MHCLG CPD4122122 Funding Service Design – User Centred Design

Tender description

Summary of the work MHCLG requires a new supplier to provide user centred design and delivery skills to work on improving its funding processes and tools. Initial work packages will include undertaking a Beta within the pre-award areas of funding, and to support live funding programmes tactically improve their existing processes. Expected Contract Length 2 years Latest start date Friday 15 October 2021 Budget Range For financial year 21-22, up to £700K excluding VAT is available, although we would expect a monthly budget of around £80K to £115K for initial stages of the work. Budget for financial year 22-23 and 23-24 are still required to be signed-off, but could be up to £1.5M and £1.5M respectively. Why the Work is Being Done MHCLG manages a significant number of funding and grants programmes, including the Community Renewal Fund, the Levelling Up Fund and the coming UK Shared Prosperity Fund. We have a large number of competitively funded programmes, worth tens of billions. There is an opportunity to design and build a modern, user-centred set of tools and processes to underpin grant management services within the Department, enabling automation of processes and reducing the duplication of effort for external and internal users, by ensuring a common set of tools and standards that can be reused across the Department. Core capabilities expected within the proposed team would be expected to be, but are not limited to: User Researcher Content Designer Interaction Designer Performance Analyst Service Designer Delivery Manager Technical Architect Problem to Be Solved Discovery and Alpha phases focused on the pre-award phases of funding have identified a common set of user needs, and tooling requirements amongst different funds that MHCLG delivers. Currently, our funds either use; general tools (e.g. spreadsheets and Outlook) that are time consuming to maintain, lack in functionality and present security risks. They are often not fit to deliver funds at the scale we need, or have bespoke systems that are expensive to develop and are not reusable for other funds. In this work, we will establish a set of reusable modules and processes to align service design of funding programmes. This work is initially expected to focus on: Building on a recently successful Alpha phase within the pre-award area to deliver a Beta phase Helping in-train funds that are later in their life cycle, e.g. programme management – to use user centred practices to design and implement improved and simpler processes. Future projects that this could support include, but are not limited to: Continued research and design within the live phases of any pre-award stages of funding, to improve the service Alpha, Beta and Live phases on the post-award stages of funding Who Are the Users User needs for the pre-award phases of funding which are set to be tackled first are: As an applicant, I need to: understand what funding I can get so that I can consider applying for it understand what information I’ll need to provide for an application so that I have a good chance of being successful provide similar information across applications so that I can reuse work be able to get help when I am unable to complete an application be able to work across multiple fund applications so that I can manage multiple applications at once be able to understand what the next steps are after submitting an application As an application reviewer , I need to: be able to be given relevant information in the right format, so that I can assess the application against agreed success criteria As someone who designs a fund in MHCLG, I need to: Design a way to identify suitable projects that meet the fund’s objectives Have flexibility to adapt an application process to my fund’s particular needs Early Market Engagement NA Work Already Done We’ve completed a Discovery phase, and passed a GDS Alpha assessment in the pre-award areas. Our pre-award Service Standard report is available here: https://www.gov.uk/service-standard-reports/apply-for-local-growth-funding Existing Team We are currently hiring permanent roles, but we expect to have in post roles including a Service Owner, a Product Manager, a Business Analyst, as well as embedded subject matter experts. Initially, we envisage having two delivery teams, one which focuses on the Beta and Live pre-award phases, and one which focuses more on tactical support to help funds deliver in more user-centred and efficient ways , whilst making learnings reusable for other teams. We wish the successful supplier to embed with our permanent staff and another supplier across these two teams to ensure they’re improving our funding services. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Recent experience of undertaking research and design projects at all phases of the GDS life cycle, from Discovery through to Live • Recent experience of delivering against the Government’s digital service standard, utilising GDS Design principles • Recent experience of working in multidisciplinary delivery teams • Experience of rapidly incorporating insights and recommendations from research to improve processes in user-centred ways Nice to Haves Experience of utilising user-centred design methods to inform policy formulation, utilising learnings from existing processes Work Location London or Wolverhampton Working Arrangments Our delivery team are split across two main locations, in London and Wolverhampton. Covid-19 restrictions permitting, we would like to co-locate with the incoming suppliers one to two days a week in our London office for face-to-face team meetings and co-working, and would envisage remote working for the rest of the week. We expect the bulk of individuals within the supplier team to be working with us on a full-time basis. Security Clearance All individuals must have a minimum of BPSS clearance. For people who wish to co-locate in 2 Marsham Street, CTC level clearance will be needed. Any roles requiring access to production code or ‘live’ data will require SC level clearance. Additional T&Cs Outputs will be owned by MHCLG/published where appropriate using a suitable license. Personal data will be processed throughout the contract,supplier staff with appropriate clearance will be required to develop/operate the service.Any access will occur within agreed systems/personal data will never be stored locally on their machines.Data will not be retained by the supplier/access to data will be withdrawn at contract termination. This is one of 2 requirements-see also ref:CPD4122006.Suppliers can only bid for one of these to ensure that we are not reliant on a sole supplier, and so that we’re getting the optimal blend of skills from specialist organisations. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria • Approach and methodology (how your people work) • Flexible approach from supplier • Value for money • Your understanding of the Service Standard and Government design principles • Your understanding of policy formulation and its impact on delivery and any technical choices • If shortlisted, suppliers should provide the following: Written proposal for the work and day rates for exemplar roles listed below. • Pricing scores for evaluation purposes only will be calculated assuming 21 working days per month of the different types of roles listed below • User Researcher, Service Designer, Interaction Designer, Content Designer, Delivery Manager, Performance Analyst, Technical Architect • Scoring as follows-Score 0 = Failed to provide confidence that the proposal will meet the requirements. An unacceptable response with serious reservations. • Score 25 = A Poor response with reservations. The response lacks convincing detail with risk that the proposal will not be successful in meeting all the requirements. • Score 50 = Meets the requirements – the response generally meets the requirements, but lacks sufficient detail to warrant a higher mark. • Score 75= A Good response that meets the requirements with good supporting evidence. Demonstrates good understanding. • Score 100=An Excellent comprehensive response that meets the requirements. Indicates an excellent response with detailed supporting evidence and no weaknesses resulting in a high level of confidence. • In the event of a tie the highest score in the Technical Competence section will be used to award • Presentation - expected early October 2021 • Max 10 pages (excluding CVs) Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • Your approach to working within a regulated environment • Challenge the status quo • Share knowledge and experience with other team members • Pragmatism of approach tailored to its environment • SOCIAL VALUE - we would expect to see evidence against the following: • Equal Opportunity (5%) - model award criteria for this theme are to demonstrate action to identify and tackle inequality in employment, skills and pay in the current workforce. • It could also support in-work progression to help people, including those from disadvantaged or minority groups, to move into higher paid work by developing new skills relevant to the contract. • Wellbeing (5%) - model award criteria for this weighting would be to demonstrate action to support health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health in the contract workforce. • It also influences staff, suppliers, customers and communities through the delivery of the contract to support health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health. • Scoring for Social Value see below • Score 0 = The response completely fails to meet the required social value standard or does not provide a response. • Score 25 = The response makes limited reference (naming only) to the social value policy outcome set out within the invitation. • Score 50 = The response addresses most of the social value policy outcome and also shows general market experience. • Score 75 = The response addresses the social value policy outcome and also shows good market experience. • Score 100 = The response addresses the social value policy outcome and also shows in-depth market experience. Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 30% Cultural fit 20% Price 50% Questions from Suppliers 1. Could we ask which suppliers worked with you on the Discovery and Alpha phases please? For the Discovery we worked with Agile Sphere, and for the Alpha undertaken we’ve worked with FutureGov. 2. Would your preference be for the successful supplier to deliver both this and the associated technical support opportunity? This is covered in the “Additional Information” section of the advert.“This is one of 2 requirements-see also ref:CPD4122006.Suppliers can only bid for one of these to ensure that we are not reliant on a sole supplier, and so that we’re getting the optimal blend of skills from specialist organisations.” 3. Whilst DOS guidance advises us to provide one example for each question, Essential Question 1 asks for experience delivering ‘research and design projects’. Could you please confirm whether you would prefer us to use one example, or multiple example to answer this question? We would prefer you to use one strong example. 4. "establish a set of reusable modules and processes to align service design of funding programmes” – do you have more detail on what these modules and processes could/should look like?" Within the pre-award areas,we have a working expectation that the modules will eventually include the publishing of a fund,fund application and assessment of funding applications.We also have a prototype of an application form that could be common across more funds,in Heroku here:https://cff-application.herokuapp.com/start.The prototype is based on a historic fund, that is not set for a new funding round.Post-award phases are expected to include in particular a tool to enable collecting monitoring and evaluation information on funded projects from local organisations and enabling timely payments. If building software in-house we would expect them to comply with the Service Standard. 5. Can you confirm more specific deliverables for this project? For example, where the requirement is “deliver a Beta phase” can you break down what you are expecting for that beta? We would expect to pass a GDS Beta assessment in the pre-award areas, that helps us to meet the needs described in the advert for external and internal users. This would initially be for a pilot fund for Private Beta, and this contract would bring in skills to enable that, alongside people from requirement CPD4122006. For other parts of our end-to-end service–including fund promotion, and the monitoring and evaluation of funded projects – several funds are already live. This requirement will also be used to enable specific work packages with these live funds that to help improve current processes. 6. Can you specify any incumbent and what their work has been to date? For the Discovery we worked with Agile Sphere, and for the Alpha undertaken we’ve worked with FutureGov.The successful supplier will be expected to work with a supplier for requirement CPD4122006 and with permanent Civil Servants within the same delivery teams. 7. PLEASE NOTE - MHCLG will be withdrawing this requirement and CPD4122122, a slightly revised opportunity will be reissued shortly this will allow suppliers to bid for both CPD4122066 and CPD4122122 and allow sufficient time for this. PLEASE NOTE - MHCLG will be withdrawing this requirement and CPD4122122, a slightly revised opportunity will be reissued shortly this will allow suppliers to bid for both CPD4122066 and CPD4122122 and allow sufficient time for this.