Development of modern tools to support Social Care Finance

Description

Summary of the work To effectively develop and iterate on the work the Council has started to improve workflow tools to support cross functional service delivery for finance and brokerage in Social Care. Expected Contract Length 4 months Latest start date Wednesday 1 December 2021 Budget Range £500,000 Why the Work is Being Done Following the cyber attack in October 2020, the Council has been developing a suite of user-centred cloud-native applications to help teams perform common tasks in the processing of service requests from residents This part of our recovery work is accelerating Hackney’s move to modern, cloud based services in line with our strategic direction before the attack. We’re developing these solutions natively in the cloud, using open source technologies so we will be able to deliver value more quickly and prioritise security, user experience and reduce the overall revenue of costs of delivering the tools. Since January we’ve been developing a suite of tools across council services (housing, social care, customer services) that support core business processes. These reusable components will ensure we can provide simple, secure, scalable technology that helps us work collaboratively to deliver better services for residents and enable future redesign of services to meet our residents’ needs. This brief will relate specifically to our financial processes in Social Care. Problem to Be Solved Building on the earlier phases of work to develop a Minimum Viable Product for social care, this phase will deliver further functionality that services need in relation to finance and brokerage across Adult Social Care. Key objectives to meet in this phase: - create a MVP to enable finance teams to conduct a pay run for suppliers Key areas of research: - Supplier notifications - Homecare (brokerage, approvals, finance) - Supported Living (brokerage, approvals, finance) Who Are the Users Primary users are our frontline practitioners and business support staff from council services. - As a Broker I need to be able to add a care package to the finance system - As a Broker I need to charge for care contributions from Service Users - As a Broker I need to collect Free Nursing Care support on packages that I’m brokering - As a Broker I need to edit a care package, including backdating packages and correcting calculations - As a Broker I need to be able to add reclaims to a package, including S117 and other council claims - As a Broker I need to be able to retrieve details of a service user and view their care plan We would expect iterated and detailed user stories to come out of research and planning sessions. Early Market Engagement None Work Already Done We have completed a discovery phase and have prototyped various tools across the finance and brokerage landscape, To shortlisted bidders we can provide access to our GitHub repositories, show and tell decks, current roadmap, further technical documentation, and high level user journey maps. Existing Team We will operate a blended team from HackIT and the successful bidder. From Hackney we have the following roles to support this work: programme director, delivery manager, product manager, user research, service designer, data experts, limited front and back end development. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Demonstrate an understanding of the user needs associated with the delivery of one or more local authority services • Demonstrate a track-record of user-centred design and Agile approaches to delivery • Experience of developing applications that have been assessed as meeting a government Service Standard • Experience of working collaboratively with an in-house team, building skills and capabilities to support a smooth handover • Have experience of working with .NET core, AWS and Terraform, mongodb, postgres as well as react and next.js for frontend • Have experience of developing ‘in the open’ - using tools such as Github • Have experience of designing and developing minimum viable solutions • Have experience of designing to meet the public sector accessibility guidelines • Demonstrate track record of working to established standards (eg pattern Library, API standards) and show how you will contribute to the further development of these standards • Demonstrate how they have worked collaboratively in a multi-vendor environment • Demonstrate how they put security first in their work Nice to Haves • Demonstrate an understanding of Hackney’s approach to technology and data • Demonstrate how they provide opportunities for apprentices and junior members of in house teams • Experience of working with clients in critical situations and strong track record of working with stakeholders through change processes Work Location Hackney Council offices in Hillman Street, E8 (remotely during Covid-19 restrictions) Working Arrangments This work can be done remotely but will require fortnightly reporting (eg via show & tells) to involve key stakeholders and regular engagement with practitioners through video conferences. We will provide access to key systems to project team members where required. At some points we may do in person workshops in Hackney. Security Clearance All people working on this project will need a DBS. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Understanding of the brief • Clarity of the approach • Experience from a similar project • Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals • Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them • Blended day rates of the team Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions • Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service • Hackney Council is a diverse organisation, reflecting the diversity of our borough. Describe how you would successfully work as a team with Hackney and other suppliers in a diverse environment Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 5% Price 35% Questions from Suppliers 1. Which supplier/s supported Hackney in either the discovery or Alpha phase of this work? We have been working with Nudge Digital 2. Do you expect to extend user research, product, or service design during the Beta phase? Yes 3. Can you clarify the IR35 position for this work? The specification states: Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply 4. Who from your team will be scoring applications for this opportunity and what positions do they hold? We will have 3 people scoring applications:Head of Digital, Social Care Relationship Manager, IT Head of Transformation, ACS 5. Can the Authority provide the exhaustive Tech-stack The tech stack is listed in essential requirements 6. Is there any requirement for SC-clearance/SC-eligible or will BPSS cleared staff suffice? Security clearance status is stated in the requirements - only DBS applies 7. What are the required Roles and Responsibilities? This is really up for suppliers to determine based on the work we have specified 8. The contract start date is before the submission date – is this a mistake? yes, apologies this should state start date Dec 13th