Improve CQC’s guidance for health and social care providers (content design)

Tender description

Summary of the work External support to improve guidance written for providers to provide in and will work in structured environment: • Minimum standards expected to cover reading age, content length and accessibility • Templates for each type of content. • The historic content to be rewritten • Details of the subject matter expert. Expected Contract Length 14th May 2025 Latest start date Monday 15 May 2023 Budget Range £150,000 - £300,000 (incl Vat) Why the Work is Being Done The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. CQC is not on GOV.UK but has its own website. We've introduced clearer standards that content published on our website will need to meet. While this increases the quality of the content we publish in future, it leaves a great deal of older information that needs to be reviewed and rewritten. Much of our older content is guidance for health and social care providers. Problem to Be Solved Older information needs to be reviewed and rewritten. Limitations of our older guidance include: • much of it is published in PDF format • it isn’t always logically structured. (Some documents are set out in FAQ format.) • the documents are often designed as a standalone products rather than integrating with the rest of our guidance, with information becoming siloed • there’s variable adherence to plain English and clear language Our in-house content team is working on new guidance to support our new regulatory model, alongside BAU publishing. They will not have capacity to improve older guidance as well. Who Are the Users As a health or social care provider I need clear guidance about regulations and care standards So that my service offers safe, effective, high-quality care and meets legal requirements As a health or social care provider we need clear information about how to register my service with CQC and maintain that registration So that it remains legally compliant As a health or social care provider we need clear guidance on best practice in providing health and social care So that my service offers safe, effective, high-quality care and I can achieve a good CQC rating As a health or social care provider we need information about how CQC will monitor, inspect and assess my service So we can prepare for inspection and assessment and achieve a good CQC rating As a CQC inspector or assessor we need clear guidance about how providers should meet regulations and care standards So that I know what to look for when we inspect or assess health or social care services As a CQC member of staff we need clear information about our HR policies and processes So that we can understand expectations of me and my team Work Already Done We have carried out: • a discovery on provider guidance (a three-month piece of research work with people who work in the health and social care sector) • a content audit on our website (a review of the pages and documents currently published) The results of these pieces of work will be available alongside a prioritised backlog of guidance to work on. Existing Team The members of our team who the supplier will have access to will be: Project lead: a senior digital content designer responsible for the backlog of guidance to be worked on by the supplier. They will be responsible for signing off the clarity and quality of the content. Subject matter expert: usually a member of our policy or HR teams, they are the content owner of the guidance. They will be responsible for signing off the accuracy of the content. Analyst: a member of the team with experience of the website who can answer ad hoc queries (e.g. analytics). Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Have demonstrable experience of developing regulatory or government guidance • Have a proven track record of designing high quality content that meets GOV.UK or NHS.UK standards • Be used to working with subject matter experts (SMEs) to draft content, agree revisions and manage sign-off • Have demonstrable experience of delivering simple, clear and concise content for multiple audiences (e.g. public, professional, internal staff) • Have a strong understanding of what makes content work well online Nice to Haves • Provide evidence of delivering high quality content at pace • Provide evidence of working remotely effectively • Provide evidence of managing delivery of a content backlog Work Location London or remote working. Our London office is at 2 Redman Place in Stratford. Working Arrangments We would anticipate the supplier to work remotely but there could also be the ability to meet in our London office when required. The supplier will be given a backlog of content to work on along with the details of the standards it must meet (www.cqc.org.uk/content-standards) and the subject matter expert for each piece. We would expect them to produce updated versions of each piece of guidance using a template given to them. Queries relating to each piece of guidance should be raised with the SME via Teams or email. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 6 Proposal Criteria • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to writing content to meet GOV.UK or NHS.UK style guides (10%) • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to reducing the complexity of guidance content (10%) • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to reducing the length of guidance content without affecting scope (10%) • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to deliver within CQC's ways of working (2%) • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to managing sign-off of accuracy and clarity (10%) • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to timeframes for delivery (4%) • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to Value for money (4%) • Using examples from your experience, detail your approach to identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them (1%) • • Team structure and availability (4%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Explain your experience of demonstrating strong influencing and persuasion skills (1%) • Explain your approach to negotiating content changes with subject matter experts (SMEs), drawing on data and evidence to support conclusions (1%) • Explain your approach to clearly agreeing working practices, roles and responsibilities when working with SMEs and other stakeholders (1%) • Explain how you would manage your time effectively to deliver content on time (1%) • Explain your approach to working effectively remotely (1%) • Social Value - What actions do you take to invest in the mental and physical wellbeing of your workforce (3.3%) • Social Value - How do you engage with your workforce to identify the most important areas to address wellbeing?