MHISS Modernising Health Intelligence Surveillance Systems

Tender description

Summary of the work Developing data management assets to meet user and business needs; 1. Develop Alpha instance of MS Purview creating a data catalogue for our holdings with full search capability, 2. Strengthen and improve our data access and audit management systems to include several features including DSA Management and data lineage. Expected Contract Length 12 months with the option to extend for 6 months subject to programme requirements and governance. Latest start date Monday 6 March 2023 Budget Range The maximum budget for this work is £843,000 excl VAT Why the Work is Being Done Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) is responsible for achieving the goals as cited in priority 4 of the DHSC Outcome delivery plan 2021 to 2022. An important aspect of this is the ability to deliver accurate and impactful data, intelligence and analysis in order to monitor the populations health, well-being and disparities. To do this we require our underpinning data management systems to be effective, efficient, safe and scalable. Problem to Be Solved Users cannot search our data holdings and need direct access to specific data assets/source data before they can explore and assess. This isn't ideal, is inefficient, time consuming, leads to silos of knowledge held in individuals, stifles innovation and limits the breadth and range of analysis. DSAs are stored separately and managed manually, making application of use cases, access permission and audit difficult increasing the chances of errors or breaches. • LAMa gives and records basic permissions, relying on semi-manual processes. There's limited audit functionality, which is not integrated, different levels of permissions cannot be granted. LAMa tracks and logs access to data and secure projects. Removing access is manual. Oversight for data asset owners is problematic, it's difficult to know who has access to what, when and why, especially with regard to use cases against DSA’s. The system makes it difficult to know who owns which data assets. Currently systems are not compliant with some recently proposed candidate standards and principles for SDE/TREs. Documentation and Standard Operating Procedures are not in place for many processes or are outdated. Data held is accessed across multiple organisations UKHSA, OHID, NHSD/E) a capability that needs to be supported in the solution delivered. Who Are the Users Analytical and Data Science professionals Data asset owners Senior responsible officer for IG and IG professionals Public Health Specialists Early Market Engagement All DOS incumbent suppliers were invited to a soft test with on the proposed approach for the work on 09 December 2022, via a short webinar. The presentation and log of questions and answers can be found within the following G Drive folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WOdDAGVTwLmtJi7eFEwoUk_0lw6Hugpb Work Already Done A Discovery and Alpha project was undertaken between 2018 and 2021 the depth and breadth of the project was wider than this project but still highlights what we need to achieve and the users requirements for this project. The reports and recommendations from these can be found within this G Drive folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WOdDAGVTwLmtJi7eFEwoUk_0lw6Hugpb Existing Team The team will be made up of a contract/project manager, Data management lead and staff, LAMa developer/Web programmer and manager, IG lead and other systems support staff. Current Phase Alpha Skills & Experience • Partnership for Development: The provider must offer a flexible capability development and partnership approach, respond to and anticipate changing and developing requirements that cannot be fully anticipated at inception. • Partnership for Development: This requirement for flexibility and partnership should be supported and enabled by an appropriate commercial structure and flexible way of working • Partnership for Development:We expect a functional team (from the supplier) will work closely with linking DHSC teams. • Partnership for Development: Demonstrable experience of working with multi-functional teams delivering work including large, centralised ICT Depts, developing relationships quickly with stakeholders/partners, able to demonstrate working collaboratively and sharing knowledge • Project management, you will have demonstrable experience and expertise in Agile project delivery and management, leading in project governance and GDS Gateway processes. • Demonstrable experience or expertise in user needs, user research and user/product testing. • Demonstrable experience in business process mapping. • Demonstrable experience in developing systems that manage different types of secondary data such as (but not limited to) births and deaths, Hospital episodes stats and NHS statistics to questionnaire-based datasets. • Expertise/knowledge: Legislation, policies, principles, practice of data, information governance and management and how they embed into workflows to enable and enforce compliance in processes and systems in previous 5 years • Demonstrable experience in developing a cataloguing and/or auditing system of