Food and Environmental Proficiency Testing Unit (FEPTU)

Tender description

Summary of the work To perform discovery to investigate the user needs of Food and Environmental Proficiency Testing Unit (FEPTU) site users and customers across the commercial and GOV.UK domains Expected Contract Length 8 weeks Latest start date Monday 26 March 2018 Budget Range £50,000 including VAT Why the Work is Being Done Discovery will investigate user needs and review options available. This will include consideration of the existing Culture Collections commercial platform. Both FEPTU and Culture collections provide a service or a product that is used in food and water microbiology laboratories as part of their quality assurance programmes, with largely the same customers. Exploration is required to determine if having a single platform for food and water customers would make it easier for PHE to co-market what is provided or if a shared platform would facilitate easier customer registration and users could visit one website to know about FEPTU services. Problem to Be Solved Gather user needs in order to determine the approach and features needed for the FEPTU Digital Service. The findings from this discovery phase will then allow definition of the actual specification of the web content and design which are based on user experience and information. The aim is to have more user-friendly web pages that are informative, easy to navigate and includes the ability to pay online for services Who Are the Users PHE Staff who need to access customer information to generate logistical and customer paperwork with unique identification information. Approximately 5000 Food & Water Microbiology Laboratory users per month. The makeup of which is 1/3 UK and 2/3 overseas. (approximately 800 laboratories in 70 countries). Typically, transactions are the users being able to return test results, check quality standards, access certificates/individualised reports and find information on schemes that currently exist. The needs of UK and overseas users is not expected to fundamentally differ as long as “plain English” is used. Early Market Engagement None Work Already Done None Existing Team PHE have a specialist team and a digital team who the supplier will be working with Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Recent and demonstrable experience in conducting the discovery phase relating to the use of digital solutions in similar specialist projects • Experience in assessing the benefits and validity of single platform vs shared platform • Recent and demonstrable experience of applying the principles of user centred design to the development of digital solutions. • Recent and demonstrable experience of designing and/or assessing digital tools to meet the needs of the users. • Recent and demonstrable experience of designing e-commerce sites. • Recent and demonstrable experience of analysis and optimisation of e-commerce user journeys including pain points. Nice to Haves • Recent/demonstrable experience of delivering projects that have passed an assessment by GDS or a Governmental Department showing conformance to the Digital Service Standard (including Assisted Digital guidance). • Experience in Open Source shared technology: Java (e-commerce site), Tomcat (server), SOLR/Lucene (search), jQuery (front end scripting), #Bootstrap (stylesheet core), Umbraco (content management system) • Experience in Open standards shared technology HTML 5 and 4: front end/marketplace, XML or REST API: data exchange third parties, interfaces into Oracle accounts, CSS 3: front end/marketplace • Experience in Operating System: Windows 2012 Database, MS SQL Server 2012 or higher • Experience in designing a road map for development of a digital service including supporting cases of GOV.UK exemptions. • Experience of working with a range of users and stakeholders including scientific experts, international users and distributors, technical and digital development teams • Recent and demonstrable experience of designing systems to manage personally identifying information under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Work Location The work can be performed from any location, but is likely to be co-ordinated by staff in PHE’s London Offices. Working Arrangments Work may be carried out from multiple locations including the Supplier’s offices. Attendance at PHE Offices in London and in other locations around England will be required for meetings. Supplier staff are expected to be on-site at PHE locations sufficient to manage relationships with senior stakeholders; the exemplar project team and users; and, stakeholders and users in other organisations so that the outcomes of the project may be met. Security Clearance Not required, DBS checks may be required Additional T&Cs None No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria • P1) Proposed approach to Discovery to determine/demonstrate how digital tools could contribute to the redesign of the FEPTU web services (including E-commerce capability), incorporating existing PHE/local digital tools (30 points) • P2) Proposed approach to identifying triggers and pain points in the redesigning process that could be improved with digital interventions (15 points) • P3) Understanding what primary functionality is required to attract and meet user needs and approach to conducting user research, including mapping user journeys (15 points) • P4) Approach to identifying service specific KPI’s (10 points) Cultural Fit Criteria • Working with the project team’s stakeholders who have varying experience of agile methods. (4 points) • Flexible working arrangements and knowledge sharing. (3 Points) • Work within the constraints of existing services, budgets and technologies already used within the programme. (3 points) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 10% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. How much access will we be able to get to genuine representative end users? You should be able to contact end users directly 2. What insights already exists about the current user base and their information priorities? Customer facing mailbox contains useful data like frequently asked questions for example details on scheme design availability, invoice queries and technical enquiries. 3. What analytics are currently in place / regularly reviewed / of site usage? Monthly reports are available from Google Analytics via gov.uk. It contains information like number of visitors, page views, bounce rate etc. 4. What feedback channels currently exist / how are these reviewed? Customer satisfaction survey(every two years), participants face to face meeting (every 18 month), steering group meeting (six montly) and regular feedback from distributors, Food and water conferences (approx 3-4 per year) and customer emails. Reviewed is carried out periodically 5. Who owns the current website (is it cross departmental / siloed) or centrally owned / administered? FEPTU currently resides on gov.uk (owned by UK Government), the content is managed by FEPTU team adhering strictly to gov.uk guidelines