Civil Service Careers site development partner

Tender description

Summary of the work Government Business Services require a team who have expert knowledge of WordPress, user research, design and technical enhancements to provide an improved service to meet our user needs. Expected Contract Length 24 months, with an optional extension of up to 6 months (if required) Latest start date Friday 8 July 2022 Budget Range It is estimated that the work can be delivered within the budget range of £300,000 to £445,000. Why the Work is Being Done Civil Service Careers site is a mature live service that requires futher development/enhancements to continue meeting user needs and attract a wider cross section of Civil Service departments. 1. Showcase the diversity of the Civil Service and our inclusive culture 2. Enable job seekers to explore careers across the Civil Service 3. Enable us to leverage the collective strength Civil Service employer brands 4. Act as a “shop window” to the Civil Service Jobs portal 5. Deliver cost-savings by “building once and building well” and preventing bespoke microsites Problem to Be Solved Civil Service Careers site is a mature live service, the service aim is to provide a central 'shared services' platform for all government departments. The service was created to prevent wasteful duplication of careers promotion material on individual departmental microsites. The current service is not meeting all departmental and end users needs, and some departments have opted to create bespoke microsites to promote individual departments and maintain their own brand identity. The goal is to increase high-value candidate transfers to Civil Service Jobs. Who Are the Users The Civil Service Careers website went live in 2018. It is the main marketing website for the Civil Service. Users may be in Civil Service or general public. It plays a fundamental role in establishing the Civil Service employer brand on the UK jobs market. Currently, 31 departments and 16 professions have a presence on the Careers website. Each department shows what it is like to work there and why and how to apply for roles. It is used to support and promote national careers campaigns such as National Apprenticeships Week and National Careers Week, as well as supporting ministerial priorities like Places for Growth. The Careers Website forms a key part of the recruitment journey for candidates looking to apply for roles. Users are able to move seamlessly from department and professions pages on CS Careers to direct searches of CS Jobs for roles that might interest them in those areas. The Careers site team works closely with the CS Jobs delivery team to provide clear user journeys to direct users to the correct roles and information. In the last twelve months the Careers website has attracted 1.5m users, of which 600k have transferred to CS Jobs. Early Market Engagement N/A Work Already Done Civil Service careers is a mature 'live' public facing website that was launched in 2018. Existing Team The existing team: Digital Service Manager Product Manager Delivery Manager Associate Delivery Manager Current Phase Live Skills & Experience • Experience in developing, testing, releasing WordPress enhancements & patching. Activities may range from minor to significant changes commissioned by Statements of Works from the roadmap or user needs. (6%) • Experience in understanding how to meet the needs of a diverse range of users, and a demonstrable commitment to accessibility. (6%) • Can demonstrate evidence of working with the buyer and customers to design and scope solutions to meet the desired outcomes based on user and business needs. (5%) • Demonstrate ability to provide full end to end testing of the services prior to releasing enhancements, ensuring changes required are in place and performance and security is maintained. (5%) • Demonstrate your expertise across all aspects of website design, API integration, build, promotion and analytics (5%) • Must be available to start work on 8th July 2022 (1%) • Must have ISO27001 certification (1%) • Must have cyber Essentials Plus certification (1%) Nice to Haves • Experience of complying with Government Digital Service standards for digital service development and specifically delivery as set out in the Government Service Design Manual, https://www.gov.uk/service-manual. (1%) • Supplier can demonstrate experience in using wireframing and other prototyping skills to produce mock ups of possible service solutions based on user research.(3%) • Can demonstrate experience with working in close collaboration with the buyer to achieve value for money for commissioned work, to ensure costs are within any established target parameters. (2%) • Can demonstrate experience of working with tracking and management tools to produce meaningful data journey reports. (1%) • Can demonstrate experience of similar initiatives within, or around attraction and marketing in the talent space. (3%) Work Location Bristol/London/Cardiff Working Arrangments Remote working - The Civil Service operates a hybrid-working model where the majority of meetings are carried out remotely. We would expect to work in the same way with the supplier. Security Clearance All Supplier staff must have minimum BPSS clearance and supplier staff with access to the codebase will require SC level clearance. We would be willing to sponsor the SC clearance process at the supplier's