704787450-Project KALEIDOSCOPE -Delivering international information advantage and decision support

Tender description

Summary of the work Create a digital tool which will ingest international engagement data from different sources across Defence to help decision-makers improve international engagement activity. The tool should be user-friendly and be accessible for non-digital natives. Expected Contract Length Up to 15 months Latest start date Tuesday 1 November 2022 Budget Range The maximum Limit of Liability for this project is £600,000 (Ex VAT) £720,000 (inc. VAT). Why the Work is Being Done The Authority must harness tools which allow it to gather, analyse and exploit data faster than opponents, make more effective decisions and respond to threat before an adversary can react. One of the methods under which the Authority does this is through projecting influence and soft power through International Engagement, Activities and Events on the world stage. The Authority must improve the coherency of data and therefore requires a tool that can orchestrate and fuse data across its internal organisation to better understand how it can exploit opportunities and utilise resources. Problem to Be Solved The Authority requires collation of useful, appropriate data sources. Well curated, appropriately tagged, data, should be developed alongside an application. Initially, the Application should extract/export/replicate data taken from wherever it currently resides. This includes formal databases and informal / bespoke manually updated databases (e.g. national days, global context, senior officer engagement, Defence and security trade fairs). Data should be ingested on a regular rhythm. The Authority requires an intuitive user interface to this solution. It must be simple, but fully customisable for users with the appetite or need to conduct more sophisticated mapping. It must also be an intuitive interface that allows databases, time scales, activity types and geography to be selected or excluded in order to support the Authority’s bespoke decision-making. Functionality must include effective visualisation to support decision making: moving maps, graphs, diagrams, rich pictures, synchronisation matrices, Gantt charts, alerts, data comparisons etc. Who Are the Users The Users are decision makers in the field of International Engagement & Strategy. They need to be able to: 1. Provide a single access point to all programmed, proposed, in progress, completed and cancelled global Defence activity, in a user-defined relevant context. 2. Support option development, programming and decision-making up to 24 months ahead. 3. Identify potential opportunities and opportunity costs of conducting international activity. 4. Identify potential negative consequences and contradictory messaging. 5. Support Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) through holistic understanding of past activity in context. Early Market Engagement The Authority undertook pre-market engagement to help the Authority to refine the requirements. No down selection of suppliers took place as a consequence of any responses or interactions from the pre-market engagement. Work Already Done Pre-Discovery activity with Defence users across multiple teams. The Authority has also conducted an assessment of the digital options available and on the datasets the Authority seeks to use for the project, including evidence-gathering, developed user stories, and delivered a manual proof of concept on Excel. - Data of which can be shared with a Supplier once on contract. Existing Team UKStrategic Command - There will be a project team from the jHub consisting of 1x lead, 2x providing cohering support, 1x Portfolio lead and a group of user stakeholders, both abroad and in the UK. Security Policy and Operations (SPO) - SPO Digital Team will cohere delivery and support transition into Core. This team consists of 1x Assistant Head and a core team of 1x Policy Lead, 1x Digital and Technical Lead, approx 25 personnel identified as a User groups. The Authority may seek to bring in additional support from wider Defence, e.g. Army's Special Group Information Services (SGIS). Current Phase Alpha Skills & Experience • Have experience in designing, developing and delivering applications that fuse multiple data sources in multiple formats to support decision making by senior stakeholders. • Have experience in designing, developing and delivering applications that provide multiple and configurable visualisation methods of fused data sets to support decision making, including geospatial and temporal representations. • Have experience in delivering Container and Kubernetes managed applications to be hosted in customer public cloud instances, i.e. into EKS, AKS, or Redhat OpenShift platforms. • Have experience in delivering in a DevSecOps process aligned with NCSC secure development principles • Have experience in designing, developing and delivering secure applications to Government customers at OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE. • Have experience in the provision of Business Analysis to establish and refine user stories, application features and backlog • Have experience in delivering application training and support to end users • Have experience in producing code and supporting documentation that enables third party support, ongoing development and maintenance of delivered applications • Have experience in delivering GDPR and Data Protection Act compliant applications • Have experience with best practice/industry standard DevSecOps tooling • Have experience of working to international