data assets and developing and importing data dictionaries to improve metadata and help users search and identify relevant datasets Nice to Haves • Demonstrable experience working on similar complex projects (in last 5 years) ideally in the public sector in health or public health • Demonstrable experience working with data dictionaries and secondary healthcare related datasets Work Location The work is expected to be performed remotedy from any location, but it will be coordinated by staff at the Department of Health and Social Care, 39 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0EU Working Arrangments We will work with contracted individuals flexibly through a range of video conferencing, face to face meetings, phone calls, emails and messaging. This provides maximum flexibility, particularly when also communicating with staff outside the immediate team. Security Clearance Staff are to hold BPSS as a minimum. Additional T&Cs N/A No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 7 Proposal Criteria • Technical Solution • Approach and methodology • How the approach or solution meets user needs • How the approach or solution meets our policy or goal • Estimated timeframes for the work • How you’ve identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them • Team structure and completeness of expertise • Value for money Cultural Fit Criteria • Provide details on your approach, principles and/or practices in how you work with other people and teams including those with low levels of technical expertise • Provide details on your approach, principles and/or practices in how you solve problems • Provide details on your approach, principles and/or practices in your approach to making decisions • Provide details on your approach, principles and/or practices in how you share knowledge and experience • Provide details on your approach, principles and/or practices in your attitude to making mistakes • Demonstrate how you will work as a team with our organisation/team and other suppliers where appropriate • Demonstrate how you are transparent and collaborative when making decisions • Demonstrate how you operate a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes • Demonstrate how you share knowledge and experience with other team members across your organisation • Demonstrate how you as an organisation challenge the status quo and be comfortable standing up for your discipline Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Work history • Reference • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 17% Price 23% Questions from Suppliers 1. Is MS Purview pre-decided as the established technical solution for this piece of work? Based on the assessment of several systems during the Alpha phase this solution was assess at the time as the best one to meet our needs. It is therefore our default position/preferred solution however if a supplier can pursuade us another solution would better meet our needs we will consider this. MS Purview remains our default at this time. See Section 2 of PHE PHISy Workstream 1 Detailed findings and implementation as to why. 2. Is the decision to use MS Purview irrevocable? No. but it is currently our default preferred solution for the data cataloging elements and for some other problems. 3. Please can you confirm whether Stage 1 scores will be carried over and used as part of the evaluation at Stage 2? No, the scores will not be carried forward automatically, but may be included should there be a dead heat between the two highest scoring suppliers following the bid and presentation evaluation stage. 4. Please can you provide a timeline indicating the dates on which you intend to notify suppliers they have been shortlisted, the submission deadline for Stage 2, and the date of award etc? We aim to notifiy companies of the shortisting outcome on or very near January 31st. The second stage is antcipated to begin on or arround Jan 31st, closing W/C Feb 13th, with supplier presentations scheduled for Feb 20 - 22. 5. Please could you confirm what scoring methodologies will be applied at Stage 1 and Stage 2? The standard scoring methodology will be used. 0 -3: 0 Not met or no evidence1 Partially met2 Met3 Exceeded 6. Regarding the response criteria at Stage 2, please can you confirm that the Case Study, References, Work History, Presentation and each of the 8 points listed in the Proposal Criteria section will be equally weighted within the 60% allocated to Technical Competence within the evaluation? At this time we expect to assess stage two in two parts. Firstly the witten proposal, under the technical and price weightings. Then secondly, via a supplier presentation, which will be used to asses the cutltural fit weighting. The other approaches have been included to retain them as options, as per DOS use instructions, but at this time we do not plan to request anything in adittion to the presentation. 