ACAS Digital Advisory Service: Beta

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done Acas completed discovery/alpha end October 2017 looking at our digital advice/guidance service with the vision: “Every employee and employer knows the best next step to prevent or cure their workplace problem”. We now require a specialist agile team to work with us in the Beta phase to help achieve: increase user satisfaction for our service, increase use of our online guidance to self-serve, reduction of ‘information only’ helpline calls, increase ratio of web visits to calls and improved user experience for mobile and tablet. This will support Acas’ wider aims: http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1342 Problem to Be Solved Users need to find and understand advice to solve their workplace problems. We anticipate this would include: •Design/build responsive service: start page, taxonomy, navigation/search, information architecture and CMS templates. •Content design for two topic areas prototyped in alpha (redundancy/holiday) then apply learnings to new topic area to validate templates. •Wordpress CMS adapted for Acas workflows, hosting and test environments. •Develop Acas look and feel– our service will not be on gov.uk. •Build and measure KPIs on an open performance platform. •Set standards for QA for the service and build/carry out appropriate automated testing. •Pass GDS beta assessment. •Agile capability building. Who Are the Users Example user stories: As an employee I want to know what my redundancy rights are so that I know if I am being treated fairly. As an employer who needs to make staff redundant I need to know the right way to do this so that I can plan my steps. As a HR advisor I want to calculate the correct amount of holiday pay an employee is entitled to so that I know they are getting the correct amount. As an Acas CMS user I need to publish content so that I can keep the service up to date. Early Market Engagement NA Work Already Done Discovery conducted Nov-Dec 2016, Alpha Aug-Nov 2017. What we found: •Users needed more detailed signposting to identify where they were within the service and within advice topics •Content must be in plain language, with a formal tone without ambiguous words. •Particular topics such as redundancy needed to be divided into separate content for employers and employees. •Content hierarchy was very important and most asked advice needed to be clear on the page and then edge cases covered in accordions later on. •Accessible and assisted digital users had unique needs and this required development of the Acas look and feel. Existing Team In house team: 1 x Service Owner (F/T), 1 X Product Manager (F/T). 1 x Content Designer (F/T). There will also be a number of Acas staff on secondment in the project to be paired with the contractor team for upskilling. In house team does not have any experience of beta. Current Phase Beta Work Location Euston Tower, 286 Euston Rd, Kings Cross London, NW1 3DP Working Arrangments The team are required to be co-located with the team in London, Monday-Friday office hours. Acas can account for occasional off-site working– to be agreed. The project will operate a standard agile scrum methodology: daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprints, demos, retrospectives, show and tells. The supplier will need to lead by being a role model in agile working. They will need to collaborate with our team and invest time in knowledge sharing and coaching to increase the capability of Acas staff. The supplier will be responsible for recruiting user research participants as part of the bid, please include recruitment costs. Security Clearance Baseline Personnel Security Standard clearance required. Additional T&Cs NA Skills & Experience Experience of delivering digital services using an agile scrum team (as in the GDS Service Manual) that meet the GDS Service Standard have passed GDS Beta Service Assessments (12.5%) Expertise in user research and usability testing and take into account Discovery/alpha findings to meet user needs (including assisted digital, accessible users and accessibility audits) (12.5%) Experience in leading an agile team as well as to coach, mentor and upskill people in agile techniques and roles to build capability within existing (12.5%) Expertise in successfully developing Wordpress CMS including user-friendly staff-facing interfaces, responsive templates, site publishing tools, front-end and UI web development (12.5%) Expertise in developing production ready open source code for private/public Beta releases from Discovery and Alpha outputs (e.g. low-fi/hi-fi prototypes) and use of GitHub (12.5%) Demonstrate skills and expertise in automated (testing) environments and implementing continuous integration, delivery & deployment. (12.5%) Experience in building open performance platforms to measure KPIs for a service and use metrics, analytics, data and user feedback to create and prioritise key content and features (10%) Nice to Haves Skills and expertise to create formalised plans to manage and proactively engage with complex internal stakeholder relationships to support digital transformation. (7.5%) Skills and expertise to deliver work on a non-transactional content based service and create transitions plans for releasing beta content and features in conjunction with an existing legacy website. (7.5%) No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria Proposal – demonstrate how the approach or solution will meet user needs, including assisted digital and accessible users (12.5%) Proposed approach – identify methodology that will lead to project success, taking into account discovery/alpha findings, further user research/ testing, GDS assessment and transition planning for public beta (20%) Technical solution–demonstrate your approach to developing open source production ready code, user-centred Wordpress CMS, building in quality assurance/testing, setting up hosting environments and creating an open performance platform (22.5%) Team structure - with roles, responsibilities and previous relevant experience (20%) Estimated timeframe for the work – demonstrate how work will be organised using sprints and how the transition planning from private to public beta will lead to project success (15%) Value for money (5%) Risks and dependencies – with approaches to manage them (5%) Cultural Fit Criteria Demonstrate your approach to engaging with internal senior stakeholders undergoing cultural change and how this will support project success (50%) Demonstrate how you will work transparently, collaboratively and share your approach with the Acas project team and seek actionable feedback (50%) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Written proposal Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers Budget range £360,000 - £400,000