standards for accessibility requirements, including adhering to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) • Have experience delivering tailored training packages alongside software packages, including IA, tutorials, seminars and guidance, which explain high to granular levels of how the system works and synergies across platforms Nice to Haves • Deliver applications to Government customers above OFFICIAL (e.g. SECRET and above SECRET). • Develop applications utilising customer provisioned DevSecOps pipelines or provision supplier side pipelines • Deliver AI/ML capabilities into applications • Demonstrate previous experience of working with the Ministry of Defence • Demonstrate experience in delivering and deploying applications within a GitOps framework • Demonstrate experience of working to Government Functional Standard GovS 005: Digital, Data and Technology framework Work Location Ministry of Defence - Whitehall Working Arrangments Supplier staff will keep to MOD team hours to maximise knowledge transfer and integrate with team development processes. Indicatively, this will be Monday to Friday, starting work by 9.30am, 7.5 hours per day + lunch time. The Supplier can be based anywhere in the UK, but will be expected to attend engagements with the Authority at the Authority's discretion; indicatively this will be 1-2 days a week in London. The Supplier shall bear all T&S costs and should provide a breakdown as part of their costed proposal. Security Clearance All must have BPSS as a minimum. Preference for all contractors to already hold SC clearance, however the Authority would be willing to sponsor the SC clearance process at the supplier's expense. Administrators of the platform must have SC clearance as a minimum. Additional T&Cs DEFCON 76 (06/21)- Contractor's Personnel At Government Establishments DEFCON 658 (09/21) - Cyber DEFCON 611 (02/16) - Issued Property DEFCON 612 (06/21) - Loss of Or Damage to the Articles No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • The proposed technical solution • How the approach or solution meets the Authority's business or policy goal • Estimated time-frames for the work • How the solution will continue after development • How has the supplier identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them (this will be included as a sub-criteria against each of the above) Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstrate CSR credentials, both domestically and globally, specifically adhering to UK international legislation and conforming to the principles and subjects addressed in ISO 26000 • Demonstrate how you will adhere to the duties imposed by the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and all Government procurement policy notes in relation to transparency in the supply chain. • Provide evidence on how your company identifies and tackles inequality in employment. • Demonstrate how the Supplier shall comply with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) • Demonstrate how the Supplier with comply with Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Work history • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 10% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. You’ve listed the current phase as being ‘Alpha’, and the ‘work that has already been done’ section describes discovery activities. So can you just confirm that this tender (and associated budget) is specifically earmarked for just the Alpha phase (prototypes etc) and not the Beta (build) phase? In other words the output of this tender is intended to be substantial prototype and some early thinking about technology, tools, integrations etc but not a working product? The Authority has developed a mock-up Alpha that has been used for live activity, but this was limited to Microsoft Excel. This Project requires the supplier to develop a working Beta product, using live (or near-live) data. 2. Are you able to share with us who performed the discovery activities. Was it purely internal staff or was a 3rd party engaged. Are you able to name the 3rd party (if applicable) and whether they are likely to bid for Alpha and Beta phases? All discovery activities to date have involved purely internal staff from the Authority. The staff involved ranged from junior to senior end users, technical experts, and data owners. This includes representation from the Authority's Head Office, Front Line Commands, and specialist units. 3. Is it intended that tool being built is subject to GDS service standard assessments? The Authority cannot confirm at this time whether the tool will actively be assessed against GDS Service Standards, but it is expected to be built against them. Indicatively, the Authority believes it unlikely that GDS Service Standard assessments will be required. 4. We note on the DOS page that you’re in alpha. Of the things suggested in the GOV.UK service manual, which aspects of discovery do you think are well-covered? The Authority has conducted two rounds of User research. The first phase was conducted by a Senior User to build a business case and pitch the project to Authority delivery bodies. The second phase was conducted by an innovation unit within UK Strategic Command and included extensive engagement with end-users.Discovery has focused on end-User problems / requirements, strategic challenges, and the policy intent User activities support. The Authority believes that further Discovery may be required around data access, ingestion, integration, and sharing. The Authority can work with the winning Supplier to conduct further Discovery activities if required 5. Which stage are you expecting to reach within this commission? End of alpha or beta? The Authority has developed a mock-up Alpha that has been used for live activity, but this was limited to Microsoft Excel. This Project requires the supplier to develop a working Beta product, using live (or near-live) data. 6. Who conducted the discovery for this work? All discovery activities to date have involved purely internal staff from the Authority. The staff involved ranged from junior to senior end users, technical experts, and data owners. This includes representation from the Authority's Head Office, Front Line Commands, and specialist units. 