Get Information About Schools - Database Administration and Enhancement

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done Get Information About Schools is the Department for Education's (DfE) register of schools, colleges and higher education institutions in England and Wales. It allows users to search for and download information on establishments, establishment groups and governors. Schools, local authorities and academy trusts can also update details by signing in to their DfE account. The service is hosted by the DfE and is currently working towards completing its public beta. Technical support is required to maintain the database and develop new features as we continue to iterate the service in-line with emerging user needs. Problem to Be Solved During the remainder of our public beta phase and into live running we are looking for a Database Administration (DBA) and development team to work with our front-end UI service design team to maintain the existing service and iteratively design new features to meet identified user needs. This may include increasing the capacity of the service to include new learning provider types, the surfacing of additional administrative functionality to better allow Departmental super users to self-serve, security and performance enhancements as required for IT health checks and KPI reviews, new tools and features in-line with user needs. Who Are the Users Our primary users are learning provider leaders and administration staff across the education sector. Other users include the owners of affiliated services and organisations (such as Ofsted and School Performance Tables) and DfE policy owners, analysts and data collection staff. They need to be able to update or access an accurate set of school characteristics information either to meet statutory requirements or perform analytical functions. The goal is to provide users with a single source of truth on which to base a consistent and reliable approach to the data collection, analysis and sharing of learning provider data. Early Market Engagement None. Work Already Done GIAS is a publically available service. We completed discovery, alpha and private beta phases in 2016 and 2017. We entered public beta in September 2017 and aim to complete this in 2019. Most of the work still to be completed relates to meeting accessibility standards and collecting and reporting performance data. The service can be accessed at https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk. Existing Team The digital team is in Data Directorate. Currently it comprises of two civil servants (product manager and business analyst) with associated support staff (also civil servants) and a front-end UI design team of contractors. The supplier will be expected to work with our front-end UI design team. The supplier will also be expected to work with the wider Department Technology Directorate Dev and Cloud Ops teams who are responsible for maintaining the DfE Azure platform. Current Phase Beta Work Location The Services will be delivered to any of the DfE Offices as required. These include, but not limited to: LONDON: Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BT COVENTRY: 53-55 Butts Road, Earlsdon Park, Coventry, CV1 3BH SHEFFIELD: 2 St Paul's Place, 125 Norfolk Street, Sheffield, S1 2FJ DARLINGTON: Bishopsgate House, Feethams, Darlington, DL1 5QE MANCHESTER: Piccadilly Gate, Store Street, Manchester, M1 2WD NOTTINGHAM: Learning & Conference Centre, Triumph Road, Nottingham, NG8 1DH Technical delivery partner team members work remotely. Travel to LONDON, SHEFFIELD and DARLINGTON offices may be needed for key meetings. Working Arrangments Remote working is acceptable but the supplier will be expected to collaborate with the wider team using our tools of choice (currently, Slack, Azure DevOps, Zoom and others). The scrum teams will work in two-week sprint cycles. High-level priorities will be managed month-by-month by the product manager distilled to the scrum team during fortnightly sprints and monitored during daily stand-ups. Travel for sprint ceremonies and other key meetings may be required. Suppliers will be responsible for coordinating DBA work to avoid disruption during normal office hours and providing their own suitable work arrangements/locations in order to achieve the required outcomes. Security Clearance Evidence of compliance with the Government Security Policy Framework, BPSS personnel security controls and Cyber Essentials. Further details can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-security and https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/708836/18.docx.pdf. Additional T&Cs • Travel & Subsistence can be claimed when approved and in-line with Departmental policy. • The supplier's working practices must comply with the provisions of the Data Protection Act (2018) and DfE security processes. Skills & Experience Experience of using GDS Design Principles and Digital Service Standard to deliver public facing digital services, outlining the principles applied, methods adopted and ability to deliver successful outcomes. Experience of developing software that complies to Government security guidelines or equivalent. Experience of managing services that utilise MS Azure: Hosting/platform/monitoring, API Management, App Services/web jobs, Service Bus, Resource Manager, APIs (e.g. Azure Graph API), Visual Studio Team Services. Infrastructure Automation, IaaS/PaaS. Experience of Microservice Architecture, RESTful API design. Experience of supporting a 24hr 365 day availability service. Experience of using Agile/Scrum methodology to iteratively architect/develop high quality digital services to GDS standards. Ability to easily scale resources up or down based on project needs and work effectively and collaboratively with other delivery teams to achieve shared goals and objectives. Understanding of the education & schools landscapes. Nice to Haves Ability to provide and flex Service Design/UX Designer, Content Designer, User Researcher and Business Analyst resource as required in line with internal capability and capacity. Experience of delivering high quality content and information architecture design for complex user journeys across multiple touchpoints, that meets user needs. Experience of complex database management. Experience of implementing, maintaining and interacting with a variety of IDAM solutions and of developing software that complies to Government security guidelines. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria Experience of delivering services in line with user needs and GDS service standards. Experience of delivering quality service features which meet industry best practice. Contingency and Flexibility - Ability to easily scale resources up or down based on project needs. Ability to support the DfE's preparations for the Live Assessment. Experience of working on projects that have multiple dependencies on other inter-related projects. Experience of providing support for a live system that is available 24hrs 365 days a year. How they will ensure the DfE receives best value for money. Cultural Fit Criteria Ability to work collaboratively with the wider multi-disciplinary team and key stakeholders whilst working remotely, and proving the flexibility to travel for key meetings as required Coaching and mentoring of DfE staff to develop and build capability. Demonstration of a proactive approach, taking responsibility for work and resolving issues quickly, without an over-reliance on the client team. Office space that the DfE can use for meetings with supplier. Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Written proposal Work history Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 40% Cultural fit 20% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers Budget range there are two elements to this project; the ongoing dba, api and web service support and the additional development / design aspects. we would like separate costs for these for the second part of the evaluation and we will provide you with more information at that stage. we expect the dba, api and web service support to be on a fixed cost basis and the additional development to be on a capped time and materials basis. however, the total expected value is £350,000 - £450, 000.