DfT - National Parking Platform (NPP) Private and Public Beta

Tender description

About adding context and requirements test Pre-market engagement n/a Work done so far The Department has undertaken extensive discovery and alpha user research which confirmed that multiple apps are pain points for road users, the service providers and local authorities. Summaries of the discovery and alpha slides can be provided by request: ollie.hughes@gov.uk. The Manchester City led pilot platform has demonstrated its technical viability, delivered reduced costs for all procurement parties by enabling the local authorities to contract to all providers and increased resilience by ensuring more than one app provider is on-line. The pilot platform currently provides the following use-cases: - Discovery of parking availability - Multi-vendor payment on arrival parking - Frictionless parking use case The pilot platform has been designed and thoroughly tested with the pilot authorities, first Manchester City Council, then Oxfordshire, and more recently Cheshire West & Chester and Coventry City Council. In total the pilot platform has contacted over 70 stakeholders including over 40 local authorities, 3 private operators, 9 potential service providers and 17 parking equipment manufacturers The DfT has provided funding until March 2024 with the mandate to onboard up to 10 more local authorities. The pilot platform was reviewed by Department for Transport’s architecture team who assessed that it met the GDS architecture and security standards and that it was capable of being scalable to the full NPP. Both the “as-is” and “to-be” data architectures were considered by the DfT’s Architecture Board and passed without further reference. The report describing the pilot prototype architecture is provided within the information pack. Which phase the project is in Beta Existing team DFT will provide; - Product Manager and Service Owner from the Traffic&Technology Team. - Assurance from Digital Service - Hosting Environment (GCP) - Consultants Parking Matters will operate as SME to the DfT team and support the successful supplier through beta. Parking Matters are responsible for designing, coding and operating the pilot platform and for on-boarding the local authorities, service providers and enforcement systems providers. The supplier will provide all resource required to deliver the project. Address where the work will be done No specific location, for example suppliers can work remotely Working arrangements Suppliers should provide their preferred approach within their proposals. The supplier should provide weekly status updates to DfT. Solution to be hosted on DfT’s Google Cloud platform and should align to DfT’s Digital and Technology Strategy and follow Architecture Principles & Standards. Knowledge to be transferred to DfT to ensure long-term resilience. Source code to be made available via DfT’s Github. All reports for publication to be provided in accessible format. Provide more information about your security requirements: Security Check (SC) Latest start date 2023-11-20 Enter the expected contract length: 2 years Extension period: 6 months Write the term or acronym: APDS Write the term or acronym: NPP Explain the term or acronym: Alliance for Parking Data Standards. The National Parking Platform will use the internationally adopted APDS data standard to relay key information, including price and availability of parking spaces, to service providers and enforcement systems. More information is available at: www.allianceforparkingdatastandards.org. Explain the term or acronym: National Parking Platform Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes Indicative maximum: 1700000 Confirm if you require a contracted out service or supply of resource Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply Summary of work DfT is seeking a flexible delivery partner with proven experience of delivering to Government Digital Service and Technology Standards to develop the National Parking Platform through private and public beta. We require a multi-disciplinary team to develop the pilot parking platform, (currently operational with Manchester City Council), and expand its capability to provide the National Parking Platform by testing and iterating the design to enable a public beta service stage by October 2024. We expect the successful supplier to develop the platform to private and public beta stages through successful GDS service assessments. Where the supplied staff will work No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Who the organisation using the products or services is Department for Transport Why the work is being done To transform current parking practice through the provision of a digital service delivering data-led innovation. Payment for parking is lagging behind developments in other markets and industries. Service providers currently compete for exclusive concessions from local authorities and other parking providers to run their app-based parking payment for a period of time. This has a number of downsides for all involved: motorists must maintain multiple apps to park nationwide; service-providers are often incentivised to compete on cost not quality; and local authorities are required to undertake periodic time-consuming procurement exercises. The NPP is being built to fix this. By creating a ‘switchboard’ between parking operators and service providers, all participating apps can offer parking in all locations. As a result of this multi-vendor approach, users can use their choice of app in any participating location and local authorities get access to the whole marketplace without needing to procure. The NPP will also enable the exchange of standardised, reliable, up to date national parking data, end-to-end parking operation, interoperability with connected vehicles and other transport services and better and improved traffic management decisions through strategic data reporting. The continued operation of the successful pilot now provides the building block for delivering the full NPP. The Manchester City Council pilot platform was set up in 2019 to prove the technical concept of digitally publishing the details of parking spaces using the APDS standard and a second phase has proven delivery of the multi-vendor concept. In doing so, the pilot has not only demonstrated the technical viability of the pilot but delivered reduced costs for all procurement parties, by enabling the local authorities to contract to all providers, and increased resilience by ensuring more than one app provider is on-line. The pilot is a middle ware platform provided on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The architecture is high availability and is secure by design using Google-provided firewalls and load balancers. Access to the platform for Service Providers and Operator’s systems is provided via a secure RESTful API using platform-issued encrypted access tokens managed by a GCP service. Further NPP details on the pilot, benefits to the parking operator, the service providers and road users can be found in the accompanying information pack and at https://npp-uk.org/. The business problem you need to solve The successful supplier will deliver the full NPP service through private and public beta by building on the pilot platform managed by Manchester City Council and extensive user-research through DfT funded discovery and alpha. The