Website Technical Roadmapping for Dissemination

Tender description

Summary of the work We are looking for a supplier to help set the technology strategy for the overall ONS website and its technical architecture to support with the ONS dissemination service strategy, setting a clear roadmap for the next 3-5 years and aligning the work of different programmes within the service. Expected Contract Length 4 Months Latest start date Monday 2 May 2022 Why the Work is Being Done The ONS strategy is moving to "dissemination as a service", publishing high volumes of data and statistical analysis in more innovative ways. ONS require a supplier to help set the technology strategy for the overall ONS dissemination service, setting a clear roadmap for the next 3-5 years, aligning the work of different programmes within the service. This is a fantastic opportunity to shape the future of government statistics and leverage the value of new technologies. Handover/project by 31/08/22 Problem to Be Solved ONS website and its technical architecture are complex, bespoke, and carry significant technical debt. A technical review is required to set the roadmap of technical capabilities and sequence, to deliver value in ONS’s short and medium term and deliver our cross-government strategic ambitions in the longer term. To support the fast-moving delivery of interactive analytical content, reviews are required of current practises; establish a sandbox environment, toolkits and ways of working that enable our visualisation and content teams to deliver tactical rich features that are aligned to broader strategic goals. Integrating of third-party products need to be considered and in-house products such as dynamic data table service, using real-time disclosure control for flexible dissemination. We require a structured data store, including implementation plan to off-board NOMIS and/or retire in-house services by end 2024. The supplier will set out the timeline for the technical assessment and road-mapping exercise, to deliver an integrated technical and product roadmap covering the full dissemination service (including a data store recommendation, buy/build proposals) ensuring alignment with ONS vision and CMS initiatives The full SOR can be found on the ONS e-procurement system following the link below; https://in-tendhost.co.uk/ons/aspx/ProjectManage/3303 Who Are the Users Digital Publishing (Core ONS) team - Business areas and contents team Existing Team Technical Leads Developers (front/back/full stack) Business Analysts User Research Product Owner Service Owner Data Visualisation Specialists Content Editors Publishing Officers Delivery Data Architects Social Media Solution Architects Deputy Director and the Senior Management Team Statisticians Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Demonstrate experience by a successfully delivered contract within the last 3 years, undertaking technical assessment and product road mapping initiative for a large-scale, complex online estate • Demonstrate experience by a successfully delivered contract, capability to run a technical road mapping process working closely with technical teams from across the organisation to understand the as-is architecture. • Demonstrate experience by a successfully delivered contract, capability to develop on the as-is architecture findings to align several programmes to create the capability roadmap. • Demonstrate experience by a successfully delivered contract of setting out the technical capabilities required to deliver the service based on the dissemination service vision Nice to Haves Demonstrate experience by a successfully delivered contract of capability to demonstrate improvements to ways of working, enabling teams to deliver innovation at pace using technology including prototyping methods. Work Location Work to follow Covid-19 guidelines with remote working. ONS Newport and Titchfield is main locations Working Arrangments Remote working but with a need to come to offices when required for collaboration purposes Expenses must be agreed in advance on a case-by-case basis in line with the ONS Travel and subsistence policy. Security Clearance BPSS - clearance required No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Please confirm, in detail, your Methodology for delivering the requirements for a technical roadmap for ONS statistical dissemination, covering the end-to-end architecture. • Please confirm you will meet the deadline by providing dates for completion of the project and the milestones (with dates) for each of the deliverables.” • Please provide a gantt chart to illustrate this • Explanation of how the method to deliver a technical road mapping exercise that will bring a broad set of challenging technical stakeholders towards a common agreement (needs and solutions). • Explanation of how the proposed method will be accurate in determining a technical roadmap to deliver the transformational outcomes envisaged. • Please explain how you will determine the case for change from our existing criteria to the new roadmap. How will you ensure support and wider buy-in from the organisation • Explanation of the involvement and accountabilities of ONS. • Please illustrate how the approach will support our ‘Statistics for the Public Good’ strategy – https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/statistics-for-the-public-good/ • Confirm how you will align the roadmap to capabilities needed within the team, how you will assess what/if changes are needed to ways of working, enabling delivery of the roadmap Cultural Fit Criteria • How will the resources put forward by the supplier ensure that they communicate effectively to other team members, and AUTHORITY appropriately. • Please describe how the resource will report effectively up the management chain within the AUTHORITY. Payment Approach Fixed price Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 10% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Could you confirm the budget for this work please? ONS has refrained from providing a budget as privileged by the guidance of the DOS framework. 