British Army Website Support - Project Digital Forge

Tender description

Which phase the project is in Live Existing team The existing team consists of a developer, user researcher, technical writer and lead product and delivery managers (which work across the programme). Address where the work will be done Fully remote. Working arrangements The supplier will be working off site at their own location as all required work for the requirement is online. No expenses will need to be paid. Provide more information about your security requirements: Security Check (SC) Provide more information about your security requirements (optional): All team members will need security clearance up to OFFICIAL SENSITIVE. Latest start date 2025-09-01 Enter the expected contract length: 2 years Extension period: 1 year Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes Indicative maximum: £625,000 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 The British Army is seeking to maintain and further develop the digital presence of the Army on the world-wide-web (www) – this is known as the Army Web. Achieving this through a cloud support service that delivers technical development of its screen-based digital products, including web-design and the development of on-line information services. This will also deliver further interactive development of Soldier Magazine. A Full-Service Digital Partner is required to provide Cloud and Innovation support. The Army’s digital presence needs to be modern, fully compliant with all relevant legislation and regulations, including information security, accessibility and accreditation. It must maintain a high degree of availability, with no breaks in service. The following is in scope Support and maintenance of Army website (www.army.mod.uk) and the Umbraco content management system Projects to develop the Army’s website. These will come from; suggestions from the supplier for improvements, the Army communication needs and user research and testing. The vast majority of the work can be conducted at the supplier’s premises by remote working The successful agency will be expected to maintain the software layer and licensing whilst liaising with MODCloud, via their Jira ticketing system, or any future hosting partner to ensure the underlying infrastructure remains patched, secure and up to date. Support and maintenance of Army hosted applications Support with the Army’s strategic digital communications. Digital improvements to Soldier Magazine to build on the recent refresh, including the potential of a subscription service, free service for serving personal, native app, and push notifications. Delivery of a robust disaster recovery plan, including at least one dummy failure to ensure success. Where the supplied staff will work No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Why the work is being done This requirement is for the maintenance of the British Army's website, to ensure it remains up to date and serviceable. The work needs to be started by the 1st July and ensure the continuous maintenance of the website throughout the whole duration of the contract. The business problem you need to solve The British Army needs to regularly maintain and develop the digital presence of the Army on the world-wide-web (www) – this is known as the Army Web. This will be achieved through a cloud support service that delivers technical development of its screen-based digital products, including web-design and the development of on-line information services. This will also deliver further interactive development of Soldier Magazine. First user type: The general public. Questions and Clarifications 1. 1. Army hosted applications – are these separate websites/applications to the www.army.mod.uk website? 2. Please clarify all websites and applications to be supported. 3. Digital communications - What current digital communications tactics are used? 4. Digital communications – do you have an existing agency for your digital communications? 5. Hosting infrastructure – what is the current hosting infrastructure? Will this remain in place for the new support contract? 6. Development backlog – do you currently have a prioritised development backlog? 7. Development features – how often are you deploying updates and new features to the website? 8. Ongoing development support – approximately how many hours/days do you currently use per month? 9. Agile delivery – is the current project management fully agile delivery? 10.Government Digital Services Standards – has the website development been previously GDS assessed? 11. Is this an ongoing periodic requirement? 12. Is there an SLA for support and hosting, what are requirements expectations and required response times? 1. Yes 2. There is www.army.mod.uk and soldier.army.mod.uk/ currently. 3. Digitial Communications are campaign led and follow the Oasis comms structure. 4.The current incumbent provides support with our communications as required. 5. Current infrastructure is MODCloud Azure with no plans to change. 6. There are no significant items on back log due to the current contract coming to an end. 7. As and when identified or developed by the current incumbent. 8. We currently use 20 hours per month but this flexes due to operational requirements. 9. The MOD embraces the Agile methodology but it does not always fit our plans. 10. The current iteration has not been GDS assessed but there are plans to do this. 11. The requirement as per Government Digital Standards. 