Accessing Adult Social Care (Beta) service

Tender description

Summary of the work The Centre for Digital Public Services is looking for a supplier to work with them and three local authorities on a beta service for Accessing Adult Social Care - including product design, technical development and iteration, user research, and on-going maintenance and support. Expected Contract Length Up to 12 months, with review points and break-clauses every 3 months. Latest start date Monday 18 October 2021 Budget Range Up to £700,000 over 12 months Why the Work is Being Done Accessing Adult Social Care (beta) is currently intended to support residents in Neath Port Talbot, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen, initially, seeking adult social care to help them get what they need in a timely manner. We have been working in partnership with three local authorities (LAs) since August 2020. Private beta launched on 1 September in NPT. It consists of a text message update service and website that provides residents and/or family members with information on their request to adult social care. Now that private beta has been launched, we want to move at pace to understand the challenges involved in scaling and operating a service as well as developing an ambitious roadmap for the future of the service. We are now looking for a supplier to join a CDPS-led, multidisciplinary team, to work on the next phase of beta delivery to design and delivery. This could include integration with WCCIS (the Welsh care case management system built on Microsoft Dynamics). In addition, you'll contribute to the development of a roadmap owned by the Centre, that takes the product beyond the three partner organisations and potentially beyond adult social care. Problem to Be Solved Reduce avoidable contacts to the front door of adult social care. Make it easier and faster for residents to track requests for adult social care to reduce unnecessary stress, reduce unnecessary calls to social care teams and free up staff time. Understand how to integrate with WCCIS from a technical and information governance perspective. At a more strategic level, CDPS wants to learn how to scale and operate the service across local authorities and health boards. We also want to learn how a product/service could be scaled beyond adult social care as well. The learnings from this work will help inform the development of future digital services strategy. We’ll be seeking to answer strategic questions like: Who owns the service in the future (CDPS, LAs, someone else?) How is it supported? How can it be scaled to other local authorities/health boards and beyond Adult Social Care? What could a future business model look like? What is the cost/benefit model? Who Are the Users As an adult resident in Wales, I need to track my request (process, timescales, key contact information) for help for social care so that I feel confident I will receive the support I need As a member of the family of someone needing social care, I need to understand what is happening and when so that I can support my relative to get the care they need As a member of the Adult Social Care team at the Local Authority, I need a simple way to keep residents and their family members up to date on how their request is being handled so that they get the support they need and do not need to contact the council for this information. Work Already Done The service has been through a Discovery and Alpha process with 3 local authorities (Neath Port Talbot, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen). A private Beta is currently being rolled out in Neath Port Talbot where 15 Local Authority Staff and 100 residents are trialling the service. The service has this far been developed by a multi-disciplinary team at Social Finance (https://www.socialfinance.org.uk/) with the three local authorities. Blog posts: https://digitalpublicservices.gov.wales/blog/ Show and tell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOaXSyGaI6E&t=3440s Existing Team The full team, made of a blend of suppliers, local authority partners and CDPS, includes these roles: *Senior Delivery Manager *Senior Product Manager *Developers *User researcher/service designer *Project Sponsor *Head of IT *Head of Service *Information Governance Lead *Head of Front Door Lead *Front Door Contact Team *Adult Social Care Product Champion *Communications Officer Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Recent experience of working in beta, continuously iterating features based on user researc • Demonstrable evidence of strong product management and influencing skills • Recent experience of incrementally rolling out new ways of operating and scaling new digital services • Experience of building services using user centred design approaches • Demonstrate your experience of designing and delivering a digital service processing personal data • Experience supporting a production environment and supporting users • Experience of using Docker and AWS for CI/CD • Experience of using Python and Django to deliver secure APIs • Experience of using React and Nunjucks • Recent experience of building APIs to access/integrate with legacy systems • Recent experience of building services which meet recognised service standards • Recent experience of building services that use GDS platforms like Notify, design system Nice to Haves • Experience within social care • Experience of working in the Welsh public sector • Demonstrable experience of working in the open • Developing and testing business models for new products and services Work Location Remote Working Arrangments We expect this work will be done remotely for the foreseeable future. Should official guidance change during the duration of this engagement, you may be expected to attend meetings across Wales. Security Clearance At minimum a security clearance at Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) will be required for all members of the team. Additional T&Cs You will need to be aware of and agree to work within the Welsh Service Standards: https://digitalpublicservices.gov.wales/toolbox/digital-service-standards/ All proposed costs should include Welsh translation costs, both written and spoken. Data sharing/protection agreements will be shared with shortlisted suppliers. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Explain your proposed approach and timelines • Describe how you would test and iterate the operating model on a live service, whilst rolling out at scale across multiple, independent Local Authorities. • Describe your team structure and team members’ capability to successfully deliver this project • Approach to knowledge transfer and increasing skills/capability in organisations • How you will deliver a bilingual approach to this work Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstrate your ability to work in collaboration with multiple organisations, with different structures, priorities and challenges • Demonstrate your ability to form one blended team, made of suppliers, interims and perm staff • How you would approach dependent, hard-to-change, legacy technology • Your understanding of the Welsh political and social landscape • Your approach to introducing new ways of working – for example, agile, user centred design, working in the open, modern technology practices Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Do you have a high level architecture diagram you could share of the current closed beta that has just completed. This can be shared with the shortlisted suppliers at the next stage. 2. Will you require an identity as a service to enable secure login and single sign on or will you be making use of the UK Government Single Sign on for Government offering currently under development? There is currently no consistent sign on pattern and by agreement, we're currently operating a simplified sign-on pattern for the private beta that balances user needs/accessibility needs with Information Governance security requirements. The current approach is proportional to the information being surfaced in the current iteration of the service.This approach will be regularly revisited to ensure our Information Governance is assessed to a higher degree of security/authentication in response to the information being surfaced. We'd welcome any thoughts around how this could be approached during the beta phase 3. Would you accept the use of a personal data store as the point of integration to enable citizens to have their own copy of their health and social care data as part of empowering them to view and act on their referrals and be an active participant. This is not something currently in scope for this work. Our focus is on integration with existing systems/databases as outlined in the opportunity.