2. Could you confirm the job titles of the assessment panel please? Deputy Director of Digital PublishingDeputy Director, Cloud Infrastructure and Technical DesignChief of Data Visualisation and Data DesignBusiness Lead for IDS Dissemination 3. Can you confirm the job titles of the assessment panel please? Deputy Director of Digital PublishingDeputy Director, Cloud Infrastructure and Technical DesignChief of Data Visualisation and Data DesignBusiness Lead for IDS Dissemination 4. This opportunity appears to be a re-release of those launched by the Authority in August and November of last year. Could you please confirm if this is the case, and, if so, the reason for this re-release? This is a re-release of the opportunity launched last year. In August 2021 we received no successful bids. In November, we received multiple bids however, pre-evaluation, it became clear that the supplier expectation of available ONS resource to support this work could not be met at this time, therefore a decision was reached to defer this work until 2022. 5. 1. Is the technical review required to be conducted at the 1) engineering quality-level or 2) at the technical capability fit- to business capability-level, or both?2. Is the review of delivery practices limited to those being used to: establish a sandbox, establish toolkits, and establish ways of working – i.e. three areas?3. How many third party products are involved and are these already in use and under vendor support or managed services?4. How many internal products are involved and are these already in use and well documented? 1 - Both 2 - ALL three3 – Our list of current third party products are many, inclusive but not exhaustive of: NOMIS (university of Durham), NIFI, SharePoint, Contablular, Hashicorp services, Concourse, CloudFlare, Swirrl’s Publish My Data (data store), Airtable, Amazon Web Services, Geo-portals4 - Our list of current internal products are inclusive but not exhaustive of: Internal CMS (Florence), CMD (Data Store), SharePoint (publishing tracker). Exhaustive documentation is limited. 6. 1. Will the scope of this tender require the bidder to include the design and implementation of the structured data store, along with undertaking its deployment and the listed retirement activities? Or is the scope limited to undertaking a market survey, short listing of supply candidates with a recommended selection?2. In relation to the above question – how many in-house services may require retiring? 1 – High level data requirements and capabilities will need to be understood and gap analysis completed on our to-be model to inform the technical design and solution options. Implementation of the technical design is not within scope of this tender. 2 – To be determined as a result of the to-be capability gap analysis. 7. Do sufficient materials exist that describe what the end-to-end dissemination service is and how it is envisioned to operate from both a business and technical operating model perspective? A reasonable amount of technical documentation is available including a collection of C4 diagrams and Applications and Technical delivery pipeline artifacts. There is some Business Operating model documentation. Respondents will be expected to augment some areas. To be aware that we are currently within a Service Design review and suspect the future ‘to be’ processes to differ in areas to the ‘as is’. 8. Do sufficient materials exist to show an integrated view of the envisioned technical landscape, and what the scope of each of the existing contributing programmes is? The road-mapping exercise is expected to assess our existing landscape and defines the envisioned end state and roadmap. 9. How many different programmes within the service do the strategy and roadmap need to align to and what are they? Four key programmes need alignment: • Business as usual/continuous improvement plans and roadmaps• Census Publishing, which has recently invested in developments within this space and therefore common capabilities or continuous improvements upon these products should be reviewed for opportunities. • The Integrated Data Service (ISD) Dissemination which is developing a cross-Government capability. Identification of opportunities, risks and common capabilities should also be reviewed. • This tender is one component of a wider transformation piece which, ahead of supplier starting, will have completed a CMS discovery and delivered a refreshed digital strategy. Reconciliation with these is expected. 10. 1. Are both a technical review and a technical assessment required, or just one or the other?2. Is the scope of what ONS are requesting commensurate with the agile delivery Service Manual guide on Discovery phases?3. Are the technology strategy and roadmap outputs required to show alignment to the CDDO Technology Code of Practice? 1. - Both2. – Delivery within the Agile delivery service manual guidance is recommended but not compulsory. Your response should explicitly state your approach and steps you’ll take. 3. - Delivery within CDDO Technology Code of Practice (CoP) is recommended but not an explicit constraint. Your response should explicitly state your approach and steps you’ll take, particularly where this deviates from the CDDO CoP. 11. Please could you clarify the meaning of “dissemination service vision” The Digital Publishing division’s responsibilities include disseminating digital content, largely statistical analysis, to the public domain. Our strategic vision is currently being reviewed which will lead to a refreshed service vision and components such as a refreshed set of Content Management System requirements which will need to feed into the technical roadmapping. 12. In your question “Demonstrate experience by a successfully delivered contract of setting out the technical capabilities required to deliver the service based on the dissemination service vision”.Are you asking for an example where we have set out the technical capabilities that a client requires so that they can deliver the service themselves? Ideally, but not essential. You may have handed over delivery of the plans to another supplier to deliver or delivered it yourselves. However if your example does not include a handover to the Organisation for implementation please can you describe what your approach to this would be.