12. Yes there is an SLA, the requirements are: Respond to incidents within 10 mins with a target resolution of <2 Hours for P1 Blockers, <6 hours for P2 Major incidents and <2 days for P3 Minor incidents during core support hours. Hosting related issues are subject to the seperate MODCloud support team SLA. Last Updated: 9 June 2025, 14:16 2. 1. Questions 10 and 11 are the same – please clarify if this is an error or of there should be an additional question? 2. There are two questions relating to being an Umbraco partner – can these questions be answered in the same way or are you expecting a different response? 3. Is the maximum budget for two or three years? 4. Is the budget including or excluding VAT? 5. What version of Umbraco is the site on? 6. Is the Soldier Magazine on a different technology? Have the future plans been identified? 7. Are hosting and licence costs outside of the budget? 8. Where is the current site hosted? (e.g. AWS, Azure) 9. What key functionality or enhancements have been made to the site in the last two years? 10. Do you have an up to date digital and comms strategy that you can share? And a campaign roadmap or activity plan? 11. Is social media included under digital communications? 12. Do you have recent user research and data insights/analytics that are driving future plans? 13. Do you have a roadmap in place for future website development/enhancements? 14. The existing team does not mention any testing/quality assurance. How is this managed? 15. The existing team does not mention any UX/UI resource. How is this managed? 16. The existing team does not mention any data/analytics/CRO resource. How is this managed? 17. The SOR references strategic digital communications – could you please provide more detail on this requirement 18. Do you currently work using an agile methodology? How is this structured? 19. Can you share any details around how you are currently conducting user research and how well this process is working for you? 1. Please see previous clarifications regards Q10 & Q11. 2.If the bidder is referring to the question regarding “essential skills and experience” and “nice-to-have skills and experience”. For the essential skills and experience the sub-criteria is to be Umbraco partner for the Nice-to-have skills and experience there is a need to be a Gold Umbraco Partner. It’s at the bidder’s discretion how they construct their response, if all criteria are met and the response demonstrates what is asked for within the evaluation criteria the Authority cannot penalise the bidder for providing the same response 3. Two Years 4. £625K figure is ex VAT. 5. The current version is 13.8.1. 6. Soldier Magazine is using the same technology. As with all products Soldier Magazine is subject to continuous iterative development. 7. These costs are outside of the budget. 8. MODCloud which uses Azure. 9. The site has had a complete rebuild and launched in October 2024 including a tech stack refresh. 10. Digital comms strategy and campaign roadmap will be shared with the successful bidder. 11. As per the document under Strategic and Creative activities , section 3. 12. Yes we currently receive those from our current agency. 13. No, this will be developed in partnership with the successful bidder. 14. This is delivered by in the incumbent supplier. 15. This is delivered by in the incumbent supplier. 16. This is delivered by in the incumbent supplier. 17. This is delivered by in the incumbent supplier. 18. As per the document under Strategic and Creative activities , section 2 and 3. 19. The Army communications team and incumbent supplier conduct user research as required based on our chosen audience profiles. Last Updated: 9 June 2025, 14:07 3. We note that you have clarified that Q11 in the essential experience section should be: "Experience of tactical communications, including development of digital strategies". We also note that the weighting for Q10 should be 8%, and 10% for Q11. Are you planning to share an amended response document reflecting this correction? We note that 25 additional documents have been listed in attachment 1, but only 18 have been made available to download via CCS. Are you planning to share the missing documents? There has been a system error in uploading of the clarification questions, this has caused duplication of the response to the clarification covering errors around Q10 & 11 on the portal. In regards to updating of documents, we will not be updating the document set as this clarification will provide enough guidance on how to provide your proposal. For any missing documents, these can be downloaded from the CCS website under digital outcome 6 agreement RM1043.8 Last Updated: 9 June 2025, 13:58 4. In the initial scope of work you mention that you will be looking for a supplier who can provide 'Support with the Army’s strategic digital communications. ' Can you please expand on exactly what this means. For example are you expecting help with producing and uploading content? Can you provide an example of exactly what this would look like? We expect the supplier to be proficient in all type of content generation, We have in the past used suppliers to support our digital communications campaigns, digitise and upload editions of Solider mag, and some of our immersive story pages (please see https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/immersive-stories/ for more detail) Last Updated: 9 June 2025, 