The Provision of Contracts Finder and Finder a Tender Services

Tender description

Summary of the work Cabinet Office is contracting for the ongoing provision, maintenance and development of two existing e-notification services, Contracts Finder (CFS) and Find a Tender (FTS). Both CFS and FTS are live and operational in public beta. The successful supplier will also be required to develop new functionality to support procurement reform. Expected Contract Length 2 years (+ potential six month extension). Latest start date Friday 1 July 2022 Budget Range The total contract value is expected to be c£4m Why the Work is Being Done Cabinet Office is responsible for providing e-notice services (CFS and FTS) to public sector organisations to enable them to meet their legal and policy obligations. Both CFS and FTS are required by law and will continue to operate over the coming years with some enhancement required to meet future user needs. This development will include responses to new policy and legal requirements that come out of the Government’s ongoing work to reform the public procurement rules. Problem to Be Solved Via the existing Contracts Finder and Find a Tender services, users need to find notices published by public sector organisations in a straightforward and transparent manner via online search, dashboards and data outputs. For both services, data input and output is via a web user interface, XML, csv and JSON upload/download, inbound API and imports from third party systems, and SAML based authentication. Publishers need to be able to manage their notices. Registration of users will be via a pre-existing external system. Both services require hosting and support. Who Are the Users As a Public Sector user, I need to publish and manage a range of e-notices (by web, API or upload) to meet my legal and policy obligations. As a Private Sector user, I need to be able to search for, view and set up alerts for notices published by public sector users. As a Data user, I need to be able to access, search and download the notice data for re-use (by web user interface, XML, CSV and JSON outbound API). As the service owner I need reliable secure systems, compliant with the Government Digital Standards and comprehensive management information. Early Market Engagement N/A Work Already Done Both Contracts Finder and Find a Tender have been developed extensively and are live and operational in public beta. The successful supplier will be required to take on the management of both systems and (if required) migrating them to a new platform. Further development of both sites is required to implement operational improvements, as well as meeting the requirements of the ongoing Procurement Rules Reform programme. A development roadmap is in place and will be made available to the successful Supplier. Existing Team The Authority team consists of a Cabinet Office policy delivery team based in Norwich and a Digital Services Team based in London and Liverpool. The Digital Services Team comprises a dedicated Delivery Manager, Product Manager, User Researcher and Business Analyst. The supplier will be required to work alongside both existing teams. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Evidence experience of delivering services and solutions in the public sector of similar size and complexity (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of working on agile projects as part of a multidisciplinary team, as outlined in the Government Service Design Manual and Digital Service Standard. (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of architecting and developing scalable services using public cloud technologies, service-oriented architecture, microservices, security and integration (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of hosting and supporting ‘live’ operational services while implementing new functions (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of developing, web user interfaces, with APIs, JSON and XML interfaces for input and output of data (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of successful onboarding of data publishers using APIs, JSON and XML interfaces for input and output of data. (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of combining user research, service design and developer expertise. (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of delivering solutions which take into account the varying needs of different user groups, including those with low IT literacy or accessibility needs (Pass / Fail) • Two years experience of transferring knowledge to internal staff (Pass / Fail) Nice to Haves • Experience and understanding of public sector e-noticing platforms or similar. (25% of marks available at sift/ shortlisting phase) • Two years experience of user experience (UX) design (25% of marks available at sift/ shortlisting phase) • Experience and understanding of Open Contracting Data Standards. (25% of marks available at sift/ shortlisting phase) • Experience of analysing system data to drive operational improvements (25% of marks available at sift/ shortlisting phase) • Please note scores from the 'Nice to Have' section will only be used for shortlisting and will not be added to overall final scores. Work Location Norwich / London / Liverpool Working Arrangments It is anticipated that day-to-day contact will be via phone, video-conference and/or email, as required. Daily stand-ups and weekly meetings will be required, conducted via Google hangout. The supplier may need to visit offices for meetings, as agreed, and some co-located working may be required. Travel costs should be included in the overall rate. CO & CCS will provide the backlog of development work that will be agreed on a per sprint basis as a Statement of Work against given estimates. Some discovery work may also be required and can be included in the SOW. Security Clearance ISO27001: Security Aspects Letter will be issued. The Letter sets additional security requirements which supplement the Cyber Essentials Certificate. Delivery partner’s should have Security Clearance or bewilling to undergo Clearance. Evidence clearance will be requested at proposal stage. Selected Supplier must hold or have applied for CTC clearance at commencement. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Proposal criteria - (section total - 28%) • Understanding of requirements and policy goals (15%) • How the approach or solution meets user needs (15%) • Proposed technical solution - how you will approach delivering the services including how your development/testing processes will ensure the quality of the work delivered. (15%) • Timeframes - estimated time for the work to be undertaken (15%) • Team structure, covering product, infrastructure setup and maintenance, ongoing prototyping and design, software delivery and content (15%) • How they've identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them (15%) • How value for money will be delivered (10%) • Social Value - (section total - 12%) • Social Value Model Acceptance Criteria 4.1: Deliver additional environmental benefits in the performance of the contract including working towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions (34%) • Social Value Model Acceptance Criteria 6.1: Demonstrate action to identify and tackle inequality in employment, skills and pay in the contract workforce (33%) • Social Value Model Acceptance Criteria 7.1: Demonstrate action to support health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health, in the contract workforce (33%) • Presentation - (section total - 20%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Cultural fit- (section total - 20%) • Experience of successful collaborative working as part of a mixed supplier-client delivery team sharing knowledge within the team. (30%) • Experience delivering in an agile way according to the principles outlined in the Government Service Design Manual. (30%) • Experience of working with clients / team members with low technical expertise (20%) • Demonstrate simplicity (e.g. do less but better, explaining complex issues in a clear, simple way, break down and prioritise complex issues) (20%) Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Can I ask who conducted the original discovery and alpha phases please? The discovery was conducted in-house. Alpha was delivered by a previous supplier. 2. Is there an existing incumbent? Yes. A period of handover will be required at the start of the contract. 3. Will remote presentations be accepted via Teams/Zoom? Yes – shortlisted supplier will be invited to a Jaggaer – Esourcing event to submit full proposals – suppliers capable of winning the procurement will be invited to a presentations and interview stage. Further detail will be provided to shortlisted supplier. The presentation stage will be remote via Google meet but we will be more than happy to organise alternative remote presentations either via Zoom / teams. 4. What does “public sector of similar size and complexity” mean ? Bidders are expected to provide examples of experience on projects of a similar size and complexity to the one advertised. This should include value, user base and working with a series of inter-linked systems etc. Experience can cover multiple projects over a cumulative period. Bidders will be expected to provide evidence of where / how the experience was gained and how this experience is relevant to this opportunity. 5. Who is the incumbent supplier ? NQC 6. Who is the current incumbent providing support and enhancement services? NQC 7. When did the current incumbent contract start and when will it end? The contract will end in July 2022. 8. What Cloud platform is the service currently hosted on? Current hosting is in Microsoft Azure via the incumbent supplier. The new supplier will be expected to advise on the best hosting solution. 9. Is there an incumbent supplier providing this service to you? If yes, who, and how long have they been working on the service? Yes, NQC, for approx 5 years. 10. What is the composition of the supplier team currently supporting both services? The supplier team is comprised of Project Management, Developers and Testers. The supplier also provides technical support. Additional security and infrastructure support is provided as required. 11. Have these services been through a GDS Service Assessment, and are the reports available? Are you expecting to go through assessment during this contract? Contracts Finder went through GDS assessment several years ago, there have been a number of significant improvements since then so the report is no longer consistent with the site.Find a Tender was exempted from formal assessment due its status as a Brexit project.Assessment requirements for future developments are to be agreed with GDS. 12. Can you share a high-level view of the roadmap, so we can understand your timelines, priorities and milestones? The roadmap focuses on implementing the Transforming Public Procurement green paper (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/green-paper-transforming-public-procurement), allowing the publication of all notices that will be required by the new regulations. In addition, we plan to make improvements to search interface and functionality, provide procurement, buyer and supplier overviews, and redesign other areas of the websites to make them easier to use. 13. What are your current hosting arrangements and do you expect to need to replatform? Current hosting is in Microsoft Azure via the incumbent supplier. The new supplier will be expected to advise on the best hosting solution. 14. How will you support transition to an incoming supplier? Can you describe your exit plan for the existing contract? An exit plan has been agreed with incumbent. Details will be shared with the successful bidder and timescales for handover and implementation will be agreed in a pre-contract meeting. 15. What is the relationship between Contracts Finder and Find a Tender – are they built on the same tech stack, hosted on the same infrastructure, do they share any aspects of the code base? Find a Tender was developed from the Contracts Finder code, so while it is now maintained separately, the code is similarly designed and structured. Additionally they use a small amount of shared code, they use the same tech stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), and are hosted on separate instances of the same infrastructure (MS Azure). 