NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) - Transformation Programme

Tender description

Summary of the work " The NHSBSA requires a Supplier who is a subject matter expert to support on specific projects within the organisation's Digital Transformation Programme and supporting ICT infrastructure. The Supplier must have specialist capability and experience in delivering digital services in line with Digital by Default Standards. Expected Contract Length 2 years Latest start date 17/04/2017 Budget Range £0-£3,000,000 Why the Work is Being Done The organisation is undertaking a Programme of work over the next 2 years to transform its services which are reliant upon effective ICT. With strategic goals of - 80% Digital Transaction, 50% Unit Cost Reduction, collaboration to create £1 billion for patients, derive insight from data to drive change, improve service and deliver great results for customers, the Programme will transform current service offerings and also establish new service offerings in line with the Government Digital Service Standards and Technology Code of Practice. In addition there is an obligation to implement Policy and legislative changes along with maintaining service continuity. Problem to Be Solved Whilst the organisation has a core team of resources required to deliver the Programme of works we also require an expert professional Supplier to provide specialist services across the Programme. The appointment of the Supplier will enable access to an expert service provider to deliver specific short term outcomes across a complex change Programme. Outcomes would cover all areas of the delivery of digital services in line with GDS design. Specific outcomes will be agreed case by case with the selected Supplier during the contract period via individual Statements of Work. Who Are the Users "As a Service Manager for a NHSBSA service I need to ensure that my service is effective and efficient as possible for my users. This will involve some transformation, built around user needs to enable increased digital take up and making use of new ICT services that can deliver reduced transactional cost or a reduced cost to the wider NHS. Early Market Engagement No early market engagement has taken place with suppliers for this requirement. Work Already Done The organisation has currently identified 24 projects which will form the Programme and 5 workstreams for the replacement ICT services. There are a number of projects in each phase of the digital lifecycle (Discovery, Alpha, Beta) which are planned over the course of the next two years and may be run in parallel. Consequently, there will be peaks and troughs where the skills and mix of skills will need to blend and be flexible to meet programme demands as required. NHSBSA will work with the successful supplier in planning the programme as far in advance as is possible Existing Team "The team is currently 90% NHSBSA internal resources (approximately 70 people) with some independent contract resources within the team (approx 10 people) The Supplier will be working with Project Management Office and ICT Teams, which includes Service Managers, User Researchers, User Experience, Front End Developers, Back End Developers, Enterprise and Technical Architects, ICT Delivery Managers, Test, Information Security, DevOps, Data Analysts" Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Essential skills and experience section will be allocated a weighting of 15% out of the total weighting of 50% for technical competence • Have experience of designing services in line with the Government Digital Service Standards, from initial discovery through Alpha, Beta and ultimately live. • Be able to provide resources to perform the roles identified above at 'Existing Team' within a project as defined by GDS role descriptions (https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/the-team/what-each-role-does-in-service-team) • Demonstrate the ability of designing and delivering ICT services which meet ITIL Service Integration and Management standards • Demonstrate the delivery of services in line with TOGAF (or similar) Architecture frameworks • Deliver projects following Agile governance (SCRUM) and PRINCE2 • Ability to provide resources within 5 working days from agreement of delivery outcomes • Have experience of working in a matrix co-located delivery team and adapting to the culture of the organisation. • Demonstrate experience of how resources have been deployed within an organisation and supported the development of internal capability (leaving a positive legacy) • Have experience of working in a Public Sector environment Nice to Haves • Nice-to-have skills and experience section will be allocated a weighting of 5% out of the total weighting of 50% for technical competence • Have experience of delivering services which result in a reduction in unit costs • Have experience of transitioning services from physical infrastructure to cloud • Have experience of using shared open source components to design and deliver services Work Location The base location will be NHSBSA's office in Stella House, Newcastle. There will also be a requirement to work at NHSBSA's office in Fleetwood, Lancashire. Some travel will be required to other sites eg., Eastbourne Working Arrangments The Supplier's team members will work as a part of the NHSBSA's existing teams. The teams are co- located and work following both Agile and Waterfall principles, it is expected that any Supplier team member will work in this way. Supplier team members may be expected to be on site 5 days per week. Relevant Supplier team members assigned to the specific project will be expected to participate in team and organisational activities such as communities of practice to enable shared learning. Security Clearance "All Supplier resources must meet the Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) " Additional T&Cs The NHSBSA will include special terms and conditions in any Call-off Order form which will provide that the Supplier will be responsible for the payment of National Insurance and PAYE for all employees engaged under this contract and the NHSBSA will be able to seek assurance from the Supplier that this is the case. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Proposal criteria section will be allocated a weighting of 30% out of a total weighting of 50% for technical competence • Proposed methodology and approach to deliver the services (Assessment will be by written proposal and presentation). • How the proposed solution will meet the organisation's objectives to deliver its ambition • How the proposed solution ensures that resources are embedded within the NHSBSA and form part of the wider NHSBSA team • How the Supplier will demonstrate good value for money to the NHSBSA, for example how day rates will reduce based on volume of days consumed. • Provide a case study to demonstrate the Supplier's understanding of Public Sector directives and experience of applying the Government Technology Code of Practice Cultural Fit Criteria • Assessment of this section will be by written proposal and presentation. • The NHSBSA have the following values - Ambition, Integrity, Innovation, Respect, Team Work, Quality and Accountability. The supplier will be able to demonstrate the same values including:- • How they will work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • How they will be transparent and collaborative when making decisions • How they can demonstrate having a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes • How they will take responsibility for their work • How they would challenge the status quo • How they would work with clients with low technical expertise Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 50% Cultural fit 20% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. 1) Could you give an example of some of the projects to be delivered under the contract? Examples include:1) The organisation is replacing its Managed IT Infrastructure involving disaggregating services to a multiple supplier model, some elements will be insourced. There will be a number of procurements, building internal capability and transferring services from the current supplier to new. Works includes - architecture design, procurement/evaluation of proposals, building a new service management approach,transferring end user computing and service desk functions.Digitisation – 1) NHS Low Income Scheme. The aim is to remove the paper application process replacing with an on-line service and a digital exemption certificate following GDS Service Manual approach. 2. Do you have a preferred cloud platform within the organisation? We have awarded a cloud brokerage contract with Arcus but may require cloud design and cloud security services in order to establish a robust framework for future cloud services, and support in standing up new cloud hosted digital solutions. The NHSBSA currently utilise AWS and UK Cloud as cloud suppliers, with AWS been our prime service. 3. What is required in response to the first 100 word question please? (Essential skills and expereince section will be allocated a weighting ....etc.). This is a statement, not a question You are correct this is a statement to explain the weighting allocated to this section. No response is required to this statement. 4. What type of team/resources are you looking for? Please refer to details published under the heading 'Existing Team' and 'Working Arrangements' of the opportunity. This explains how the team is to work and the types of roles required. 5. What is driving the mobilisation lead time to provide resources within 5 working days from agreement of delivery outcomes? To ensure agility and momentum and avoid delays to the Programme. 6. Do the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience refer to the chosen supplier, the staff to be provided through the programme, or both? The criteria applies to both the supplier and any staff they provide to deliver the outcomes. 7. Do you expect the selected supplier to support passing GDS Service Assessment as part of the Transformation Programme? Yes but the responsibility for such with be with NHSBSA. 8. To what extent will long-term enablement of NHSBSA’s current staff be a factor in selecting a partner for this programme? The need for a robust and coherent knowledge transfer is a factor as is the ability for NHSBSA staff to operate, support and maintain products delivered by the Supplier; this is not a need to help up-skill but is to ensure robust knowledge and documentation. This is part of the quality assessment criteria stated in the requirement documentation. 9. Can NHSBSA please confirm that you wish to award a single supplier for this programme? Yes that is correct. 10. Will NHSBSA be looking to novate existing contractor staff on the programme through this contract? No 11. Do NHS BSA wish the selected partner to help solve any wider recruitment challenges? The requirement is as defined and is to overcome challenges by a surge in demand of outcomes needed in a fixed time to meet business objectives. 12. On what basis with the price evaluation be carried out - simple rate card or by pricing a sample work package? A robust role based rate card that represents blended work for IT and Digital packages, we would be looking for the supplier to identify innovative ways to reduce costs e.g. reduced rates over period or alternative delivery approaches (off site) 13. To what extent does the NHSBSA expect the supplier to be accountable (ie. direct and control) project deliveries. ie. do you expect to define whole projects as ‘work packages’ - where the successful supplier is accountable for definition and development of a complete solution OR do you expect to define work packages constrained to specific expertise/disciplines within a project (eg. architecture work package, test work package). We expect to define the business outcomes for each work package and the supplier should demonstrate how it can fulfil these. The work packages will range from overall deliverables through to specific discipline based outcomes, eg., a work package may comprise the completion of a full discovery phase whereby the supplier would take accountability for the completion of discovery in line with agreed quality, or the supplier may be asked to deliver the user research deliverables for discovery which the BSA would be accountable for the discovery but the supplier accountable for the quality of the user research. 