Developing the minimum viable Business Index

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done Businesses interact with many council services which typically are not connected, each seeing a dissonant and fragmented overview of businesses in the borough. We developed a prototype Business Index which ingests data from our major systems and reference datasets. The prototype exchanges data with Hackney’s LLPG as arbiter of trading names associated with premises. Data is periodically refreshed manually, producing a static ‘read only’ dataset for Qlik analytics. We need the Business Index to operate as a live dynamic master index, supplying “golden” records for real-time authentication of appropriate business transactions. Problem to Be Solved Businesses typically transact using more than one identifier, such as incorporated name, other trading name or names of owners or agents associated of the business. Such identities are not recorded consistently across our systems. Identifiers may be recorded separately or in some combination. Transactions are currently handled individually by the council, fragmenting the experience for businesses and increasing inefficiency. A master dataset of businesses would facilitate the council pursuing a joined-up approach and authenticate appropriate transactions online. Who Are the Users As a business owner/administrator, I needs to self-serve online to efficiently be in regulatory compliance. As a compliance officer, I need to see the whole regulatory context for a business so that I can support their compliance. As a digital service developer I need well-documented and fully functional REST APIs so i can simply build a digital service. As a Master Data officer, I need the Business Index dataset updated efficiently and concurrently with the LLPG, so that I can focus on data quality. Early Market Engagement Work Already Done The Master Data team built data feeds from the council’s data warehouse, developed rules and transformations, matched businesses to company and address reference datasets. It used open data from Companies House to identify the company registration number and link company information. It used Hackney’s Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) to identify and classify business premises and link Google Street View and the VOA. This information is currently displayed in Qlik, enabling visualisation of multiple records against the same business. Existing Team 2 Master Data officers, with the cooperation of Council’s revenue and public realm services, under the direction of the council’s Business Relationship Delivery Group. Current Phase Alpha Work Location Hackney Service Centre, 1 Hillman Street, E8 Working Arrangments We would expect the supplier to be based onsite for the majority of the engagement in order to support collaborative working and knowledge sharing. Security Clearance Additional T&Cs 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 experience of designing a directory that consumes third party APIs and provides API endpoints 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 Nice to Haves Be able to meet the Local Government Digital Service Standard Experience of a similar project No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria Understanding of user needs from the service Clarity of the approach Experience from an analogous 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 Assessment Method Written proposal Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 5% Price 35% Questions from Suppliers Budget range £60,000 - £70,000 excluding vat