Prisoner Communications Strategy Discovery

Tender description

Summary of the work Through the understanding of how prisoners communicate and how they want and need too, define a clear and coherent strategy that has opportunities for improvement in a more user-centred way, reduces demand on prison staff, and provides value for money Expected Contract Length 18 months Latest start date Friday 24 February 2023 Budget Range Up to £1m excluding VAT Why the Work is Being Done The MOJ has a bold strategic vision for the delivery of digital, data & technology in HMPPS including: ● give people in our care the digital tools and technology to support their rehabilitation. ● Make video conferencing accessible, building rehabilitative relationships in prison and on probation, their families and friends and staff supporting them. The Digital & Technology Strategy for 2025 themes: 1) Led by Users: Actively working with prisoners, family, friends and alongside colleagues allows us to design user centred strategy and policies that supports people in our care, our staff and the organisation. 2) Driven by Data: Provide high quality data, shared widely across the prison service, enabling identification when prisoners may not have any communication and lack appropriate social support on release. 3) Agile in our response: Enable flexibility to ensure that HMPPS provides a coherent response quickly, preventing the breadth of contracts seen in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. HMPPS has made progress in new ways for prisoners communication, social, legal, or professional. However, we are now at a point where Justice Digital needs to develop a user-centred prisoner communications strategy that meets the needs of prisoners, families, friends, and stakeholders across all forms of communication Problem to Be Solved Given the breadth of communication services initiated in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, this is a complex space, comprising multiple contracts of significant value, and services that have a high public profile. Justice Digital wants to develop a coherent prisoner communications strategy to ensure prisoner communication is user-centred, modern, and provides value for money. The aim of this procurement is to: ● Understand how prisoners want and need to communicate from a social, legal, and professional perspective, ● Understand how they are currently doing this (the different types of communication i.e. phone, video call, email, mail etc), the pain points and opportunities for improvement in this (from a prisoner, staff, family and friends, and stakeholder perspective) ● Define a clear, coherent strategy that enables prisoners to communicate (socially, legally, or professionally) in a more user-centred way, reduces demand on prison staff, and provides value for money for MoJ/HMPPS. ● Develop a clear roadmap for the implementation of this new strategy for Prisoner Communications. Who Are the Users ● Prisoners and their family and friends - they are end users and reliant on our services for communication. ● HMPPS front line staff – the breadth of prisoner communications often put significant demand on the time of prison staff, needing to ensure a variety of forms of communication are resourced. ● HMPPS operational management - require a more simple and effective approach to prisoner communication that ensures they can be managed effectively, reducing demand on the operational line. ● HMPPS regional & national operation teams - as per local operational management, these teams need confidence that the national prison estate and probation service is meeting its strategic targets. ● HMPPS national policy teams - need confidence that prison and probation policies and practices are being followed. ● HMPPS security teams – need confidence that prisoner communication is safe, secure, and falls within appropriate governance requirements. Work Already Done No previous dedicated work has been done on the development of this strategy. However, each of the relevant services will have relevant work completed, which can be shared with the successful supplier Existing Team There is no existing team in place. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Proven track record of delivering digital services to, and/or on behalf of, Government Agencies (discovery, alpha, beta, live), meeting the government digital service standard and technology code of practice • Delivering significant operational impact by improving, rationalising and / or standardising services and processes within an organisation • Knowledge of current & emerging reporting technology & techniques within the team • Experience of leading investigative user research into problems & opportunities, gathering & analysing information and producing clear, compelling, evidence-based recommendations • Experience of service design and agile, incremental digital delivery that delivers value early and iteratively • Proven experience & expertise of collaborating across teams and departments and transferring ownership and knowledge to in-house teams Nice to Haves • ● Experience within the probation and prison environment, in particular relating to prisoner communication and prisoner wellbeing • ● Knowledge of the wider Criminal Justice system and systems which are part of the user and data journey • ● Experience of working within