DWP Digital Children - Application Development & Live Service Support

Description

Summary of the work Provide Development and Live Service Support services and outcomes of the Children Platform technology estate, primarily the Child Maintenance Scheme (CMS) 2012 System. Support the delivery of required regular releases of business change, transformation portfolio and provide Live Service Support to ensure performance remains stable and optimised for service. Expected Contract Length Anticipated duration is 2 years Latest start date Monday 1 November 2021 Why the Work is Being Done DWP are re-procuring the services for Application Development and Live Service Support of the Core Business Systems for the DWP Children’s Platform, including the Child Maintenance Services 2012 (CMS 2012) System. The current contract expires 31st March 2022. The primary purpose of the contract is to ensure the core CMS2012 application remains operational and fit for use. The CMS2012 application underpins the Child Maintenance Group’s administration of the 2012 Child Maintenance Service. The appointed supplier will provide the required skills and capabilities needed to develop and maintain the CMS2012 application to deliver its future change portfolio, technical and service transformation programme, support the legacy technology and maintain the live service. In addition, the supplier will also provide services to support the delivery of various other initiatives that form part of the DWP Digital Children’s future work programme. The services to be provided under the contract will be: Software Development, User Experience and Design, Testing & Auditing, Service Delivery, Performance Analysis and Data, Security, Support and Operations. Problem to Be Solved The Child Maintenance Group (CMG) is responsible for the administration of the 2012 Child Maintenance Scheme. Either obtaining maintenance from the Paying Parent (PP) and paying it to the Receiving Parent (RP) or facilitating the payment between the two parties directly. To deliver its goals, CMG requires digital services and outcomes from suppliers to supplement DWP’s own internal capability with the appropriate skills and capacity to ensure provision of the current live services and to develop new digital solutions. The appointed supplier will deliver outcomes for required regular releases to deploy a range of additional business and technical requirements that supports operational delivery and the future DWP architecture and technology transformation programmes and provide live service support to the production system, within a complex multi-application, multi-supplier environment, to ensure it remains current with legislation and optimised for performance and service. Children and Families requirements include a set of technical skills in the preferred DWP and Children’s key technologies that align to the core services to be provided. The key technologies are: Siebel, BPM, Adobe, Documentum, Node JS Who Are the Users As a DWP Technology Function I need to be able to supplement my development and live support teams to ensure they have the capability and capacity to deliver necessary change and system stability for the Child Maintenance Group (CMG) and the parents they support. Early Market Engagement A pre-procurement presentation was held on 08/06/2021 providing background information on DWP Digital Children & Families and the Child Maintenance Service and an overview of the Live Service Support, Service Transformation Vision, Current Architecture and Future Ambition and Pre-Contract Security Assurance. If anyone would like a copy of the slide deck this can be downloaded from: https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/guest/go/public/opportunity/current Work Already Done Applications have been developed on the Children Platform technology estate in support of various child maintenance schemes, including the CMS 2012 system that was developed for the latest scheme, which went live in 2012. Development work continues, based on 6 weekly sprint cycles, to deliver against a range of business and technical requirements. Support of the production system continues to be required within a complex multi-application, multi-supplier environment. Existing Team The appointed supplier will work in within a multi-discipline and multi-supplier environment which also includes exiting Buyer teams. The appointed supplier will be able to work alongside and interact between these existing teams as required. The exiting Buyer team currently consists of 95 resources in post across a range of DDaT Roles. Current Phase Live Skills & Experience • Have experience of delivering development capability using a wide range of methodologies including agile and waterfall across five or more concurrent projects with teams of 50-100 development resources. • Have experience of aligning development activities with other parallel work streams across split sites, ensuring quality standards are maintained. • Have experience of delivering ITIL live support capability across multiple concurrent applications. • Have experience of developing, testing and supporting bi-modal IT where there are both heritage COTS systems as well as newer systems based around events and micro services architecture. • Have experience of and immediate capacity to supply technical skills (3-5 years experience) in Siebel Public