14. Could you please provide information about the structure of the programme, the reporting lines and where we would report inside this structure. How will you ensure that we are able to secure input in terms of time, support and resources (information) from the wider organisation and incumbent suppliers? The BSA is committed to providing and securing input from all relevant internal and external stakeholders.The supplier will report into the programme at different levels which will be dependent upon the deliverable, eg for where the deliverable is an item within a project then the supplier/resources will report to the project manager, where the deliverable is a project in itself then this would report to the Programme Lead or the Head of Service. 15. Does NHSBSA expect the supplier have full discretion and control over which of our resources are assigned to which work package? The NHSBSA expect such discretion but with the right to identify where a resource assigned is not meeting NHSBSA needs or is not working in accordance with NHSBSA values to request that such a resource is removed and substituted. 16. To what extent does the NHSBSA have a well defined technical, delivery and service standards framework that suppliers are required to comply with? The NHSBSA applies the GDS framework for Digital and applies ITIL, TOGAF for ICT standards, the NHSBSA follows an adapt and adopt approach rather than to reinvent its own specific standards. 17. How will the NHSBSA manage the definition, quality assurance and acceptance of individual work packages? Each work package will be defined including outcome requirements, assurance needs and acceptance criteria. 18. Based on current project pipeline, can you give a forecast of likely demand in each type of role for the next 3 months? OR could you provide an indication of the key deliverables or achievements you would expect in the first 3 months of the contract.? It is expected that initial SoWs will include:IT projects - To provide and deliver architecture components, cloud architecture, digital architecture, security and digital securityTo provide and deliver components in support of an ITIL based service management function.Digitisation - Low Income Scheme, to create technology components to support the delivery of a digital user.Digitisation - To complete Alpha phase for the transformation of Eligibility Services.Digitisation - Low Income Scheme, to create a rules engine 19. Does the NHSBSA expect the supplier to manage and direct the work of other parties (eg. NHSBSA's own team; other 3rd party suppliers)? No NHSBSA does not expect the supplier to manage and direct the work of other parties, we do expect to have collaboration between all parties. 20. Do you have existing 3rd suppliers already providing some of these requirements? Would you expect us to take over any work in progress from 3rd party suppliers? Yes there are some existing suppliers but the intention is they complete their work and it will not be passed over. 21. Do you anticipate a need for ongoing support and maintenance of digital services developed by the supplier under this contract or would such requirement be contracted seperately? No, the intention is that upon completion of each project the solution will be transitioned into operational support by existing NHSBSA teams. Such a robust transition will be an important factor in the process. 22. The requirement states a need for [Digital] 'Service Managers' and 'ICT Delivery Managers'. To what extent will you require IT Service Management (e.g. ITIL/SIAM) services, deliverables or work packages as part of this requirement? ITIL and SIAM are important and are embedded in the NHSBSA ICT strategy; we would expect such managers to understand and apply ITIL and SIAM approaches. 23. Do the NHSBSA envisage that the programme of work will include public-facing digital services, new services for internal users or a combination of both? It will be a combination of both. 24. Would the chosen supplier have the opportunity to contribute and input at a strategic level to the wider programme of works, and would strategic digital transformation and programme management skills be looked on favourably? The NHSBSA are happy to have strategic engagement and contribution from the chosen supplier; we do expect strategic level skills. 25. Can you please share the list of Open Source components that have been identified or are already being used for this program? The following components are an example of some identified as required across the programme, some will be readily available either as products from code repositories or open API’s to consume. Others will be built by the Programme and consumed by services across the organisation:-Smartcard AuthenticationGovernment GatewayVerifyExemption Search Rules EngineNetwork SegregationMessage BusAPI Management SolutionDatabaseAudit Framework ServiceData RetentionNotify – email, letters, smsBSA-Notify, Letter, Print SuiteNotification PreferenceAddress SearchBSA-Pay (Direct Debit, Credit/Debit Cards, Cheque, Cash, Account)ReportingExemption SearchProfanity CheckerDocument StorageFile TransferLogging/Elastic Search 26. Can you please detail what you mean by "Shared Open Source " components. Does this just mean Open Source components or does it have a different interpretation? This is in relation to open source components which will be maintained centrally as a service and consumed by other services, this is the norm for 3rd party open source products, however some of the components we refer to will be built by the NHSBSA and then consumed across many other services.