7. Looking at the Essentail Skill: ‘Partnership for Development:We expect a functional team (from the supplier) will work closely with linking DHSC teams’, please could you explain what ‘linking DHSC teams’ are? The terminology linking team is used here to highlight that there are a number of teams that the supplier team will need to link in with in order to deliver, such as analytical teams, data science teams, Data management teams, central ICT etc 8. Looking at the Essential skill: ‘Project management, you will have demonstrable experience and expertise in Agile project delivery and management, leading in project governance and GDS Gateway processes’, please could you explain what the ‘GDS Gateway processes’ are? GDS has an Agile assurance framework/gateway that the project needs to be assessed against at each stage further details are here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assurance-for-agile-delivery-of-digital-services 9. A Discovery and Alpha project was undertaken between 2018 and 2021” which suppliers were involved in this previous work? Softwire Ltd as stated in the Slide deck from the webinar and in the Alpha recommendations 10. During the pre-market webinar the requirement covered development of a beta into live. Can you confirm if the current requirement is for an Alpha only or would you expect the development of a beta/live within the initial 12 months? This project wants a beta live project in the next 12 months 11. To what extend do you expect the supplier to analyse and/or structure the data? There is no expectation for the supplier to analyse any data, the expectation is for the suplier to develop a structure for the listing of data i.e. taxonomies etc, and ideas on how to 'discover' our own data 12. To what extent do you expect the supplier to undertake management of the service i.e. service / help desk provision, incident response and performance management? Do you have a current service management plan/provision? This contract is for the delivery of a product/products that our internal team will run manage and maintain, there is no requirement for ongoing service management. 13. Is LAMa still to be used for access management or is the aim for Purview to handle both data access management as well as references to applicable DSAs? LAMa currently manages and records applications for access to specific datasets. We would like it to be interoperable with Purview, it is however unlikely that Purview will handle user access and not to the level of detail we need. 14. Is lineage to be determined only via the metadata store and what percentage of data assets currently generate the metadata outlined in the metadata framework? This will need to be explored and agreed at an early stage in the project 15. What specific Azure service is being used as the current data lake? (ADLS Gen1 / ADLS Gen2 / Other) The current Data Lake runs onsite with a test site in Azure (manged instance). We will use whichever storage and services are recommended as per Microsoft best practice at the time. 16. How do data consumers currently consume data from the data lake? via R, Python, SQL or PowerBI 17. How well defined / matured is the Information Governance / Operations model? We have well defined roles and processes these need to be better supported by the technology. 18. Are the Information asset owners integrated into the common operating model? We have a bespoke systems for managing data access which involves all relevant parties. We have defined roles, however the current systems access are not role based and we would like purposed based access applying (as stated in the requirements). Most processes are very well defined and established some may need mapping as they are modified to fit the new system. 19. Does LAMa support role level access? Can you provide additional information about LAMa’s role management and logging capabilities? Currently LAMa does not provide role based access, it doesn't provide access, it manages and records applications for access to specific data sets. 20. Are there requirements to leverage ML / Deep Learning for tagging / automated classification? We would be interested to explore what might be possible with this, but it is not a core requirement. 21. Is there a requirement for Data Quality scorecarding within the catalogue indicating trustworthiness of the data for end users? Yes 22. Does LAMa have integrating capabilities with MS Purview? Not at present. 23. Has the LAMa team been identified as a stakeholder / participant in the design and implementation of the Data Catalogue? No. However we expect the lead developer and IG leads to work closely with the supplier in the design and development of the systems and processes for the access and audit gateway which will link to the catalogue 24. Can we deliver a product demo? Details should be within the written proposal, you are able to use the presentation but the purpose of this session is to assess cultural fit - so you can decide on how best to use the time. 25. What size of organisations are we currently competing with? Details on the size of companies making or completing an application can be found at the head of the published advert: https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/digital-outcomes-and-specialists/opportunities/19282 26. Can we apply as a consortia of organisations? Yes, however there will need to be a single lead supplier with whom we would contract with if awarded. They will then be expected to collaborate and subcontact to meet the requirements.