Sector including detailed technical knowledge of Siebel architecture, deployment model and data model. • Have experience of and immediate capacity to supply technical skills for sunset systems below including detailed technical knowledge of architecture, deployments and data. • Adobe-AEM, Documentum, BPM, IBM-HTTP-Server, SageX3 • Have immediate capacity to supply technical skills to support, patch, update and upgrade for Jira and Confluence • Have experience of delivering automated testing of UI, API, Events, files across a range of COTS products as well as microservices as part of pipelines. • Have experience of testing using tooling:  Cucumber, Selenium, Browserstack, Postman, Jmeter, Mokito, EasyMock, PowerMock, WireMock , JaCoCo, Istanbul, Mocha, Junit, Checkmarx, OWASP Zap, BlackDuck , SonarQube • Have experience of infrastructure monitoring and application monitoring using tools such as ELK, Graphana, Promethus, fluentd, Google Analytics as well as cloud-native tooling integrated with hosted monitoring tooling. • Have relevant experience in developing applications using modern technologies and methodologies that are compliant with government standards. • Can support, stabilise and keep our persistence technologies in good health though develop to production lifecycle. • Oracle RAC, MySql, PostgreSQL, DocumentDB, Cosmos DB • Elasticsearch • Snowball • Kafka • Have experience of deploying and managing both self-hosted and cloud-based applications in across a range of technologies. • Have immediate access to a resource pool to undertake the roles documented in the DDAT framework in the following areas: Engineering, Architecture, Product Management, Delivery management, Security, Data • Have capability to supplement resources using a remote model (i.e. not at a DWP location), and have capability to deliver with compliance to ISO27001 standards. • Have experience of working with incumbent suppliers to transition knowledge of systems and takeover responsibilities within demanding timescales (~2 months). Nice to Haves • Have experience of working within Government or a comparable organisation within the last 3 years. • Have experience of ServiceNow. Work Location Due to the COVID-19 situation work will be carried out remotely until further notice. However following the easing of restrictions at a future point in time the appointed supplier may be co-located with the Buyer on DWP sites based within Newcastle Upon Tyne with the ability to continue to provide Digital Teams using a remote model, where appropriate and with agreement from the Buyer. Working Arrangments Typically Digital Teams will be required to work a minimum of 7.5 hours per day, 5 days per week. Some weekend work will be required for discrete project work and support resource will be required to cover 24/7 on an on call basis. Reimbursable expenses will be paid in line with DWP Policy. Security Clearance All resources must be BPSS (Baseline Personnel Security Standard) compliant or equivalent (or prepared to undergo clearance process prior to commencement of work). DWP would support an application however costs are to be met by the supplier. Additional T&Cs This requirement is likely to be a mix of predominately outsourced managed services with some supply of resource, therefore off-payroll working rules (IR35) may/may not apply. DWP will determine if off-payroll working rules apply, prior to each individual statement of work. DWP is working with the internal legal team to review the DOS 5 legal documents against DWP's model T&C's. There may be some enhancements/amendments. This information will be shared with shortlisted suppliers with the RfP. TUPE may apply to this contract - Should this be the case DWP will seek to share this information with shortlisted suppliers. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Please demonstrate that you have the knowledge and experience necessary to perform the functions as detailed within the Specification of Requirements document. • Please demonstrate your ability to gain, at pace, a detailed understanding of the solution to allow continuity in development as well as ongoing support. • Please demonstrate the experience of your teams delivering major change via development of concurrent releases and Live Support services for a comparable customer. • Please demonstrate the capability of your teams in providing Service Management across multiple concurrent applications. • Please demonstrate how you have introduced innovation into an organisation for a comparable customer. • Please detail your process for resource acquisition with evidence of its maturity and use elsewhere on contracts of a similar nature. • Please detail value for money (VfM) proposals associated with the provision of this contract and requirement and demonstrate how they link to the key objectives and will benefit DWP. • Completion of a Information Security Questionnaire (ISQ) that allows DWP to assess the supplier’s compliance with DWP Security Schedule, Policy, Standard and industry good practice Cultural Fit Criteria • Experience of successful collaborative working as part of a multi-supplier delivery team sharing knowledge within the team. • Evidence of a culture of continuous improvement where individuals learn from past mistakes and offer improvement opportunities. • Social Value: Equal Opportunity – Tackle Workforce