Digital Operations - Delivery of cloud platform services

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done "Digital Operations is responsible for the Multichannel Digital Tax Platform (MDTP), winner of the 2015 British Computer Society Digital Project of the Year award providing the production digital environments supporting approx 120 digital services, 10 million customers and 100 releases weekly improving and iterating these. The Platform provides development and test environments for teams in the Digital Delivery Centres building the Services, enabling delivery of HMRC's Digital Services iteratively using agile methodologies. HMRC require a supplier to add value to this development through provision of suitably skilled technical roles to work in Scrum Teams alongside existing HMRC teams and others." Problem to Be Solved HMRC require a partner to deliver the technical aspects of new and existing Platform developments. This will include (but is not limited to) technical agile specialists incorporating work in scrum teams and delivering in phased sprints. This will be done through outcome based statements of work. Who Are the Users The users are internal digital teams building products for HMRC in support of the Digital Strategy. HMRC's Digital Strategy is to accommodate the majority of interaction with customers through digital self-service. This will reduce the nation's tax gap through making the UK's tax system more transparent and also reduce the overheads involved in supporting such a system. Early Market Engagement N/A Work Already Done The Multiple Digital Tax Platform is already operational and supports approx 60 Digital Product Teams. We are looking to iterate and improve the platform. Iteration is both user driven and in response to legislative change. Existing contracts expire on 31st January 2018. We would ideally like new suppliers to begin work to transition into HMRC before that end date wherever that was possible. Existing Team There are currently a number of teams working on these services. The successful supplier team will work with these existing capabilities (from other suppliers as well as HMRC staff). A part of the role of the supplier will be to assist HMRC in growing its own capability and we will expect a level of support for our staff who come at all levels from apprentice through to senior management. Current Phase Live Work Location Primary location is London. Other locations may include Manchester, Telford & Shipley Working Arrangments "Work collaboratively with existing cross functional Agile Teams iterating the Platform Be on site 5 days (40 hours) p/w collaborating with wider team unless work commitments require work to be done elsewhere. Participation in an out of business hours (9-5 Mon-Fri) on call rota is expected A flexible approach will be agreed in each SoW throughout the life of the contract. We may be open to other working arrangements as the relationship develops. Be responsible for travel and expenses to normal workplace. Expenses will be in line with HMRC policy. Individuals to adhere to the Civil Service code of conduct." Security Clearance The supplier must ensure each individual supplied to us has BPSS security clearance as a minimum. Additional T&Cs "The supplier will have had experience working to Government Digital Standards. The supplier will provide HR management support to each individual resource. Any capability or behaviours concerns will be raised by HMRC to the supplier, who will then need to act on these. HMRC will have the right to move an individual off of the account if standards of capability or behaviour are breached." Skills & Experience Have demonstrable experience of providing the relevant skills, roles and resources against a variety of technologies required to form a Scrum Team. Have demonstrable experience of collaborative working with a client's ‘in-house’ teams, including coaching and mentoring, and knowledge sharing. Have demonstrable experience of successfully developing platform services using a pragmatic Agile approach. Have demonstrable experience of scaling up and down teams to accommodate either new requirements or changes within the delivery pipeline. Have demonstrable experience of providing additional and/or value added activities when acting in the role of a partner supplier to an organisation. Engineers will be competent with or experts on Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery and security best practice (Dev SecOps). Teams will have demonstrable DevOps experience, showing ability to release at least every sprint and ideally much more frequently. Previous significant multi-team contract within large organisation in the last two years working in agile scrum. Supplier will have demonstrable experience of user and test driven development (TDD) using agile scrum. Supplier will be able to supply contractors competent with using the ELK stack, Splunk, Mongo DB, Graphite/Grafana, Jenkins, AWS and GitHub. Experience of delivering to Government Digital Standards. Nice to Haves "Supplier would ideally have had a significant multi-team contract with a public sector body. Experience of working on a multi-active cloud platform using open source software that includes Mongo DB, ELK, Github, Jenkins. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 6 Proposal Criteria Technical capability as demonstrated in their written examples, and required at interview. How the approach or solution meets user needs. Ability to provide local resource and scale up or down as required, with examples. HR support and capability. Cultural Fit Criteria Able to start on the work immediately. Have excellent communication skills with staff at all levels of the organisation. Willing to take responsibility for their work. Be willing to collaborate and partner, including with other suppliers. Proactively share knowledge and experiences with members of team. Be innovative and promote ideas and suggestions as applicable. Focus on achieving value for money in all activities. Adhere to HMRC's Code of Conduct. Payment Approach Fixed price Assessment Method Written proposal Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 55% Cultural fit 5% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers Budget range £9.2m