - https://github.com/UKHomeOfficeForms/hof) • • Understand issues pertaining to applying security checks to individuals travelling across borders. • • Demonstrate experience of writing cloud native / 12-factor apps • • Demonstrate knowledge of working with 3rd parties to develop standard interfaces and data exchange portals. • • Proven track record in the development of automated testing procedures. • • Have experience of successfully transitioning projects into a live service environment within a government department within the last 12 months • • Have availability of resources to be able to start as soon as possible Work Location The work is predominantly based in London within the M25 (Westminster initially at 2 Marsham Street and then Croydon), however proposals of remote working at a different location will be considered. Working Arrangments Expenses will conform to HO internal policies and will not be payable within the M25. The team is expected to work across the multiple sites; the main sites are expected to be Westminster, Croydon, or Heathrow. The team must be available during standard HO working hours. Security Clearance All staff engaged on the programme must currently hold or be capable of being security cleared to SC level. Additional T&Cs This contract would probably be deemed outside the intermediaries legislation (IR35) but could be affected by factors outside HO control. HO assumes no liability and will grant no guarantee of status. IPR in any Developed Technology will rest with HO. The Contractor will warrants to the Authority that all components of the Developed Technology shall: (a) be free from defects in material and workmanship; and (b) perform in all material respects in accordance with the agreed specifications No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • • All essential and nice to have requirements will be evaluated further as part of the overall proposal criteria below • • 2nd stage Evaluation criteria have 8 categories: Specific Competencies 40%, Plan for initial phase 25%, Policy 20%, Methodology 10%, Security 5% • • Specific Competencies: Includes all essential and nice to have technology criteria • • Specific Competencies: Includes all essential and nice to have business and project plan • • Written response as to the type of agile delivery criteriamethod proposed. • • Specific Competencies: Ability to transfer to Business as Usual • • Plan: Quality of delivery plan for first phase of engagement and statement of work, including user research • • Policy: Cloud - Open Source - IPR and Licensing • • Methodology: Agile - Government Digital Service • • Security: Compliance with people security requirements Cultural Fit Criteria • • Experience working with public sector organisations • • Work collaboratively with key contacts in Home Office • • Transparency in decision-making • • Strong pro-active approach to incident and problem management Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 65% Cultural fit 5% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. Can Home Office confirm the difference in response required for the following two questions: - Proven track record of building services automated testing procedures -Proven track record in the development of automated testing procedures Our assumption is that one regards to the use of automated testing in delivery whilst the other refers to setting automated test frameworks up from scratch, but any further clarification would be welcomed. The first requirement refers to a previous service delivery that met the GDS Service Standard point 10 (Test the end-to-end service) and needs to be addressed in that context. The second is a more general point on how automated testing was embeded in the delivery DevOps process (with Continuous Integration pipeline and deployment). In both cases, real life examples are required. 2. Does the internal team for this project have a preference as to the agile methodology to be used, e.g. Scrum, Kanban. The internal team has no preference on the type of agile methodology that should be used. Suppliers should propose a methodology and how it would work in relation to this project and their proposal. 3. Please can you provide further details of the desired "offline user interface". What is the use case(s) for this interface? Are there any preferred technical approaches to this interface? More detail will be provided to the down selected suppliers. For the purpose of answering nice to have skills please reference any applicable experience with offline user interfaces. 4. Please can you clarify the timescales implied by the "tight deadline driven by legislative changes"? The expectation is that the full service will be in public beta by October 2017 to meet legislative changes. 5. We assume from the mandatory skills and experience that the service must be hosted on AWS? Does the budget range of £0.5m to £1.5m over 2 years include the costs of the AWS hosting? Is it envisaged that the hosting is provided by the supplier or under a Home Office account? Does the Home Office want the supplier to manage all aspects of the hosting environments and deployment processes, or will any element of environments and deployment processes be handled internally? Home Office have developed Digital Services Platform (DSP) on AWS that provide containerised hosting of different technology components (e.g. web servers, message queues, monitoring stack, etc). Home Office preference is to make use of DSP stack where possible and therefore the eGAR is expected to run under the Home Office account or sub-account (subject to Home Office DDaT ratification). Therefore, if the provision of the service is likely to be on an alternative cloud provider, then the infrastructure costs must be included.But the supplier must handle all aspects of the hosting environments and deployments process but follow HO practices. 6. Beyond the three internal roles identified, are you envisaging any other roles being provided by the internal team, e.g. Delivery Manager or Scrum Master, User Researcher, Content Designer? Also, will the project need a Performance Analyst, and if so would you expect that role be provided internally or by the supplier. Beyond the three internal roles identified, are you envisaging any other roles being provided by the internal team, e.g. Delivery Manager or Scrum Master, User Researcher, Content Designer? Also, will the project need a Performance Analyst, and if so would you expect that role be provided internally or by the supplier. 7. When looking for experience in "mobile applications" are you looking for: (i) experience in native or hybrid apps; or (ii) the application of responsive design and progressive enhancement to delivering a good experience on mobile devices? If you are envisaging a native or hybrid app, please can you outline the use case(s) you envisage that would require a native or hybrid app. We require an easy to use web based app, the underlying design and architecture has yet to be finalised. 8. One of the Home Office’s nice-to-have skills and experience mentions ‘…provisions for an offline user interface’. Please can the Home Office clarify whether, in this context, an offline user interface means: (1) a user having the ability to prepare GARs remotely using a device that is disconnected from the Internet; or, (2) users having an alternative channel for submitting GARs in the event that the Portal is temporarily offline (in line with GDS service assessment criteria 11)? The supplier must be able to demonstrate that it has experience of working and succesful compliance with GDS service assessment criteria 11. 