Inequality • Social Value: Wellbeing - Improve health and wellbeing Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Reference • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 45% Cultural fit 15% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers 1. Can you provide some history and context for the Application?How has it evolved, history of support arrangements and perceived success or otherwise of those arrangements?How is the application currently supported? Please refer to the Opportunity Notice published on the DWP e-procurement tool for supporting history and context:https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/guest/go/public/opportunity/currentIn brief though the application supports the 2012 child maintenance legislation, payments etc. (Also info on Gov.uk etc.)Changes to the application are authorised via CRs raised by CMG operations which requests changes and improvements. These are delivered in agile sprints, to align with working practice.The application is historically and currently supported by DWP digital resources augmented by third party supplier services. 2. For this bid, how will you ensure a level playing field with the competition? i.e. Will Transition costs, TUPE costs etc be considered and /or covered? Suppliers will be asked to provide costs for things such as TUPE and transition, however these will not be used as part of the evaluation. They will only be used for financial planning purposes. 3. What is the expected contract duration?Some Idea of Length of contract and any break points being considered?Options for extension? Anticipated contract length will be up-to 2 years with a possible 6 month extension period. 4. Is an Out of Hours support service provided/required? Yes, an OOH service is currently provided and we forsee this will be required for the new contract. 5. What is Location of current Service? - Onshore/Offshore?Where is UK Support Location – Is it Longbenton? Is this the intention for the new contract?Is offshore capability currently utilised and to what extent? Would it be acceptable for the new contract?Any delivery location restrictions both onshore and offshore ? The current service is a combination of offshore and onshore and the onshore location is Longbenton and it is the intention for this to be the location going forward. Offshore capability is used extensively and will be considered as part of any proposal. The main onshore location is Longbenton and will be going forward your proposal should include any options you wish to include for offshore working and associated locations. 6. If onshore, are staff available to TUPE (eg if part of a shared supplier service they may not be)? Access and Feasibility of comprehensive KT process / handover process ? Potential Issues if offshore e.g. shadowing might not be possible We believe TUPE would apply to this contract. Information will be provided to shortlisted Bidders as part of the Request for Proposal (RfP). 7. We assume TUPE would apply and would be necessary for the skills transfer – if not how would we get the knowledge required?How many individuals could be in-scope for TUPE and how many may be retained (if in-house) if any already within DWP? We believe TUPE would apply to this contract. Information will be provided to shortlisted Bidders as part of the RfP. 8. Quality / amount of technical and business documentation (Design, HLTAD) etc - is it up to date ? Heritage CMS 2012 system switched to incremental documentation back in 2013. The high level architecture artefacts have been updated, however, high level designs and low level designs have been oriented around releases or collections of changes. Part of the DOS Transition / exit planning will address knowledge handover including refresh of relevant documentation. For new services architecture and design content is up to date and low level deployment details contained within Infrastructure As Code. 9. Is the intention that there is an opportunity to be supporting the platform as well as the Application or just the Application? Ownership of the service (full-stack) is with the L2 service owner to which the supplier will provides a range of service management services. The supplier will have particular capabilities in the application layer and will also be expected to provide technical leadership in resolution processes involving other technical specialists across the entire platform when required. 10. Is the Dev/Support/Test environment hosted in DWP or supplier infrastructure? Where are they located? Dev and Test environments provided by DWP/Children's hosted in either AWS or Azure. 11. If in a DWP environment could we gain access to use this (i.e. avoid rebuild)? Dev and Test environments would be available. All DWP staff and providers have controlled and secure access to environments including secure offshore access for Dev/Test. 12. Is the dev/support environment licenced and paid for by DWP or the Supplier? Is licence transfer possible between suppliers? Paid for by DWP. 13. Where are current production systems hosted and what is the hosting arrangement?e.g. is it a Cloud based arrangement? Production environments are currently hosted in DWP on premise hosted data centres - CMS 2012 application is not cloud hosted - on line services are. 14. What are your service hours and service level expectations for the application? Is the current service achieving these SLAs? Can they be supported remotely/on-call? Service Hours are 07:30 - 20:30 Mon-Fri, Sat 07:30 - 17:00 & Sun is optional overtime 7:30 - 15:00. Currently service meets SLAs and can be supported remotely and on call cover is also in place. 