Multi Tax Delivery Platform (MDTP) Continuous Delivery Capability

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. MDTP is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) currently hosted in AWS (London Region) and all of HMRC's modern, customer-facing digital services accessed via Gov.uk reside on this platform. MDTP also provides services and dashboards to many thousands of internal staff. MDTP 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 MDTP's usability, operability, security and simplifying the path to Production. Problem to Be Solved This is not a greenfield implementation but the continued evolution of a cutting edge, 'best of breed' PaaS. We must continue to maintain and enhance MDTP's ability to serve up online 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 platform, HMRC's customers will not be able to access MDTP's tenant services or may suffer a degraded user experience. The successful supplier may be asked to conduct work on various areas of the project simultaneously. Who Are the Users MDTP provides a platform for hosting the department's digital services, themselves owned and operated by the service teams based in numerous delivery centres around the UK. MDTP's direct users are therefore the tenant service teams, with HMRC's external customers as the ultimate beneficiaries or end users. -Service teams - users As a user of MDTP, I need a performant, secure and highly available platform, So that I can deploy and operate digital services for HMRC's customers. -External customers - end users As a user of services on tax.service.gov.uk, I need to interact with HMRC, So that I can, e.g. file my tax return. Early Market Engagement Work Already Done MDTP went live in February 2014 and is now entering its fourth major iteration: 2014 - 1 x SME cloud provider 2016 - 2 x SME cloud providers (active-active) 2017 - 1 x hyperscale cloud provider (AWS) 2020 - (AWS) ECS implementation, replacing a suite of bespoke deployment orchestration tools The platform roadmap envisages MDTP'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 six platform teams, typically comprising the following roles: - Infrastructure engineer - Software developer - QA/tester - Delivery Lead - Product Owner - Business Analyst Current Phase Live Work Location Primary location: Bristol, 3 Glass Wharf, BS2 0PS It would be desirable for the suppliers to be based within reasonable travel distance of the Primary location Face-to-face collaboration is key and remote working will only be considered on an ad hoc basis. Secondary location (occasional travel only and only up until the site's planned closure in November 2020): London, Canary Wharf, E14 4PU 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 in line with HMRC policy. We expect the successful supplier to provide upskilling to permanent staff to increase internal capability. Security Clearance The supplier(s) must ensure each individual supplied to us has BPSS Security clearance. Clearance costs to be met by supplier. 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 Mandatory Terms will be added to the Call-Off contract Skills & Experience Demonstrable experience in translating business problems and user needs into technical designs Proficient at writing code (Scala, Python, Ruby) to solve problems, automating wherever it adds value and incorporating security best practices at all times Demonstrable hands on experience of, as a minimum, the following AWS services - 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 Demonstrable experience in automated unit/integration/functional/performance testing with meaningful and maintainable quality gates, ensuring features are only promoted through CI-CD pipelines when they exhibit the right functional and non-functional characteristics Deep understanding of distributed Source Control, preferably git/GitHub Deep understanding of application deployment strategies and Continuous Integration Deep understanding of HTTP and its supporting network level protocols Deep understanding of navigating and troubleshooting cloud-based Linux compute Demonstrable experience of developing, using Terraform, Kubernetes, ELK, Sensu, Clickhouse, MongoDB Nice to Haves Demonstrable experience of having had a significant multi-team contract with a Public Sector body Demonstrable evidence of successfully providing additional and/or value added activities - i.e. over and above contracted work when acting in the role of a partner supplier to an organisation No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria Shortlisted suppliers will be asked to provide a Written Proposal and Presentation scored against a selection of the Criteria outlined above which will be provided with the Proposal Scenario. The following outline the expected ways of working to be evidenced. Technical solution Approach and methodology Value for money Cultural Fit Criteria Demonstrable experience of having had a significant multi-team contract with a Public Sector body Demonstrable evidence of successfully providing additional and/or value added activities - i.e. over and above contracted work - when acting in the role of a partner supplier to an organisation Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 50% Cultural fit 10% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers No questions have been answered yet Budget range the anticipated budget is £4.6m per annum over 2 years (£9.2m total contract value), split between 1 – 2 suppliers, depending on the result of this dos exercise.