A team to build out technology to support grant-making capabilities

Tender description

Summary of the work Providing a multi-disciplinary team to support re-use of technology components to support administration of grant-making capabilities, if required by changes to government regulation. Expected Contract Length 9 months Latest start date Monday 17 January 2022 Budget Range This procurement is to the total value of £200,000 excluding VAT and budget will be managed through Statements of Work for shorter periods (eg of £80,000 each). However, any spend depends on the project needing to start and the value will be dependent on a high-level business case being agreed before commencement. Why the Work is Being Done As part of the response to COVID, local authorities have been asked by government to administer grant funding for businesses and other organisations. This tender seeks to ensure we have the skills and capacity in place to respond to any new requirements from central government at short notice. The exact nature of the work will depend on what measures, if any, the government puts in place. Problem to Be Solved Hackney has a number of technology capabilities that enable the Council to design user-centred digital services rapidly: * A secure cloud environment in AWS with a set of Terraform templates for provisioning infrastructure as code * A pattern library to provide consistent user experiences * A form builder to enable developers to produce forms * Micro front-ends for capabilities such as search to support admin interface RS * A Document Evidence Store to handle requests for information We want to ensure that any work to build new services re-uses our existing capabilities wherever possible to accelerate development, provide better services and reduce the cost of support. Who Are the Users We would expect to identify a set of user needs in response to government requirements and guidance. Early Market Engagement None Work Already Done We developed a solution as part of the discretionary business grants scheme (https://github.com/LBHackney-IT/discretionary-business-grants) although we now have available more reusable components. Existing Team We would expect to provide a product manager, solution architecture (advisory capacity) and Data Protection Officer (advisory capacity). The team would need to be largely self-supporting although would be expected to work within our governance arrangements (eg. sign-off of solution architecture by the Technical Design Authority and ADRs reviewed by the in-house team). Current Phase Not started Skills & Experience • Demonstrate an understanding of the user needs associated with more complex local government services • Demonstrate a track-record of user-centred design and Agile approaches to delivery • Experience of developing applications to meet a government Service Standard • Have experience of working with .NET core, Microservices principles,React, cloud platforms such as - AWS ( serverless framework - Lambda functions,Cloudfront,Cloudwatch,DMS,S3 etc) and Terraform • Have experience of developing ‘in the open’ - using tools such as Github • Experience of a project using Event Driven Architecture implementation using SQS and SNS • Have experience of designing to meet the public sector accessibility guidelines • Demonstrate how they have worked collaboratively in a multi-vendor environment • Have experience in C/CD tools such as CircleCI • Have experience with QA tools such as Cypress,JEST for unit testing, Gherkin framework. Nice to Haves • Demonstrate an understanding of Hackney’s approach to technology and data • Demonstrate how they provide opportunities for apprentices Work Location Remotely, and in Hackney Council offices in Mare Street, E8 where face to face contact is required Working Arrangments This work can be done remotely but will require fortnightly reporting (eg via show & tells) to involve key stakeholders and regular engagement with practitioners through video conferences. We will provide access to key systems to project team members where required. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Understanding of the brief • Clarity of the approach • Experience from a similar project • Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals • Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them • Blended day rates of the team Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions • Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service • Hackney Council is a diverse organisation, reflecting the diversity of our borough. Describe how you would successfully work as a team with Hackney and other suppliers in a diverse environment. Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Case study Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 5% Price 35% Questions from Suppliers 1. Is there an incumbent? No. MadeTech did a previous piece of work to develop our business support grant process but our hypothesis is that our common components, developed subsequently, may be a better starting point for this piece of work. 2. Would you consider using a low-code solution to build out this technology? Yes - provided that:- the solution’s licence model worked for this use-case- the software adheres to the Technology Code of Practice, particularly in relation to accessibility, interoperability and security- we can access the expertise to build and maintain the service 3. Can you share the outputs from the work carried out by madeTech The key outputs are available on GitHub: https://github.com/LBHackney-IT?q=Business&type=all&language=&sort=