expense. Additional T&Cs All expenses must be pre-agreed between the parties and must comply with the Cabinet Office (CO) Travel and Subsistence (T&S) Policy. All vendors are obliged to provide sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures so that the processing meets the requirements of GDPR and ensures the protection of the rights of data subjects. For further information please see the Information Commissioner's Office website https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-reform/overview-of-the-gdpr/ No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Describe how you can provide timely and accurate estimates for desired enhancements when they are commissioned. (3%) • Describe your provision of the appropriate combination of digital specialists applicable to the particular outcome/enhancement required. (6%) • Describe how you can work collaboratively with the internal teams delivering recruitment services, Cabinet Office support team and business/engagement leads. (6%) • Describe how you will support accessibility and security audits carried out by independent professional services. Making required changes to address the issues as prioritised by the customer’s product manager. (5%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstration of how successful knowledge transfer and handover will be done. (5%) • Transparent and Collaborative Working. (3%) • Detail identification opportunities for continuous improvement. (2%) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 10% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. Please confirm when the scheduled Q&A session will start on Friday 8th April The scheduled Q&A session on Friday 8th April 2022 will be from 14:00 - 15:00. 2. Can you please confirm that questions and answers discussed on Friday’s Q&A call will be published in good time to allow suppliers not able to attend to access this information? Yes, all questions and answers from the Q&A session will be published by 17:00 on 13 April 2022. 3. Can you please confirm why suppliers with access to the codebase will be required to have SC clearance? Is there particularly sensitive or restricted data being captured/stored on the site? Although there is no sensitive data, it is best practice to ensure those with admin access to the codebase are SC cleared. We would be willing to sponsor the SC clearance process at the supplier's expense. 4. You have mentioned that not all department’s needs are currently being met by the site and microsites have been created to address these needs.Can you please explain the needs that the current site is not meeting and how you plan to bring departments back ‘into the fold’ so to speak? Departments often request enhanced functionality, less restrictive content templates, and more options to personalise their brand. Whilst we need to adapt and encourage departments to embrace the shared service strategy by improving our offering, we also need to reinforce the Civil Service brand as a whole. 5. Please could you provide details of the Q&A session and how we can join this? The Q&A session will take place on Friday 8th April 2022 from 14:00 to 15:00. Details of how to access the conference by video and telephone are available in the Q&A details when logged in to Digital Marketplace. 6. Will suppliers who do not have Cyber Essentials Plus (but do have ISO27001 accreditation) be excluded from the next stage of the process or simply lose marks in the evaluation? Both Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO27001 accreditation are essential criteria for a supplier. If either one cannot be met, the supplier is guaranteed not to progress to the next stage of evaluation. 7. Will suppliers who do not have Cyber Essentials Plus (but do have ISO27001 accreditation) be excluded from the next stage of the process or simply lose marks in the evaluation? Both Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO27001 accreditation are essential criteria for a supplier. If either one cannot be met, the supplier is guaranteed not to progress to the next stage of evaluation. 8. Who is the Incumbent? Softwire is the current incumbent. 9. Q&A session - It’s been stated that having Cyber Essentials Plus is an essential criterion, and if a supplier didn’t have it that would be an automatic exclusion. Just to qualify that, what would the scenario be if there was a commitment to getting Cyber Essentials Plus? Q&A session - That would be fine, if we know the timelines.In your application, you must provide evidence clearly showing that Cyber Essentials Plus would be in place at the start of the contract (8 July 2022) 10. Q&A session - You’ve mentioned this will be a central shared services platform for all government departments. Do you envisage a lot of different stakeholders and what would be the level of engagement the agency would get involved in or would you be handling that on your side? Q&A session - The current site has around 32 departments currently using the site and there are around 25 departments across the civil service. So that gives you an idea of the number of stakeholders currently, however, we also have wider stakeholders from across government. In terms of engagement from a supplier with our stakeholders, generally, it is managed in-house by us but there may be some engagement needed when it comes to research and things like that. 11. Q&A session - On digital marketplace