success of this pilot platform has enabled a new pathway to the beta delivery which is quicker to market than building from the alpha design. The pilot platform will continue to provide operational services, during Beta private, to the four local authorities currently on-boarded. More local authorities are expected to on-board the pilot platform during beta. We are looking to work with a supplier who will extend the pilot functionality and scalability to potentially host over 300 local authority and potentially many more private parking operators. You will need to explain how you will build the full NPP, in parallel with the operational pilot, and set out the arrangements for transferring operation from the pilot to the full NPP for “go-live”. Details of the pilot architecture and access to the coding will be provided to the successful supplier. This beta requires expansion of the pilot operation to provide a “clearing house” for the NPP parking payments. The full NPP will need not only to process potentially millions of parking transactions but also raise sufficient revenue from transaction fees to enable the NPP to be self-funding shortly after “going live”. This “clearing house” function will require banking processes to be designed and tested and appropriate reconciliation measures to be provided to ensure each parking operator receives the fees to which it is entitled. Reporting capability for the transactions, reconciliation and NPP operations will need to be designed, tested and implemented. In addition, the pilot use cases will need limited expansion to meet market services provided by app providers. A summary of the requirements that will need to be designed and tested within the private beta are as follows: Banking – we need an architecture designed and built which will send customer payments to each operator through dedicated NPP bank accounts. Reconciliation process– to ensure that each parking operator receives their accurate and detailed parking charges from each of the service provider within a multi-vendor payment system. Transaction fee tracking and charging – to enable the NPP to charge fees for connection to the platform and for processing the parking transactions. Efficient communication of statistics & reporting data – establishing the data requirements and provide reports from service provider transactions. Deliver frictionless parking – to build on functionality developed in the pilot to enable service provider customers to exit car parks, within a multi-vendor operation, without the need to make payment at a payment station or directly by their app. Interconnected tariff rights/sessions – to determine the options for managing concessions offered to users between the different service providers (to avoid customers using multiple service providers to avoid tariffs or park longer than allowed). Automated “challenge query” system – to determine whether information requests to consider challenges to PCNs are designed within or without the NPP and to implement the service. Location ID allocation – to maintain a database of location IDs and provide an automated verification process for one or more location IDs to be applied for and added to the NPP. Establish performance monitoring system - to provide operational status, performance and transactional activity reports. Error logs and alerts – you will need to provide live system logs and alerts for operation and automated feedback to developers testing their integration. Integration with DfT security recommendations – to review and deliver recommendations from the DfT security audit and pen test. Details shall be provided to the successful tenderer. To ensure we develop these user-centric services, you will design the user-research activity during both the private and public beta phase. For example, this will include researching the detail for payment reconciliation and determining how bank transfers should be completed including the schedule. The Department has established both service provider and local authority user groups which can support the research. Subject to the beta contract breakpoint, the service will require routine maintenance to ensure it continues to adhere to the following standards during beta public: Technology code of practice https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-technology-code-of-practice Digital Service standard https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard Architectural principles Shared at stage 2 if shortlisted NCSC guidelines https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-minimum-cyber-security-standard/the-minimum-cyber-security-standard Accessibility https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps First user type: General Info First user type: Local authority parking manager First user type: Service providers First user type: Motorist First user type: Enforcement software provider First user type: General Info Enter more details about this user type: Personas and needs for the key user groups were developed during the discovery and alpha stages and listed below. In addition, we will need to provide data that will serve all stakeholders interested in developing parking-as-a service including data aggregators, multi-modal app providers and mobility-as-a-service developers, academics, businesses, consultancies and potentially EV data suppliers and users. Enter more details about this user type: • I need to provide joined-up parking services, So that my customers have seamless access to different modes of transport and different parking places; • I need to have a simple procurement framework, So that I can reduce time, effort, and complexity of procuring service providers; • I need to access comprehensive parking data, So that I can make better strategic and operational decisions that improve the livability of my area; Enter more details about this user type: • I need to be able to access real-time availability of parking, facilities, and costs, So that I can improve my service to my customers; • I need to be able to easily exchange data with other actors in the industry. So that I can make better strategic and operational decisions. • I need to be able to trade in new parking areas. So that I can offer my service to more customers and improve their experience across locations Enter more details about this user type: • I need a single way of managing my parking, So that I don’t need to download multiple apps that may separately record my data; • I need to know parking rules, occupancy, and facilities at specific locations, So that I can plan my trip and avoid penalties; • I need competitively priced parking, So that I can have value for money. Enter more details about this user type: • I need a central place to access sessions payment data (irrespective of the payment supplier), So that enforcement officers on the ground can easily establish if they need to issue a penalty. • I need to understand occupancy to compare against valid sessions, So that I can assess the levels of non-compliance, conduct more targeted actions and be more efficient. • I need data standards and interoperability, So that I can share data with multiple systems (back-office systems, enforcement systems, providers systems), to make the processing of penalties more efficient. Enter more details about this user type: More information on the user personas can be found in the supplementary information pack.