Explore Education Statistics (Business as Usual support) and public beta enhancement

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done DfE produces over 50 statistics series every year, with data being used by a variety of people from the general public to government policy makers. Our Discovery research showed frustration with our current approach. Key findings included: -Users struggle to find the right data -Inconsistency within and between publications -Users are required to download and manipulate large amounts of data -Producers spend a large amount of time responding to additional adhoc requests Having now developed a minimum viable service which we believe better meets user’s needs, we are looking to maintain, optimise and improve this through public beta. Problem to Be Solved Our goal was ‘to provide a new service that allows better access to and consumption of statistics, meeting the many varying user needs identified during Discovery with due regard to accessibility.’ Having created our new service to MVP standard, we’re now looking to maintain and iterate upon it throughout public beta and need to recruit a team to do so. Call-off resource is required to support a small DfE BAU team, responsible for any bug fixes and urgent development of functionality to keep the service running. Who Are the Users A subset of the global needs (for all users) are as follows: - I need DfE data to be easy to navigate so I can find the statistics I’m looking for - I need DfE data to be simple to use so I can analyse and customise without extensive knowledge or training - I need data to be accessible so I can use the data with a disability - I want to customise the data according to my requirements so that I can answer my questions by myself Early Market Engagement Work Already Done We have carried out a discovery (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721729/HiveIT_-_DfE_dissemination_discovery.pdf), alpha and private beta in which we designed and developed a minimum viable service that would better meet users’ needs. To see existing code, our GitHub repository is available here – https://github.com/dfe-analytical-services/explore-education-statistics Access to our private beta platform can be given on request, please email laura.selby@education.gov.uk for details. Existing Team The supplier will be working with the DfE Statistics Modernisation team comprising two full time members of staff, one of which will be a product owner. Current Phase Beta Work Location Sheffield & Darlington - with likely travel to various locations throughout the UK. Working Arrangments a) A call-off approach to enable DfE to request support for BAU as and when needed. Work will therefore not be required on a full time basis (expectation that it is equivalent to 0.5 dev, 0.5 QA FTE over the course of the contract) b) For post-MVP development we expect the team to scale up to a full agile scrum team (including Delivery, Design, Development, Quality Assurance and User Research as needed). c) Working to Agile principles - i.e. regular stand ups, Show & Tells, Retrospectives d) Necessary expenses will be paid in line with DfE standard policies Security Clearance BPSS clearance Additional T&Cs We will scale up the team during 2020/21 (as we operate public-beta) to iterate on the service design and functionality in line with user feedback and analytics. A 'post-mvp backlog' will be used to keep stock of these features and will be the starting point for prioritisation of future enhancements. Though we expect this may include: - Service and infrastructure optimisation - More sophisticated admin tools and flexibility within the ‘build a statistics release’ process - Extended functionality to allow users to pull information from multiple statistics publications at once - Enhanced charting and data visualisation functionality Skills & Experience Experience with Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Function as a Service (FaaS) infrastructure and Azure DevOps build pipelines Experience with React.js with preferably knowledge of Typescript and Next.js Experience with C# and .Net core for the development of API's, preferably with knowledge of Azure SDKs and Entity Framework as a ORM. (QA) Experience creating Automated UI tests and API tests, preferably with Robot framework and Postman. Experience of iterating the design and functionality of a digital service inline with user feedback Experience of working to GDS service assessment standards Nice to Haves An awareness of statistics in Government. Experience in the dissemination of data on a large scale. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria Approach & methodology Team structure and skills Value for Money Cultural Fit Criteria Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers Be transparent and collaborative Share knowledge and experience with other team members Challenge the status quo Be comfortable standing up for their discipline Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Written proposal Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers Budget range the total budget available is around £650,000 inc vat. this will cover both the bau support and public beta enhancement, flexing as appropriate. we expect a small budget to be allocated to bau support and maintenance continuously (averaging around 1.0 fte) until the end of the contract. the major post-mvp enhancement work will be carried out throughout 2020/21 where we will scale up the team to design and develop any post-mvp features that have been identified as necessary, either by users or the business.