there is discussion around enhanced functionality - what are the key drivers or key things the current site doesn’t do, the key thing motivating the whole project? Would you be able to share the roadmap? Q&A session - At the moment we have got loads of demands from departments and professions to get on board with accessible templates. Could be adhoc changes or new requests. We are also looking to integrate data from other digital services. Also accessibility audit and pen test annually which is routine. Enhancements could be anything coming from the departments in a change request.We’re not able to share the roadmap in full, however, some of the key items are, as mentioned, data integration between digital services, improving usability of the site and improving our MI too. 12. Q&A session - What’s your internal resource structure looking like? Who’s working on the project from a technical angle internally? Q&A session - Technically we don’t have any developers in the team. We have the Product Manager, Delivery Manager, Associate Delivery Manager, and Service Manager who oversees lots of live digital recruitment services. We do have sister teams that we can occasionally pull resource from, like user research colleagues, but generally they’re pretty busy and we don’t get a lot from them. 13. Q&A session - Is there an incumbent currently carrying out any development/adhoc work? Q&A session - Yes, we have a contract with a supplier currently and their contract ends in July which is why our start-work date is the 8th July 2022. They have been working on the project around 2 years. 14. Q&A session - With regards to that incumbent - have they been invited to submit a proposal as part of this process, do you know if they are? Q&A session - We don’t know if they are planning to, they have access to Digital Marketplace the same as everybody so if they are planning to submit a response, that’s not something we know about at this stage. 15. Q&A session - Do you have any immediate SoW/Projects lined up that would need to be addressed at the start of the contract? Q&A session - We don’t have any pieces of work that we think will cross contracts. We’re hoping to tie everything up with our current supplier before the end of their contract so there are no immediate pieces of work that we’re expecting at the beginning of July. 16. Q&A session - Assuming suppliers are successful at the initial shortlist do you have a timeline for the rest of the process? Q&A session - We’ll look to shortlist w/c 18th April and the week after, so we should be able to notify suppliers on 4th May 2022 if they’re moving to stage two of the process or not. We’re hoping that the Proposal Pack will be sent on the 4th May, if successful, and then the deadline for supplier proposals would be about a week after we’ve made that notification. We then hope to have presentations w/c 16th May. And we’ll notify you of the times and dates in our shortlisting outcome email if you are successful. 17. Q&A session - Due to the submission date on DOS being on a bank holiday, is it possible to get an extension? Q&A session - We are unable to change the date on DOS unfortunately or change the deadline at this stage so the deadline of 23:59 on 18th April 2022 stands. 18. Q&A session - One of the motivations is to reduce the number of microsites that have sprung up. Is it a case of taking the content on the microsites and rolling it into the platform or is it start from scratch? What will be we in regards to that? Because I suppose there’s a knock-on effect of how much analysis work needs to go into looking at the breadth of what’s there. Q&A session - Departments believe that Careers can’t meet all their requirementsThe microsites from departments tend to spring up because they don’t believe the central careers site can meet their requirements. Generally, one of the main reasons is about branding. Departments like to have their own branding and not necessarily be “The Civil Service” but be their own entity. So in order to bring them back into the fold, it’s a case of doing analysis on what those requirements are and how we can meet them whilst still holding the Civil Service brand true. 19. Q&A session - Is WordPress a definite requirement or would other CMS platforms be considered given the microsite migration? Q&A session - WordPress is what the site is currently built on. It was what it was built on in 2018. We're possibly not wedded to it, if there were better CMS platforms for use. But that would considerably change our requirements and budget. So our budget and requirements are based on it being a continuation of our WordPress platform that we have at the moment. 20. Q&A session - Following on from the above question, from an evaluation perspective, some of the questions are around WordPress experience. Would your preference be for us to simply answer digital marketplace on a WordPress basis, and then offer alternatives should we be successful from that point on? Q&A session - As you say, our requirements are based on WordPress and that's what we’ll be evaluating on. At contract let in July, when you start work, we'll still be using the WordPress platform. So that's exactly what we'll be evaluating on. Any developments further down the line if we decide to change platforms we just can’t foresee. There’s no current plan to change platforms but it’s not an option that we have completely taken off the table.