UK SBS IT17379 Innovate UK IFS

Description

Summary of the work Taking the service through the remaining Beta Public enhancements to a live service assessment. This will also require a hand over to a live/BAU team who will continue the service iteration, so making sure adequate validated documentation and processes are in place before departure is a must. Expected Contract Length 12 months with the option to extend for a further 3 months. Latest start date Wednesday 1 November 2017 Budget Range Up to £3.6M excluding VAT (for the entire duration of the contract term, including any extension applied) Why the Work is Being Done Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency. The number of applications received by Innovate UK has grown significantly since its inception. The systems originally implemented to support these activities have become unable to meet the business needs. In response, Innovate UK launched the IFS project to move all end-to-end transaction services online. We aim to operate a “Digital by Default” business model to meet government Digital by Default Service Standards. A team is now sought to continue the development of the product and see the project through to live assessment anticipated in Spring 2018. Problem to Be Solved Further develop the current Public Beta product, respond to user feedback for improvements to the system and implement the remaining technical debt and roadmap items to improve the service and bring other competition types on board. Enable the service and the team to do zero downtime deployments. Support existing publically available service. Who Are the Users As a funder I need to advertise an opportunity to business and academic organisations for funding in priority areas. As a business or academic organisation, I need to be able to submit applications for innovation funding (respectively) so that I can respond to requests to undertake work in priority areas that have the potential to benefit the UK economy. I need to be able to collaborate with other organisations on my application where applicable. As an assessor I need to be able to review funding applications so that an application’s suitability for funding can be assessed and granted (or refused). Work Already Done This project is now in Public Beta heading towards the live assessment. Competitions are now running through IFS to apply for funding as can be seen via the below web link. Further development is needed for additional competition types and in response to user feedback and support queries. https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/search Existing Team The proposed team will work alongside an existing product owner, delivery manager and BAU team consisting of Developers, UXers , a BA and a Tester. The proposed team will also engage with other Innovate UK employees, business teams and third party suppliers as the project demands. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Demonstrate your skills and expertise in the below criteria and how they will ensure the successful delivery of this project. (PLEASE LEAVE THIS BOX BLANK) • To GDS Digital Service Standard including project phases and GDS assessments and how this will be carried out particularly through public beta working towards live assessment • To deliver a user-centred product through the Agile methodology • Can you demonstrate expertise in Object orientated concepts and design patterns, Java 8 development and the Spring Projects HTML, CSS, SASS and JavaScript (Gulp, CoffeeScript, NodeJS Thymeleaf) • Can you demonstrate expertise in Gradle as build tool, TDD and CI tools such as Bamboo or Jenkins • Can you demonstrate expertise in Version control in cloud based deployments (Bitbucket and GIT) Performance management and tracing in a distributed environment (jMeter, Blazemeter, Apache Bench, New Relic, Zipkin) • Can you demonstrate expertise in Docker containers Managing database upgrade solutions for zero downtime deployments (Flyway) Horizontally scalable and stateless applications, Authentication management (Shibboleth, LDAP), Tomcat embedded server • Can you demonstrate how you will apply your skills and expertise in Business analysis, Relational databases and SQL development, Manual testing and writing scripts for Robot/Selenium framework automated test tools • To Agile ceremonies, Managing technical teams, Understanding and advising on technical best practice, Managing multiple work streams in a complex multi skilled team • Please demonstrate how you will adhere to the GDPR requirements relevant to third party suppliers. Nice to Haves • Demonstrate your skills and expertise in the below criteria and how they will ensure the successful delivery of this project. (PLEASE LEAVE THIS BOX BLANK) • To develop online application services and tools • To use collaboration tools such as Slack, Jira, Confluence and Webex • Demonstrate how you will apply your skills and expertise, knowledge and skills transfer to BAU teams and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project. • Demonstrate how you will provide support to an existing service in production • To work with a Microservices architecture • To work within service orchestration tools such as RedHat’s OpenShift or Kubernetes • To work with IAC and CM tools such as Ansible and Terraform • 8. Demonstrate how you will apply your knowledge of security within a CICD pipeline and how you will apply your skills and expertise to use tools such as OWASP ZAP Work Location The site is Polaris House, Swindon, SN2 1FL Working Arrangments Minimum three days per week on-site, location as described above. A professional working day, flexible working hours between 8AM- 5PM as needed to deliver the service in an efficient way as agreed by the Product Owner and Delivery Manager. Security Clearance BPSS - Baseline Personnel Security Standard Additional T&Cs • Under GDPR rules Innovate UK reserves the right to audit the supplier or any of it’s sub-contracted services. • Third party storage, retention and destruction of data policies must align to Innovate UK policies. • Service Organisation Control (SOC) Reports, or similar, should be provided to give additional assurance of the controls within the third party. Third party use of data (whether passed to subsidiaries or additional third parties) and whether all of these organisations must adhere to Innovate UK requirements including for Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Approach and methodology • How the approach or solution meets user needs • Estimated team size for work • Approach to identifying and managing risks and dependencies • Approach to maintaining control, transparency and quality • Team structure (with roles and responsibilities) Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstrate how you will work transparently and collaboratively with the Innovate UK project team throughout this project • Demonstrate how you will work flexibly, responding to changing priorities and issues throughout this project • Demonstrate how you will transition seamlessly into an existing team and project ensuring no disruption to end users throughout this project Payment Approach Time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Is there an incumbent supplier and if yes, are they bidding for this opportunity? There are multiple suppliers currently working on this project. At this stage it is unknown which suppliers are bidding for this requirement. 2. Is there a current supplier (who's delivered work to-date) who will be bidding for this? There are multiple suppliers currently working on this project. At this stage it is unknown which suppliers are bidding for this requirement. 3. Could you outline the roles (numbers and skills) that you envisage you'd need for the project? We expect suppliers to propose a team structure in alignment with the published budget and the requirement published on the Digital Marketplace. 4. We note the budget and timeline imply a large team requirement. Please indicate the number and type of roles required at contract inception We expect suppliers to propose a team structure in alignment with the published budget and the requirement published on the Digital Marketplace. 5. Please could the authority clarify if the budget range of £3.6m is just for this specific project length of 12 months (with a possible extension of 3 months) or whether it would be used to cover a larger programme of activity as well e.g. further extensions, hosting/support etc. The maximum budget of £3.6m (ex VAT) is for the specific project as detailed on the Digital Market Place. This budget covers both the initial 12 month term and the potential 3 month extension.