Health Education England website rationalisation - Discovery phase

Tender description

Summary of the work Health Education England is currently rationalising our existing disparate web estate around discrete professional and multi-disciplinary hubs. We are seeking a partner to: Complete a discovery for a new Nursing and Midwifery hub. Consider how all hubs might be unified around a single domain along with HEE's corporate website. Expected Contract Length 8-10 weeks Latest start date Monday 9 August 2021 Why the Work is Being Done A fit-for-purpose website is essential to support Health Education England's strategic goals and commitments to deliver the We are the NHS: People Plan for 2020/21 and thereby plan, recruit, educate, and train the health workforce to deliver the NHS Long Term Plan. HEE’s websites are how we communicate and engage with future and current health professionals, be they learners, educators, employers, partners, and the public at scale. The reach and focus of our websites extend simultaneously across local, regional, national and international audiences, and across specialisms, professions and multi-disciplinary areas of healthcare. HEE is currently rationalising our existing web estate onto a new platform. Part of this involves consolidating our disparate web estate into discrete professional and multi-disciplinary hubs, and consider how these hubs might be unified around a single domain. This opportunity has two objectives: 1) To understand the user and strategic needs for a new Nursing and Midwifery professional hub 2) To consider how these hubs might be unified around a single domain along with HEE's main corporate website. Problem to Be Solved We believe that how we provide information to HEE's customers is inefficient, frustrating and confusing. This is because the way that we produce, present, share and host information isn’t what our users need. How can we better communicate and engage with future and current health professionals, be they learners, educators, employers, partners, and the public at scale. Our customers find that they: • cannot find what they need • do not trust that the information is current • spend a lot of time looking for information • have to go elsewhere for the information • don't know where to go for further support and advice • struggle if they have accessibility needs. Through this discovery project we want to gain an understanding of how we can better meet user needs and deliver better digital services to our customers. Who Are the Users Current Workforce: HEE Staff, NHS Learners, NHS Educators, NHS Employers As a member of the NHS workforce I need access to accurate and timely information about HEE's services, products and programmes, so that I can progress in my professional development and deliver better patient care. Future Workforce: Public As a member of the public I need access to accurate information about healthcare careers, their development pathways, and HEE's services to support them, so that I can plan and commence a career with the NHS. HEE's Partners As a HEE partner I need access to accurate information about HEE's services, products and programmes, so that I can work collaboratively to deliver better patient care. Objective 1 of this discovery will engage with these user types in the nursing & midwifery space. Objective 2 will engage with a more diverse cross section of the NHS workforce and public. Work Already Done HEE are currently concluding the beta phase of our National Website Platform service. This is a service for HEE that aims to replace the abundant website management systems across HEE with a single platform for all HEE websites, including national, regional, local and programme. Part of this work was to create the first few professional hub sites. These sites have progressed through discoveries, alphas and betas. This discovery is to address the next phase, a Nursing and Midwifery hub, and how these hubs might be unified around a single domain along with our corporate site. Existing Team There is a nursing & midwifery team within HEE - they are key stakeholders and subject matter experts. There is a communications team within HEE, with a few members supporting the current corporate site, and a few members dedicated to supporting the nursing & midwifery team. There is a growing in-house delivery team who are responsible for developing and maintaining hub sites on HEE's National Website Platform. Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Ability to design and lead website/intranet user and stakeholder research activities that produce a robust understanding of digital needs and priorities • Recent experience in conducting a Discovery phase and applying the principles of user centred design to the development of digital solutions • Ability to assess the benefits and risks of these options and make recommendations as to which are most appropriate to explore further • bility to present research findings and insights to a non-technical audience, including senior managers • Experience in taking a user centred, agile approach to delivery of services. • Experience of working in line with the Government service standard • Ability to conduct both remote and in person qualitative and quantitative user research activities Nice to Haves • Provide evidence of having passed a government, local government or NHS digital service assessment • An understanding of the NHS and its current ambitions and challenges • Experience of working on digital projects for organisations of a similar size and complexity to Health Education England • An understanding of the technical constraints that apply within the NHS IT environment • Experience of working on digital projects with NHS or other public sector organisations Work Location The supplier can work remotely, with (if possible) occasional meetings held on site, either in London or Birmingham. However, there may also be a requirement to run user research workshops, either virtually or physically. These would be arranged with users by the supplier. Working Arrangments Milestone meetings with the supplier will be held at least fortnightly, although the nature of the project means that contact will be more frequent through stakeholder meetings and workshops etc. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Proposed approach and methodology for user/stakeholder research • Understanding of project objectives • Knowledge of a broad range of digital technologies and their applicability to project objectives • Understanding of technical constraints that apply within the NHS environment • Planned activities, deliverables and milestones for these • Proposed outputs and presentation of results and recommendations • Estimated timeframes for completion of the project • dentified risks and dependencies, and proposed management of these • Experience of similar projects (website rationalisation) or of working with similar organisations (size and/or sector) • Team structure, knowledge and experience Cultural Fit Criteria • Transparency and collaboration in working practices • Ability to share knowledge and communicate recommendations with non-technical groups • Ability to show data evidence for insights and recommendations • Be comfortable in advocating for agile practices, user centred and inclusive design Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. The opportunity requests “Ability to conduct both remote and in person qualitative and quantitative user research activities”. Would this require us to have field workers? No, it means that the discovery may require user research sessions or workshops to be held some of HEE's offices around the country. This isn't essential, but this approach might be more conducive to engagement and participation with users. 2. Please confirm the budget for your requirement (both for Discovery phase, and full project if this information is available). Our experience of discoveries suggest that a maximum budget of around £50k would be sufficient.The 'full project' will likely be delivered in-house. However we may invite tenders if more capacity is required. 3. Can you confirm the latest start date? Latest would probably around the 23rd August, but we can be a little flexible. 4. With regards to the growing team behind the National Website Platform, can you provide us with more details on the different disciplines in this team, and how we’ll work alongside them? We current have a service delivery team consisting of a service owner, product managers, delivery manager, user researchers, content designer, UX designer, frontend developers, full stack developers, content editors.The service delivery team are working on other priority areas of service delivery, so we expect this discovery to run in parallel. There will be opportunity to share knowledge and insight gained from previous sprints, however. 5. Has another agency partner been involved with the beta or early market engagement? We’ve worked with a range of suppliers as part of the early market engagement 6. Do you have an existing agency partner whom you expect to apply for this work? No, we don’t have an existing agency partner, although we have worked with several agencies who may bid for this piece of work 7. Ref Q2 and Q5 – Can you provide your definition of the difference between a service and digital solution? Here is the GDS definition of a service:A whole service: this is everything the user needs to do to achieve a goal, including non-transactional things, such as research and choosing how to achieve their goal; a whole service is also everything government needs to do to achieve an outcome, including delivering and supporting the service.A digital solution is one part of a service. 8. Have you done any pre-discovery work we can have access to? Not specifically relating to these areas of work, no. 9. How many disciplines are we bringing together into one site/domain? We haven't determined the full range of disciplines as yet. Our decisions will be informed by user need and strategic objectives. At present we are working on a medical hub, dental hub and have an MVP librarian hub.However to specifically address two areas of this discovery:- nursing and midwifery - all associated disciplines. (see NHS Health Careers for a list)- corporate site it's a variety of health professions, including doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, allied health professionals, psychological professions, healthcare scientists, genomics. We hope this discovery will help identify some disciplines to consider. 10. How do you define your size/complexity? Employees, number of departments, responsibilities? As you can imagine the NHS is a very complex organisation, employing around 1.5 million people across 350 different professions. HEE, in collaboration with our partners, are responsible for planning, training, recruiting and educating this workforce. 11. Part of this work was to create the first few professional hub sites – Has there been and decisions Yes, we launched our first hub site last month and we are currently working on dental and medical hubs.All decisions are informed by user need and strategic objectives. We follow the GDS Service Standard/NHS Digital Service Standard and the NHS Digital Design System. 12. Ref Q4 – When you say “non-technical” do you mean non-technical in terms of development/ tech background or someone who doesn’t have a research background Both 13. Ref Q3 – What are you refereeing to when you say “these options” is it technical constraints, research methods/ recommendations? The 'options' is a reference to recommendations for proceeding to alpha. i.e which are our riskiest assumptions that need to be tested more. 14. Do you see Q3 as a follow on answer from Q2… do they need to be based on the same answer? Yes, they do follow on. But they wont be based on the same answer, no. Criteria 2 is asking your experience of running discoveries, criteria 3 is asking about your experience of evaluating discovery outputs and making recommendations for progressing to alpha. 15. Presumably HEE would supply user research participants? Yes, we have access to a diverse set of user research participants from the healthcare sector. We also have access to professional networks that may be able to help if there are any under-represented user types. 16. Can you please share which supplier is working on the National Website Platform Beta? There is no single agency. We have a multidisciplinary team comprised of contractors, in-house staff and agency resources. We are planning to recruit a full in-house team. 17. Can you please share your timelines for the procurement, following the shortlisting stage? Latest start date would probably be around 23rd August. 18. What application domain is being used or preferred to be used for the professional hubs? We are using an enterprise level digital experience platform (DXP) called Bloomreach.