16. Are you expecting the supplier to work directly with your staff in a blended team? The supplier's development team will be expected to attend various meetings, including Stand Up and Sprint Planning. The Authortiy will make decisions around prioritisation and sprint composition in conjunciton with the Supplier. Story definition will be undertaken by both the supplier and the Authority's project team as appropriate.There is no requirement to physically co-locate. 17. Can you provide more details about your existing team and their respective experience? The existing project team is comprised of a Delivery Manager, Product Manager, User Researcher and User Acceptence Tester. Each has multi-year experience on a number of different projects across multiple organisations and each has been working on this project for over four years. 18. Is BODS in scope of this requirement? If not, why not? Can you please clarify which definition of BODS you are referring to? 19. Can the tech stack for the service be shared with suppliers inc hosting architecture and software in place to run the service? (inc version numbers of any architecture/software) The tech stack includes Linux (CentOS 7), Apache, MySQL 5.7 and PHP 5.4. The infrastructure includes Microsoft Azure Front Door, three application virtual machines in separate availability zones, and one database VM. 20. Incident metrics...How many incidents / problems were raised in the past 12 months or average per monthHow many service requests in the past 12 months or average per monthHow many incidents were classified as a P1/P2 – service unavailable?How many of these P1/P2 incidents occurred OOHs? Average effort per OOH P1/P2?How much OOH release support is required on a month by month basis? From March 2021 to February 2022, 591 support tickets were raised by the incumbent supplier for Contracts Finder, of which 0 were critical, 0 high, 4 moderate and 587 low priority. There were 548 for Find a Tender (0 critical/high, 90 moderate, 458 low). Separately, there were 13 incidents where the service was unavailable. The effort required to resolve these is unknown. 21 releases were made out of hours from April 2021 to March 2022, taking the incumbent supplier up to an hour each. 21. Is there a [historical] backlog of open / “in progress” incidents & service requests+? No, all incidents and service requests are closed within a month. Separately there is a development roadmap and backlog that is actioned through an agile sprint process. 22. How many enhancements to the service have been delivered in the past 12 months introducing change to the service? (i.e. what is the volume or scale of change) From April 2021 to March 2022, there have been 76 development tickets released for Contracts Finder and 110 for Find a Tender. 23. How active is the service? Can you share service analytics from the past 2 years? Eg. Avg daily visits, peak concurrent users, etc. Contracts Finder analytics show 4,533,171 page views for the year from April 2021 to March 2022, with daily maximum counts of 20,977 page views. The same period for Find a Tender shows 1,887,958 page views for the year, with 10,487 daily maximum. Users must accept cookies to be included in these counts. Previous data for Contracts Finders indicates actual page views may be four times higher. 24. What data size does the service hold at present and how much has this grown in the past 12 months? The Contracts Finder database is currently 153 GB and Find a Tender 10 GB. We do not keep historical records of this. 25. Are there any integrated 3rd party solutions or is the service stand-alone? The CFS and FTS services are integrated with the Supplier Registration service (https://supplierregistration.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) for single sign-on (SSO) via SAML. Many third-party services use the CFS and FTS APIs to send and retrieve notice data. 26. Will remote presentations be accepted via Teams/Zoom? Yes – shortlisted supplier will be invited to a Jaggaer – Esourcing event to submit full proposals – suppliers capable of winning the procurement will be invited to a presentations and interview stage. Further detail will be provided to shortlisted supplier. The presentation stage will be remote via Google meet but we will be more than happy to organise alternative remote presentations either via Zoom / teams. 27. The guidance states that suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal, and that the latest works start date will be Friday 1st July 2022.Could you please provide further details regarding the overall tender process timescales, and how long the period will be for shortlisted suppliers to submit a written proposal? A rough guide around timelines can be seen below but is subject to change, internal discussion, capacity changes and approval gateways. A full and final timeline will be provided to shortlisted suppliers:Shortlisting close via Digital market place – Monday 11th AprilEvaluation of suppliers –Thursday 14th AprilOutcome of Shortlisting process and suppliers invited to Jaggaer E-sourcing event- WC-18th AprilLive period 2 Weeks (WC-18th April – 2nd May)Presentations WC 2nd MayAwardBefore the 1st June 28. The proposal criteria states four section totals:Proposal criteria – (section total – 28%)Social Value – (section total – 12%)Presentation – (section total – 20%)Cultural fit – (section total – 20%)Can we assume that the remaining 20% relates to price?In addition, the evaluation weighting is detailed as Technical competence 60%, Cultural fit 20% and Price 20%.Could you please confirm how these two scoring criteria i,e proposal criteria and evaluation weighting are linked together please? We are keen to ensure we fully understand the marking structure and weightings. The marking scheme will be clarified with the 5 shortlisted suppliers as we have some restrictions on our Jaggaer E-sourcing portal. Effectively 80% of the marks available will go into a Technical Envelope, split out as follows:Proposal criteria – (section total – 28%)Social Value – (section total – 12%)Presentation – (section total – 20%)Cultural fit – (section total – 20%)20% of the marks available will be attributed to Price/ commercial envelope.