West Midlands Children's Placement Portal Replacement

Tender description

Summary of the work The West Midlands Authorities require an experienced service partner to undertake the design/UK/UI, Build, Test and Implement a robust Regional Children's Placement Portal solution. Expected Contract Length 12 months + 12 months Latest start date Monday 27 March 2023 Budget Range £700,000 - £1,060,000 Why the Work is Being Done The incumbent solution across the West Midlands for placing vulnerable children with care providers that can meet their care needs is reaching end of life and needs replacing with a new solution. The new solution must enable all of the authorities within the West Midland region to continue to act as one 'super' authority when placing children across the region. The new solution must act as an enabler of change, helping to bring more closely together placement teams and providers, and aligning needs and resources in such a way that both greater outcomes for children and greater financial benefits for placement teams and providers can be realised. A mature and robust data model is required to underpin the transactional element of the solution, allowing commisioners and providers to better understand the marketplace and allowing them to make more informed decisions on the placing of children into care. The incumbent solution is likely to reach EoL by April 2024 Problem to Be Solved Vulnerable children with a variety of care requirements need to be placed with care providers who can match the care needs of the child and provide the child with the care that they require. This is a region wide operation and the solution must allow all local authorities and independent agencies to make placements across the region using the same instance of the solution. The collection and manipulation of data, and the subsequent utilisation of insight dervied from the data is going to be a key component of the new solution. The marketplace has placement officers on one side of the equation and providers on the other and the new solution needs to enable all parties to be able to work more closely together, with a view to providing the best care possible for children, whilst challenging the value in the marketplace. Who Are the Users As a placement officer, I need to create formal requests for placements based on social worker's requests and send them out to suitable providers. I need to be able to manage live requests and chase providers where required. I gather all of the information and draw up the Individual Placement Agreement (IPA). As a provider, I need to be able to check placement requests and match the needs of the child against care specialisms and I need to be able to request further information where required. I need to be able to make an offer to place the child with the placing authority. As a commissioner, I need to be able to monitor and evaluate the data underpinning the placements process in order to develop and manage a fair market for children's needs. As a QA Manager, I need to be able to conduct ongoing due dilligence on providers to ensure children and placed in secure accommodation. As a finance manager, I need to be able to produce accurate budgets and forecasts from system data. Early Market Engagement Two soft market test were held at the beginning of 2021 to establish both the appettite and the maturity of the marketplace towards purchasing a solution. At that time, the route undertaken to procure a new solution was primarily focused on 'off the shelf' products. Work Already Done Full requirements set produced for an 'off the shelf' product. Discovery, User research and Alpha stage carried out, widening the original scope to include requirements from providers, commissioners, and finance officers and proving that a robust data model can enable both better decision making, leading to better outcomes for children and a more financially fair marketplace for children's placements. Work has also been undertaken to digitise the Individual Placement Agreement (IPA). Existing Team Birmingham City Council IT&D - Senior BA, Solutions Architect, Security Adviser. Birmingham Children's Trust - Product Owner. West Midlands Commissioning Hub - Product Owner Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Minimum of 3 Years’ experience of developing Web Applications and content using W3C standards (including WCAG) and best practices including Gov.Uk guidelines for content design (provide example) • Minimum of 3 Years’ experience of designing and managing highly scalable, flexible and available digital applications and services to defined SLA's (provide example) • Minimum of 3 Years’ experience of delivering Solution Design Documents and Data Flows for an end to end solution. (provide example) • Minimum of 3 Years’ experience of delivering large digital applications projects using a variety of methodologies and toolsets. • Minimum of 3 Years’ experience of operating a defined Information Security Management System . Please provide evidence (e.g ISO27001 accreditation, SOC2 Audit Report) • Understanding and experience of working alongside organisations structured according to the Digital, Data and Technology Professional Capability Framework (DDaT). • Experience of operating within a recognised IT service management framework, such as ITIL 4 and have appropriate accreditation. • Minimum of 3 Years’ experience of working on agile digital application projects with multiple stakeholders • Understanding and experience in transitioning from the incumbent platform, to a new platform including data migration, data cleansing, etc • Experience developing and publishing open source code, including applying correct licencing to allow the source code, blueprint, or design to be used, shared, or modified under defined terms and conditions • Provide experience of delivering Technical Delivery within Local Government organisations or equivalent • Provide experience of managing End to End Project Delivery, including risk management and the management of planning and dependencies within Local Government organisations or equivalent • Provide experience of delivering complex project using Government Digital Service standards Nice to Haves The supplier operates to, or has begun implementing an established DevOps culture (please describe the DevOps maturity and capability) Work Location 10 Woodcock St, Birmingham - Birmingham City Council as the main commissioner. The solution will need to represent and work as a single solution across all local authorities in the West Midlands region. Working Arrangments The supplier's staff will be expected to be available during the typical working hours of the Birmingham City Council (BCC) team (Monday to Friday (9.00am to 5.00pm) in order to maximise collaboration and knowledge sharing. We require the supplier to conduct the usual agile ceremonies and weekly updates/as well as 'show and tell' sessions for stakeholders. These sessions could take place over MS Teams or face to face. Security Clearance Minimum of BPSS (BASELINE PERSONNEL SECURITY STANDARD). Additional T&Cs 1. We will retain ownership of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) created during the contract 2. Travel and Expenses will not be paid 3. Key supplier staff included at the proposal stage will be expected to work on the contract; replacing resources with internal staff is within the outcome. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Technical Solution • Approach and methodology • How the approach or solution meets BCCs Objectives • How the approach or solution meets user needs • Team structure • Project plan (including milestones / risks / mitigations/etc) • Governance • Previous learnings • Transition / Migration • Proactively engaging with stakeholders Cultural Fit Criteria • Approach to sharing knowledge, skills and experience with our team to support the building of internal capability • Approach to responding to, managing, and overcoming project setbacks or errors that may have caused by people both within and outside of your team • Clarity on issues raised and corrective action undertaken with changes made to the system. • Social Value Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Work history • Reference • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 50% Cultural fit 20% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. Given that the production of a requirements set for an ‘off the shelf product’ can you confirm if this is your preferred solution, or if you are looking for something bespoke to be developed. The full requirements document will be a development specification as the constraints of the funding received from DLUCH mean that the project has to be developed using agile methodologies and the final product released as open-source code. 2. You mention you initially sought an off the shelf solution. Is this still your preference? No – a development solution is now preferred to an off the shelf solution due to the tenets that accompany the funding received from DLUCH 3. Have any external suppliers worked with you during the previous phases? External suppliers were involved in the discovery and Alpha stages 4. Where you ask for experience “within Local Government organisations or equivalent” – would you consider either work done with Central Government organisation or the NHS to be equivalent to working with Local Government? Yes. 5. Are development services (not design) allowed to be delivered from outside UK locations using synthetic test data which is produced from profiling real-life examples of data? The preference is that development is done in the UK. The use of synthetic data adds a layer of complexity that will impact on timescales and approach to Knowledge Transfer (KT) with UK based development teams. 6. Will you accept examples from NHS as an ‘equivalent’ to local Government organisations? Yes 7. Are you able to share the requirements document from the discovery? We do have a high-level requirements document. The CCS Digital Marketplace does not have a mechanism to upload documents. If you wish to receive the document, please provide your email address. 8. Please could you share the Discovery and Alpha output We are working on finalising this for the second stage of the DOS procurement. We do have a high-level requirements document. The CCS Digital Marketplace does not have a mechanism to upload documents. If you wish to receive the document, please provide your email address. 9. Is it acceptable to use more than one example within a response to any of the Essential and Nice to Have Skills and Experience Yes. A minimum of one example to be provided. 10. Please can you confirm what you mean by End to End Project Delivery? Do you mean the whole lifecycle e.g. discovery-->live? By End-to-End project we mean an organisation having the ability to deliver this project from start to finish. The expectation is that this will include the whole life cycle including deployment of the MVP, and any additional functionality contained in the product backlog, as per the full requirements. 11. Please can you confirm what you mean by ‘organisations’ in the following question? Are you referring to govt departments? Understanding and experience of working alongside organisations structured according to the Digital, Data, and Technology Professional Capability Framework (DDaT) By Organisations, we are referring to the following: 1. Strategic Commissioning Network (SCN)2. Birmingham Children’s Trust3. Birmingham City Council (BCC)4. BCC Information, Technology & Digital (IT&D)5. Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUCH) Or equivalent organisation e.g. local gov, central gov, etc. 12. Relating to the “...experience of delivering Technical Delivery”, can you please confirm whether this relates to the establishment of a framework for technical delivery, or ways in which the Technical Delivery itself is conducted. This in our view is a technically complex project. It is essential that the preferred supplier can demonstrate the ability to deliver a robust technical solution in a controlled manner, and also show experience of managing change in areas such as technical transformation, data migration etc. On the framework, our preference is that this is based on agile delivery methodology. We are open to other dynamic technical delivery framework if it operates within agile boundaries. 13. Which organisation (or organisations) undertook the Discovery and Alpha Discovery and Alpha stages were undertaken by a cross working group consisting of Birmingham City Council IT&D and Methods. 14. Are additional documents available? There have been some questions relating to Discovery and Alpha output. It’s our view that this is not required at stage 1, hence the CCS Digital Marketplace not having a mechanism to upload additional documents. All relevant information will be available to those suppliers shortlisted for stage 2. However, if you wish to access the high-level requirements, and more detailed project context following the discovery and alpha phases in this stage 1, please provide your email address. 15. Minimum of 3 Years’ experience of operating a defined Information Security Management System. Please provide evidence (e.g ISO27001 accreditation, SOC2 Audit Report)We are ISO27001 accredited, achieving certification in November 2021.Prior to this we had robust Information Security Management System (ISMS) and say it is fully consistent with the approach and controls defined in ISO27001 and ISO22301. Will this be acceptable to pass this requirement? Yes, this is acceptable to pass this requirement for this stage. 16. Are functional and non-functional requirements included as part of the evaluation? Yes – There will be a number of functional and non-function requirements shortlisted bidders will be asked to respond against.