7. Discovery is described as being “in house”, was this conducted by consultants or permanent staff? All discovery activities were conducted by permanent staff (crown servants) 8. The project requires the successful applicant to aggregate and curate datasets from scratch, but does the project have any ambition to use existing, curated datasets, rather than creating them? For instance, it is possible to purchase global data on public contracts and tenders as a service through G-Cloud. Does the project have a view on the curated datasets that either already exist within MOD or that they would like to purchase rather than commissioning their creation from scratch? The Authority does not have curated datasets, but data that has been in use for some time. This will be internal MOD data, but also open-source such as the global context data like public holidays, election etc. 9. Data tagging is stated as a specified need. To help understand the level of effort required can you indicate what types of data types and volumes are involved? Data types include Excel, PDF, CSV, Web scrapes and data presented via API. 10. Are you able to fully outline the methods that were used to assess the digital options available and in particular on the datasets the Authority seeks to use for the project in addition to evidence-gathering, developed user stories etc? The Authority aims to improve existing processes that utilise known Authority datasets, so no formal assessment of datasets has been conducted. However the Authority would be open to identification of other datasets through the course of this engagement. Evidence-gathering and 'User Story' development was conducted over 18 months by a team, who engaged with Users responsible for managing and orchestrating international engagement. This User engagement across several teams was distilled into 'Key User Requirements' which are common across all Users in Defence the Authority seeks to provide the tool too. These KURs will be shared at ITT stage. 11. Can you share in more detail the outputs of the manual proof of concept and the learnings from it? The outputs were popular as the manual proof of concept provided the Authority with a far more enhanced picture of international engagement activity. The Authority determined that the process of building this spreadsheet was too laborious and time-consuming, therefore automating it would be much easier. 12. Part of the task for the supplier is to gather data wherever it resides – does this include overseas environments and data in foreign languages? No, the Supplier is required to gather databases and not the data itself. The data is being generated by users within Defence. 13. On data sources – What is the estimated mix between formal and informal data sources and what do the informal data sources consist of? In what format are the formal data sources? Two formal databases, which can be accessed via an APU. The informal databases are diaries, calendars and timings of senior MOD officials on visits and engagements. These take the form of outlook calendars primarily and also on SharePoint. These are also the global context information. 14. Is this part of a wider programme and are there interdependencies with that programme? No, KALEIDOSCOPE is a standalone project. 15. Are you able to outline the decision making that you are seeking to optimise? Yes, the Authority seeks to make better decisions about how to utilise resources (people & capabilities) around the world in order to maximise effect v resources. 16. Are you confident in the quality of the data that you hold and that it will adequate measure in line with your requirements? The Authority is not entirely confident in the quality of the data, however hopes to provide greater value by aggregating lots of different data sets together, to provide a better quality picture. 17. Can you confirm it is a web application that you are looking for as a solution? Yes, it is envisaged that the most appropriate solution is a web application accessible via Authority enterprise IT systems 18. Can the authority confirm the classification level of the information to be worked with throughout? Up to OFFICIAL- SENSITIVE 19. Can the authority confirm who completed the Discovery phase and if the outputs will be available to bidders prior to response writing? All discovery activities to date have involved purely internal staff from the Authority. The staff involved ranged from junior to senior end users, technical experts, and data owners. This includes representation from the Authority's Head Office, Front Line Commands, and specialist units. All User information will be shared with Suppliers who are Invited to Tender. 20. Can the authority confirm if it is expecting a COTS solution or a bespoke build? The Authority’s preferred solution to this requirement is a bespoke build. Further detail on this requirement, beyond that provided in the advert, will be issued to those Suppliers invited to provide a written proposal.