Improving the Pay My Rent service to increase the number of people who pay online

Tender description

Summary of the work Delivering improvements to the online rent account service to increase the number of users who pay online. Expected Contract Length 3 months Latest start date Monday 30 July 2018 Budget Range Up to £80,000 excluding VAT for this phase of work, and an additional budget available for support and maintenance of the solution, if required, Why the Work is Being Done Hackney Council launched an online Rent Account service in October. Since then it has been used 50,000 times by 12,000 people. However, just 27% have tried to make a payment on the service and 36% of people have failed to complete an online payment. We want to explore how we might increase payments through personalised notifications and an easier payment process. Problem to Be Solved - 80% of users access the service on a mobile, but the current payment gateway is not optimised for mobile - We do not provide messages to users of the service, beyond their rent data - There are constraints in the user interface as a result of using the lowcode platform Who Are the Users As a tenant I need to know my balance so that I can avoid falling into arrears As a tenant I need persuasive reminders so that I understand the importance of making timely payments As a user I need an easy way to pay online so that it is so easy, I prefer to do so Early Market Engagement The current version of the service was built by a team including in-house staff (who are still available to help), contractors and experts provided by FutureGov. We are interested in using GOV.UK Pay as an easier to use payment gateway, but aware that delays in updating the user's balance (on reconciling it with the Council's finance system) may degrade the experience. Work Already Done The service is built using Outsystems, a low code platform. It consumes APIs for our tenants and their balances from Universal Housing, the housing management application. These APIs are documented at https://github.com/LBHackney-IT. We are open to alternative approaches to technology that better meet user needs. We are building a case management solution to support income collection, which will include an algorithm to identify likely to pay their balance and prioritise cases that require human intervention and a CRM for tenancy contact. We are developing an OAUTH single sign-on module to improve access to council services. Existing Team Head of Service (project sponsor) Product Owner Delivery Manager (who is also Delivery Manager for the tenancy CRM project) Frontline staff as required Current Phase Live Skills & Experience • Provide a multi-disciplinary team, including user research, service design and front-end developer • Adopt user-centred design and Agile approaches, consistent with the govenrment’s service design manual • Have built a product that’st been assessed as meeting a government digital service standard • Understand how to meet the needs of a range of users, including those lacking digital skills • Be agnostic of any particular software, enabling us to consider a range of options to meet user needs • Share their work freely and openly with the Council and the wider community • Experience of behavioural economics Nice to Haves Promote user-centred design and Agile across the Council Work Location Hackney Council offices in Mare Street, E8 Working Arrangments We would expect the supplier to work onsite for the majority of the engagement, enabling them to share their work with social care colleagues and test propositions with residents. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Understanding of user needs from the service • Clarity of the approach • Experience from a similar project • Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals • Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions • Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 5% Price 35% Questions from Suppliers 1. You mention that the service is built in Outsystems, low code platform - do you envisage retaining this platform? We don't have a fixed view on this. It's important we understand first how the service needs to be improved to better meet user needs and then what technology best enables us to do that, in the most efficient way. 2. You state that the supplier should work on site for the majority of the 3 month engagement - do you envisage this being every day? No. In our experience 3-4 days a week onsite will be sufficient. The importance of co-location is:- developing a shared understanding of user needs - supporting the embedding of user-centred, Agile approaches- helping the team understand how to support the application- aligning with the other pieces of work, particularly the CRM project 3. Is this piece of work just to review the usability of the current process and propose a new UI…. Rather than propose a new technology toolkit as well? The take-up figures suggest a fundamental review of the UI is unnecessary. The primary aim of this work is to increase the proportion of users that can use the app to make a payment, first time, unaided. We assume this will require amendments to the UI and potentially changes to the technology toolkit too, and have set the budget so that option is available.