(3.3%) • Social Value - How do you promote wellbeing through your supply chains? (3.3%) Payment Approach Fixed price Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 55% Cultural fit 15% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. Would you be open to a variant bid using machine learning to turn existing content into a structured database (which can be updated) and automated generation of required guidance (which can automatically be updated & tracked)? No. We’re not looking for automated solutions, we’re looking for content design support including working with subject matter experts. 2. Did a external supplier conduct the Discovery phase or was this done internally? It was done by an in-house multidisciplinary team including content designers, a user researcher, a product manager, a performance analyst, a service designer and a service manager. 3. Do you have an incumbent supplier for this project? No 4. is there an incumbent? No 5. Please advise on the volume and content of the document backlog? (Ideally no. documents estimated, and nature of the documents – we assume text heavy, rather than extensive technical charts & diagrams?) The volume of the document backlog will exceed the amount of work likely to be delivered. We have 3,000 documents published on our website (though not all of those are being included in the backlog). We also have ~75 staff policies on our intranet.Generally the documents are text heavy, yes. There are some diagrams and charts but use of those is not widespread. 6. the budget doesn’t match the 2 year contract. can you qualify how long you will need this person for? is this ad hoc and how often etc? We are not sure what you mean when you say the budget does not match the 2-year contract. We would expect people working on the backlog for the full two years. We don’t anticipate this being ad hoc, it’s expected that the content designers would be constantly working through that backlog. 7. Are you able to share a copy of your terms and conditions for this opportunity? We intend to use the Digital Outcomes and Specialists 5 legal documents – link belowhttps://www.gov.uk/guidance/digital-outcomes-and-specialists-5-legal-documents?_ga=2.53248428.542753521.1675956946-729213583.1670585042 8. Will you be sharing the discovery and audit findings and prioritised backlog of guidance so that suppliers can size the work? The discovery report is available here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/17E2LLtrF4KQGXFIU-cz7lTFOz3P-1OZh/view?usp=sharingA previous version of our document audits is available here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v5rPJxPk00lRVfghAUyIi0LI1qozvi2Y/view?usp=share_linkAn updated and improved version of this will be available at the start of the work. This will combine external provider guidance documents as shown in this document (these are the ones with reading ages against them) with our internal HR policies that we intend to review. 9. We’ve started to complete our proposal online and are being asked to respond to a number of questions with a maximum word limit of 100 words. We can’t progress the application and see the additional submission requirements until these boxes are completed, so can you please outline the additional proposal requirements (in addition to the 100 word limit questions) as we want to assess how these might link to your ‘Technical Competence’ and ‘Cultural Fit’ evaluation criteria? Thank you! We’ve contacted the Crown Commercial Service regarding your question. We are not sure what additional proposal you are referring to. Unfortunately, Crown Commercial has not come back to us. It might be a good idea for you to call them on this question.Our understanding is once you have responded to the essential skills and nice to have requirements (the first phase) we will shortlist suppliers and should you be successful, you will be invited to the second phase which will require you to submit a proposal. That proposal will be evaluated using the evaluation criteria that has been published. 10. When will the deadline be for the written submissions? And when do you expect the presentations to be held? We cant give you exact date but late April early may for both deadline for written submission and presentations. 11. Do you currently use any third-party content design supplier, or have you in the past? If so, which ones were they? We currently have a contract with TPX Impact, who provide some design specialists as part of our transformation work. This is a separate area of work from the content covered in this procurement. In the past, we have had specialists provided to support individual digital projects which have included content designers. We have not had a comparable supplier for supporting content design of our general guidance or internal policies. In any case we publish contracts over £10k on the Contracts Finder accessible to public. 12. 1. Are you able to provide the template referred to, into which new guidance should be written?2. Please can you provide the content back log, or an estimated number of content items that require rewriting?3. Are you able to provide an example piece of guidance?4. What is the delivery format of the rewritten content (e.g. Word)?5. What is the expected frequency of delivery (e.g. X number of rewritten content items per month)?6. Are you able to provide more information on CQC’s ways of working? Are these the same as the content standards? 1. A version of the templates here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ZPdP2es86tdnlpGhFVrjani3JzXhQge/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104425554472676801764&rtpof=true&sd=trueAn updated version of these will be available.2. A previous version is available: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v5rPJxPk00lRVfghAUyIi0LI1qozvi2Y/view?usp=share_link - an updated and improved version of this will be available. 3. This is one example: https://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/20160608_100070_v6_05_How_to_apply_to_cancel_regulated_activities_Guidance_for_providers_and_managers.pdfIn this case, the content is badly formatted. 4. The content will be entered into our CMS and published. Word document is best.5. This would depend on the supplier. Preference is to work for work to be done as quickly as possible. 6. Our content standards are one part and we also have a set of corporate values.