Professional Services for the Transaction Monitoring Platform

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done We are looking for up to two partners with expertise in building and operating a Continuous Integration-Continuous Delivery (CI-CD) capability in public cloud. TxM is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) currently hosted in AWS (London Region) and all of HMRC's modern, customer-facing digital services. TxM went live in February 2014 and is always evolving to meet changing user needs. The platform vision and roadmap set out the future direction, centred on continually improving TxM's usability, operability, security and simplifying the path to Production, and wider exploitation of our customer insight platform for machine learning based production features across HMRC's processes. Problem to Be Solved Maintaining and enhancing HMRC's TxM platform capability to serve up audit content to HMRC's customers, as well as services to internal staff, while ensuring an optimal user experience. Without a performant, secure and highly available TxM platform, HMRC's customers will not be able to access MDTP's constituent services or may suffer a degraded user experience or be exposed to risk. Who Are the Users "As a user of services on tax.service.gov.uk: I need HMRC to protect my personal identifiable information, and the public revenue from unauthorised access and/or attack So that I can safely conduct my tax obligations with confidence So that I can accurately and simply provide authentication and attribute information. As an Officer of HMRC I need accurate, reliable and true information about the activity of customers using our customer facing services. So that I can detect, prevent, and pursue unauthorised and/or criminal activity I can assist customers with their interactions with HMRC services I can analyse customer activity and behaviours" Early Market Engagement Bristol supplier day 12th July 2019 Suppliers may also request a copy of the presentation slides and the Q&A document that followed by emailing arron.egan@hmrc.gov.uk. Please note: 1. The Classic Services have been removed 2. MDTP is being procured as a separate DOS exercise Work Already Done TxM went live in February 2014 and is now in its third major iteration: 2014 - 1 x SME cloud provider 2016 - 2 x SME cloud providers (active-active) 2017 - 1 x hyperscale cloud provider The platform roadmap envisages TxM's continued evolution as a cutting edge PaaS, so there is plenty of transformative feature work in addition to the live running aspects. Existing Team HMRC expect the Service Providers to work alongside other suppliers and internal staff, including apprentices, as part of blended teams. There are 5 teams, typically comprising the following roles: - infrastructure engineer - software developer - QA/tester - Delivery Lead - Product Owner - Business Analyst - Service Designer - User Researcher Current Phase Live Work Location Primary location: 10 South Colonnade London E14. This office will move in late 2019/early 2020 to Stratford East London. Primary Location: Accounts Office, Victoria Street, Shipley, BD98 8AA. This office will move in late 2020 to 7 and 8 Wellington Place, Leeds. Working Arrangments The supplier will be required to co-locate with the existing platform teams, mixed teams comprising both internal staff and other contractors, 5 days per week. Occasional travel may be required to other HMRC Delivery Centres. Expenses will be paid as per agreed contract rates. We expect the successful supplier to provide upskilling to permanent staff to increase internal capability. Security Clearance All supplier contractors must hold or be able to achieve Security Clearance (SC). These posts are NOT reserved to UK Nationals. To be suitable for security clearance contractors MUST have been continuously resident in the UK without any significant breaks. Further details of eligibility for clearance can be found: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-security-vetting-advice-for-people-who-are-being-vetted Additional T&Cs All personnel engaged in the provision of this service must have a minimum of three years experience in their designated role/skill specialism, with an expectation of five years minimum experience for lead roles. Additional HMRC specific terms in relation tax compliance among other things will be added to the call off contract Skills & Experience Providing additional and/or value added activities when acting in the role of a partner supplier to an organisation Translating business problems and user needs into technical designs using agile methodology Proficient at writing code (scala, python, ruby) to solve problems, automating wherever it adds value and incorporating security best practices at all times Hands on experience of various AWS services like Cloudformation, S3, ECS, EC2, RDS, Lambda, SQS, SNS, Stacks and IAM Proponents of test-driven development (TDD) practices, writing top quality unit tests and code Devising and implementing unit/component, integration, system and acceptance tests to meet functional and non-functional requirements Deep understanding of distributed Source Control, preferably git/GitHub Deep understanding of application deployment strategies and Continuous Integration Deep understanding of inter-application communication protocols Deep understanding of navigating and troubleshooting Linux servers Developing machine learning based environments using R studio, Jupiter Notebooks, AWS Sagemaker to develop models. Deep understanding of stream based data ingestion pipelines, including a range of physical and software based collection methods. Deep understanding of complex multi source audit event management including, normalisation, ontology development, summarisation, and criminal justice standard confidentiality and data integrity. Nice to Haves Significant, similar contract with a public sector body Experience of developing using Terraform, Kubernetes, ELK, Sensu, Clickhouse, MongoDB Splunk cluster administration Previous experience of operating sensitive protected environment at Official Sensitive or higher. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria Earliest Start date Suppliers will need to demonstrate that they will fit with our approaches to software delivery. Collaborative working with other suppliers and in-house teams, including coaching, mentoring and knowledge sharing Proponents of test-driven development (TDD) practices, writing top quality unit tests and code Practising pair programming and understanding the value of peer review as part of maintaining focus on quality Working in agile delivery teams within a product-centric environment, and particularly comfortable with kanban Good communicator, having the soft skills to talk to the business as well as techs Teams will have demonstrable DevOps experience, showing ability to release at least every sprint and ideally much more frequently Continuous cost based analysis to drive efficiencies and reduce total cost of ownership in every aspect of design and development Drive innovation to transform legacy services into modern customer centric solutions which delight the customer. Ideally demonstrating how they iteratively migrate legacy services in complex mixed ecosystem environments. Suppliers should demonstrate how they've identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them. This needs to focus both on: a. Information Security risk management b. Project risk management Suppliers need to demonstrate a good understanding of Transaction Monitoring capabilities and how they function in one or more industry sectors. Suppliers need to demonstrate a sound working knowledge of the General Data Protection regulation and any challenges this may provide in delivery of capabilities. Demonstrate they will work alongside HMRC permanent staff and other contractors. Suppliers must demonstrate how they have delivered within a. Multidisciplinary teams b. Mixed ecosystem teams c. Multi-site teams Cultural Fit Criteria Operates a no-blame culture, encouraging people to learn from their mistakes Able to start work immediately Have excellent communication skills with staff at all levels of the organisation Will take responsibility for their work while also pairing/peer reviewing by default Willing to collaborate and partner, including with other suppliers and HMRC staff at all levels Proactively share knowledge and experiences with members of team, especially with HMRC staff Be innovative and promote ideas and suggestions as applicable Focus on achieving value for money in all activities Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 50% Cultural fit 10% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers Budget range our expectation is that there will be a budget of £6.3m per annum which will be allocated between up to 2 suppliers.