9. • The ‘Problem to be solved’ statement mentions the need for ‘…improved bulk upload functionality’. To help us provide evidence that is as relevant as possible, please can the Home Office confirm whether this means: (1) an external system integrating with the eGAR Portal to upload GARs in bulk; (2) a user interacting with the eGAR Portal to upload GARs in bulk (e.g. using some sort of file upload facility); (3) a combination of options 1 and 2; or, (4) whichever option user research identifies is most appropriate. The user case is the need to upload multiple GARs or multiple passenger / crew details at once, the design of this will be based on user research. 10. You state that a previous iteration of this tool already exists, built by an external supplier, which was a proof of concept... can you advise if that supplier remains contracted to the authority and the outcome of the use of the tool? The proof of concept work has now been completed and the lessons learnt from this exercise will be shared with the down-selected suppliers in the second stage of this procurement. 11. Regarding previous experience of working successfully with provisions for an offline user interface, do you mean: Disconnected working? Or do you mean ensuring there is an offline plan? Or do you mean something else? More detail will be provided to the down selected suppliers. For the purpose of answering nice to have skills please reference any applicable experience with offline user interfaces. 12. Could you please confirm the maximum GCSP classification of the data? Is there any cross-agency interfacing required with the data captured, e.g. interaction with the NSW? The wording suggests that the proposal would include support operations for the system for up to two years. Could you kindly confirm whether the support would be expected to be 24/7 and whether there is an existing cloud infrastructure account or ecosystem to plug into (i.e. shared monitoring services) or if it would run in an isolated standalone fashion under an independent cloud-account? Lastly, should the cost include infrastructure/hosting costs? (1) Data classification is “OFFICIAL” only and therefore can be stored in the commodity cloud. This needs to be covered in RMADS.(2) No cross-agency interaction. eGAR portal only interfaces with other Home Office systems.(3) The support will be L2 and L3 only, while L1 support is provided by Home Office team. The L2 and L3 support hours to be agreed, but currently they are 08:00 to 19:00 Mon-Fri (as defined in the eGAR Service Design Package). These however, are possibly subject to change. 13. It would be really helpful to have a short conversation with the project team to clarify a couple of items quickly and to check our understanding of the requirement. Would the team be prepared to organise a teleconference for suppliers tomorrow or on Wednesday please? The Project team will hold a CC with Shortlisted suppliers. Shortlisting will be done based on Suppliers Skills and Experience. 14. With regards to the proposed payment approach being capped time and materials. Could you please confirm whether you intend the work to be carried out using agile methodology? This would mean that tasks are performed against a prioritised backlog and accepting that some of the less important/non-essential requirements may not be delivered to prevent the budget from escalating. Or is it your intention to write a detailed specification at the outset which must be delivered at the supplier's cost if they exceed the time period they stated in the response. This work will be conducted using an Agile Methodology and will be required to meet the https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard. The RFP which has been drafted to include some Technology Constraints but is largely performance based. 15. The weblink to the forms is not working. https://github.com/UKHomeOfficeForms/hof 16. Is there an incumbent supplier for this opportunity? If yes, have they been invited to respond to this invitation? This project is viewed by the authority as a wholly new requirement that will be open to all suppliers on the DOS framework to compete for. The project will be built upon using the lessons learnt from the POC that has been completed. 17. Please advise of the specific number of roles required to facilitate this work? i.e. One individual or a team to facilitate The supplier will be required to provide an Agile Team, a RFP document will be shared with down selected suppliers which included the suggested roles of the multi-disciplinary team. 18. Do the entire team need to be SC Cleared. We have worked on projects where only people that are accessing information on live services (Business Analysts & Lead Developer & DevOps) have been SC Cleared. Would this model work for the eGAR Project SC clearance is preferred, but CTC clearance will be considered dependant on the role. 19. Does the development and delivery of the tool require only a front-end web-form based solution, or does it also include delivering the back end storage, management, and reporting etc of where and how the GAR reports are stored? Have any technology decisions already been determined, and if so what are these constraints? No – The service will require some back end functionality and storage to allow operators to change GARS up to a certain point before the flight departs (this needs to be configurable by the business) and send to an internal system. A feature of the present system that we would want to replicate would be for the operators to be able to use previously sent passengers data again to save operator input time should that passenger travel with the company again. This should be restricted to individual log in’s and other data should not be seen by others. 20. In the nice to have requirements a JAVA8 knowledge is suggested. Is the technology solution tied only to JAVA based systems or a contractor or team of contractors can offer an alternate solution? Java8 is not mandated, but one of the preferred languages. However, if Java is used then the solution must be built on Java8 version. If the solution proposed is on an alternative technology, then this will be assessed in line with the UK Border Force Reference Architecture and GDS Service Standards. 21. As an existing tool exists and it's been built by an external supplier will they participate on current bidding? This project is viewed by the authority as a wholly new requirement that will be open to all suppliers on the DOS framework to compete for. The project will be built upon using the lessons learnt from the Beta that has already been completed. 22. Mandatory requirement section suggests on having a single contractor, however budget range points on supplying a team. What is the exact requirements - how big personnel is required? Home Office is looking to enter into a single contract to deliver this service. It will be for the bidder to propose the size of team they will put in place to deliver the requirements. 23. Service provision accepts an option on having a partially remote team conducting project work in a different location, what exactly is minimum on-site requirement? There is no minimum on site requirements. It will be for the bidder to propose how their team will work, taking into account the requirement for agile delivery and the level of engagement that will be needed with the business and other areas of Home Office who are currently London based.