a complex public policy and service environment • ● Working within a government programme that requires close working with other civil service teams and managed services Work Location UK Working Arrangments There will be a requirement for visits to prisons and other national locations, particularly for research. There may also be a requirement to travel for meetings in Sheffield or London. The supplier costs need to be inclusive of travel and expenses Security Clearance A minimum of Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) standard is required No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • A recent case study of a similar project that explains your approach and methodology and how it can ensure successful delivery. • Provide examples of how you have used innovative techniques to investigate and solve problems and how you have identified and delivered value early and iteratively • Provide an example team structure including skills, experience, responsibilities and the relevance of individuals. Explain how you will ensure the team delivers their responsibilities throughout this approach • Provide a project plan for what your team would deliver during the timescales, how would you split the time between the project phases - e.g. discovery, alpha, beta etc • Demonstrate how you will deliver value for money throughout this project • Demonstrate how you would ensure an effective hand over to the in-house team Cultural Fit Criteria • Work collaboratively with HMPPS Digital and staff in probation and prisons including stakeholders with varying understanding of agile methodologies • Considers the needs of all users of varying backgrounds and abilities • Is innovative and forward thinking, shares knowledge, experience and honest feedback with clients and takes responsibility for the quality of their work • Able to demonstrate the value of their approach and understands the value of data and analytics Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Can the Authority confirm if the successful bidder will be precluded from any future delivery for Prisoner Communications? Subject to the route to market taken by the buyer, the successful bidder will not be precluded from any potential delivery for Prisoner Communication 2. Can you provide guidance on how HMPPS will evaluate questions where they have asked suppliers to “Demonstrate a track record”? Are you looking for a supplier to show the breadth and scale of their experience delivering similar services or to provide a single example with details of the approach and how it met the government digital service standard and technology code of practice? As per the Framework Agreement evaluations will use the following scoring matrix,Score0 = Not met 1 = partially met2 = Met3 = ExceededBidder should provide a response that is reflective of a similar requirement 3. Following the short listing what information will be provided to suppliers to support estimation of the delivery timescales across the Discovery, Alpha, Beta phases of the project There are currently no plans to provide further information after shortlisting. However, if there are specific questions, these can be answered and shared across all shortlisted suppliers. Our focus is on understanding how potential suppliers think they could achieve the required outcomes within the budget, which will drive the timelines proposed by the shortlisted suppliers. 4. Can you provide timescales for the procurement following the submission of the initial response? When will successful suppliers be notified and what time has been allocated for response to the evaluation questions and preparation for the presentation? The indicative timeline being followed is as followsSubmission – 05/12/22Evaluation – 06/12/22 – 14/12/22Notification – 15/12/22Presentations will not be part of the stage 1 process with the Buyer reserving the right to include a presentation activity within the stage 2 process and shortlisted bidders will be advised with plenty of notice of when this will be required 5. HMPSS have stated that there will be further evaluation through supplier presentation. Can you provide information about how this will be used in the overall evaluation of the supplier offer? Can you provide some initial guidance on the topics to be covered in the presentation? The buyer reserves the right to request a presentation from stage 2 shortlisted bidders and if introduced will be used by the evaluation team as supplementary to the stage 2 written submission.Any potential presentation will not be scored independently from the written submission 6. For Q5 you state “Service Design” – please can you clarify whether you mean ITIL based Service Design or User Centric/GDS Service Design? This relates to User Centric/GDS service design. 7. This is for a Discovery however the proposal criteria mentions splitting time across ‘project phases – e.g. discovery, alpha, beta etc.’Can you please confirm this is only to cover the Discovery phase? The use of discovery refers should be taken here to mean identifying/finding/creating the prisoner communications strategy. This piece of work covers exploring the prisoner communications experience and identifying opportunities for improvement (discovery), testing some of those opportunities (alpha), and aiming to implement prioritised opportunities after testing (beta).