Creating a reusable paid-for appointments system

Tender description

Summary of the work This piece of work will include - Identifying queries that will be included as part of the paid-for appointment service - Creating a method to capture these which includes the generation of a reference - Creating a method to take payment and the ability track the process through to completion Latest start date Saturday 1 May 2021 Why the Work is Being Done There are several services across the Council with dedicated duty lines to handle customer queries. For example, Planning's duty rota resources the handling of both email and phone planning enquiries. This activity involves spending time filtering requests and responding to them. Many teams have recently experienced an influx of queries due to limited access to some of our legacy systems. Making some teams ability to respond and keep up with inbound queries extremely challenging. The projects vision is to improve customers experience, create staff time savings and generate additional income for service areas. Problem to Be Solved As part of a wider improvement plan to improve service provision and generate additional revenue, this brief is for the proposal of a solution to filter (directs customers to the right answer on the website/ other websites if possible in the first instance) and capture queries, enable payments for specific queries and book tracked responses. It should be built in a way that any service area can easily use it if required. We need a solution that meets the Technology Code of Practice, at an affordable price which can be maintained by the existing Hackney team. Who Are the Users As a customer, I need… to obtain specialised advice so I can make an informed decision to pay for the service I require so I can complete my transaction to receive a reference so I can pay and track my request As an Officer, I want… to acknowledge and validate a request to respond to a request in a timely manner to mark the response as completed when done As a Manager, I need… to monitor queries to allocate resources effectively Existing Team Individual product teams that have, or are, developing self-service applications Hackney Delivery Manager Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Experience of working to the service design manual • Have passed a government service standard assessment • Have experience designing services for a wide range of digital skills and confidence • Ability to support development of REST APIs to Hackney’s standards • Experience of developing design patterns that can be reused for other services • Agnostic of technology and independent of any existing database suppliers Nice to Haves Provide opportunities for people seeking ways into work in Hackney (eg through an apprentice working on the project) Work Location Hackney Service Centre, 1 Hillman Street, E8 1DY Working Arrangments We would prefer a team onsite for 3 days a week, most weeks in order to engage with ICT colleagues and build broader engagement with the style of working (eg through show and tells). Pending Government Restrictions. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Quality of the technical solution • Clarity of approach • How the approach or solution meets user needs • How they’ve identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them • Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals • Experience of the method of working from previous projects Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions • Take responsibility for their work Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Reference • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 7% Price 33% Questions from Suppliers 1. Are there any budget or timescale details available at this time? We would ideally like a Beta ready in approx. 6 weeks. 2. Is there an incumbent supplier? There is no incumbent supplier 3. Can you please provide more details about your existing infrastructure and the requirements that need to be met to allow easy transition to your existing in-house team We are hosting all applications on AWS cloud and in line with Hackney's development standards. 4. Will this solution be integrated/attached to the main Hackney Council website (https://hackney.gov.uk/)? The public facing side should be attached/accessible through the main Hackney website. 5. Are you able to share any discovery research that will help us understand in more detail the user needs for this service? We have not carried out a discovery but as part of the project you will have access to internal and external users to understand in more detail the user needs for the service. 6. Can you please share the budget for this work? £50k 7. What prior work (if any) has been carried out on this (e.g. Discovery / Alpha)? A Discovery/Alpha has not already taken place. You will have access to internal and external users to understand their user needs in more depth as part of the project. 8. Do you have any documentation showing existing business processes and/or ideal state? The existing business process - Currently if a customer has a query they will either contact the service via telephone and speak to a duty officer or they will send an email to a shared mailbox and the duty officer will reply. There is currently no existing booking option available. 9. Could you provide details of Hackney’s API standards or elaborate on this point? Please see the link to our development standards below. https://github.com/LBHackney-IT/Hackney-Development-Standards 10. Please can you confirm the budget for this opportunity? £50K 11. Please can you confirm the budget for this opportunity? £50K 12. Can we deliver the entire experience as a chatbot, albeit integrated with your support staff instead of website/application? We are open to ideas. It must however meet the services user needs. 13. How many backend systems/APIs do we need to integrate with? The main API integration will be with our financial payment system. 14. Of the order of.... what volume of traffic is expected?. Volumes are expected to be fairly large. Currently Planning for example receive over 100 queries per day. 15. To do justice to the proposal one really needs a full list of functionality in scope i.e. search for a service, recommend a service, generate a lead etc etc. Any clarification? Some research will be required to obtain specific user needs. High level functionality will include;- Find a service- Separate queries that will be included as part of the paid-for appointment service from those which can be answered with a standard response.- Paid-for appointment might be a call back or emailed response but will need to generate a trackable reference - System should be able to take payment- Alert the service area of an incoming request- Track the process through to completion (when a response is received)- Accessible externally via our website 16. Could you please confirm the timeline for the proposal of the shortlisted suppliers (presentation date, selection, award etc)? Shortlisting will take place week commencing 19th April 2021(if required presentations will take place week commencing 3rd May 2021) 17. Are you committed to building a new service for this piece of work?Or are you open to considering whether an existing off-the-shelf system could be implemented and customised to meet user needs? We are open to ideas. The service must meet our user needs and be reusable and sustainable for the future. 18. Do you expect the solution to offer citizens a choice of booking dates / times and allowing them to select their preferred choice, or do they simply need to make a request and payment with an internal user then following-up to make the actual booking arrangements? We would like the system to be built in a flexible way so they it can be easily adjusted to meet different service users needs, some may need booking choices of specific dates/times and other will just want to take a payment for an internal user to follow up and response within a given timeframe. 19. Do you have a payment gateway in place for the application to integrate to or does this need to be built also? Yes, Civica Pay 20. What are these legacy systems and how do you envisage the ‘reusable paid-for appointments system’ interacting with these legacy systems? The only system it will need to integrate with to begin with will be our financial payment system. 21. Any thoughts on the types/number of resources needed to deliver this, based on similar/previous types of work? Based on previous work I would suggest resources such asa user researcher / UX type person and Senior developers. 22. Do you have any further information on the budget for this opportunity? Our maximum budget is £50k.