13:54 5. Will successful stage 1 vendors be offered another clarification window for stage 2, or should bidders aim to have all questions relating to this project submitted by the deadline this Thursday? There will be opportunity for further clarification in later stages of this procurement. Last Updated: 9 June 2025, 13:50 6. Please can the authority confirm what it hopes to get from having a gold or platinum Umbreco partner? Umbreco partnership can cost anywhere between £3k-£10k (potentially prohibitive for SMEs) and the benefits for a client of partnership are no different from those provided through the Umbreco Enterprise level agreement. In the must have section you have weighted the certified Umbreco partner which is a paid for status and requires no skills to achieve it, should this question not be focussed on demonstrating previous experience of CMS? Rephrasing both the Umbreco partnership questions to focus on skills/experience would provide a fairer competition and increase the chance of the authority getting what it wants form the contract. The use of Umbraco certified partners provides us with the assurance that your developers are Umbraco certified, aware of the Umbraco best practices and are up to date with everything Umbraco, potentially delivering faster time to market and return on investment. It demonstrates your commitment to our chosen CMS. Is seen to signify a high level of expertise in Umbraco and enables direct access to Umbraco HQ support. Given the limited number of questions and size of response fields we can publish this is used as a to try and help us down select as the certification provides assurance around key requirements for us. We expect all bidders to demonstrate their skills and experience, failure to do so would reduce their overall score and potentially cost them the award regardless. Last Updated: 9 June 2025, 13:48 7. In the nice essential skills and experience, questions 10 & 11 are exactly the same though worth different scoring percentages, 10 and 8% respectively. Is this a mistake? Also the percentages throughout these questions add up to 102%? Can you please clarify this? There has been an error in uploading of the criteria. The criteria within question 10 should state the following: Demonstrable recent evidence of good planning, co-ordination, communication and project management skills. The criteria within Question 11 should state the following: Experience of tactical communications, including development of digital strategies. The Authority confirms the percentage weighting for Question 10 is 8% and the percentage weighting for question 11 is 10%. All weightings still add up to 100%. Please can the bidder double check the total weightings and demonstrate where the weightings add to 102% Last Updated: 4 June 2025, 10:55 8. In the nice essential skills and experience, questions 10 & 11 are exactly the same though worth different scoring percentages, 10 and 8% respectively. Is this a mistake? Also the percentages throughout these questions add up to 102%? Can you please clarify this? There has been an error in uploading of the criteria. The criteria within question 10 should state the following: Demonstrable recent evidence of good planning, co-ordination, communication and project management skills. The criteria within Question 11 should state the following: Experience of tactical communications, including development of digital strategies. The Authority confirms the percentage weighting for Question 10 is 8% and the percentage weighting for question 11 is 10%. All weightings still add up to 100%. Please can the bidder double check the total weightings and demonstrate where the weightings add to 102% Last Updated: 4 June 2025, 10:54 9. In the nice essential skills and experience, questions 10 & 11 are exactly the same though worth different scoring percentages, 10 and 8% respectively. Is this a mistake? Also the percentages throughout these questions add up to 102%? Can you please clarify this? There has been an error in uploading of the criteria. The criteria within question 10 should state the following: Demonstrable recent evidence of good planning, co-ordination, communication and project management skills. The criteria within Question 11 should state the following: Experience of tactical communications, including development of digital strategies. The Authority confirms the percentage weighting for Question 10 is 8% and the percentage weighting for question 11 is 10%. All weightings still add up to 100%. Please can the bidder double check the total weightings and demonstrate where the weightings add to 102% Last Updated: 4 June 2025, 10:54 10. Will successful stage 1 vendors be offered another clarification window for stage 2, or should bidders aim to have all questions relating to this project submitted by the deadline this Thursday?" All questions relating to this project will need to be submitted by the deadline this Thursday, there will be no opportunity for further clarifications in subsequent stages. Last Updated: 4 June 2025, 10:31 11. Can we please query which deadline time is correct? The portal states - **Deadline 16/06/2025 @16:00** Whereas the document states **Deadline 16/06/2025 @15:00** The correct deadline for responses from suppliers is 16 June 2025, 16:00 Last Updated: 30 May 2025, 10:13 12. Contract start date The correct latest contract start date is 10/09/2025 as per the competiton timeline. Last Updated: 30 May 2025, 10:09