15. Incident run rate / problem volumes and trend. How many incidents P1, 2, 3, 4?How many Incidents per month? Please refer to the Opportunity Notice attachment Annex 4 published on the DWP e-procurement tool:https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/guest/go/public/opportunity/current 16. Do they envisage transformation, or is this just run? A feed and Water Arrangement?Any Future transformation / roadmap plans for the Application? Primarily run with input in to future service design based on operational data/findings. 17. Can you provide an idea of the Amount / frequency of change work anticipated? Frequency of sprints on the Core CMS 2012 application is every six weeks, amount is determined by scope of each sprint. 18. Technical debt - how far is the system behind current product versions and what vendor support is available? (extended / obsolescence / none ?) Siebel being upgraded to n-1 (IP20 this financial year). Siebel support contract in place with Spinnaker (not Oracle). COTs package status documentation maintained and risk evaluated periodically to align with upgrade path priorities and agreed with the Digital Children Management Team. Technical debt regularly reviewed for remediation decisions. DWP/Children's are responsible for TechDebt and support status and values input from suppliers as well as other teams in making choices. 19. Security obligations eg. keeping system patched? clearance? GDPR?What are the security restrictions re. data etc? Presumably very sensitive data – held in UK only? Security obligations and risk management processes and risk actions are managed by the application Service Owners, with support of internal and external supplier resources as deemed appropriate. 20. Is production DR environment operational and proven? Is there a test cycle ? Core CMS2012 system DR environment is operational and proven, annual DR tests scheduled. RTO = 24 hrs. 21. Licensing commercial accountability – Assume client side? DWP owns and is responsible for all licensing. At times DWP will take advice including from suppliers, often based on options, that may directly or indirectly impact licensing or commercial terms with vendors. 22. Where are the locations of the end users? There are 6 Primary locations: Plymouth, Hastings, Birkenhead, Belfast, Falkirk and Dudley, with a number of smaller ancillary offices. 23. How stable is the Application? What are the key interfaces? Are any particularly troublesome? The application is stable and meets non-functional requirement targets relating to availability/uptime. There are sometimes issues with interfaces which result in a 'degraded' service for the duration. One such interface is with HMRC systems through which data is accessed by CMG caseworkers. Other interfaces in to the core system are with online systems accessed via portals by UK citizens. 24. Is there any significant project activity planned that may impact the services? Please see response to Q18 regarding IP20 upgrade. Also significant programme of Tech remediation in plan. Transition processes in place to mitigate risk with Live Service Support input. 25. What is the demand on the app, are there any peaks and troughs, stability problems or ticket backlog concerns? Approximately 5000 users log in to the core system, with a concurrency peak of around 2500. There are positive trends evidenced in relation to ticket backlogs such as problems and incidents etc. 26. Will the client provide Level 1 support and access to their Service Desk? (What is your ITSM tool? Is it Tech Now?) If not client, then who? Yes - Level 1 support will be provided by our UXCC Team who operate 24*7 Service Now is the ITSM tool we use. 27. Are there any third parties involved in supporting the Application? There are a number of internal and external service providers involved in supporting the service. Internal and external colleagues work across the service lifecycle e.g. Design; transition and operations. 28. What will be the key asks that they can make us aware of in the contract – Evergreening, DR, Security, flexibility of end term date? Key asks will include Incident and problem management. Assessing impact of changes. Third line application support/management. 29. Are there any key tools essential to the running of the app we should be aware of? Service monitoring is performed centrally by first line support (User experience control centre). Additionally L3 Application support require access to logs maintained on staging server. There is also ELK which is used to provide OI. We use WCC to manage the Informatica Batch. BMC for additional Monitoring. OEM - Oracle product. 30. Will the early market engagement slide deck be circulated? Yes, we have made the early market engagement event presentation available.Please refer to the Opportunity Notice published on the DWP e-procurement tool. https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/guest/go/public/opportunity/current 31. Any indication of how procurement will be scored? The procurement will be evaluated in accordance with the DOS Buyers Guide.https://www.gov.uk/guidance/digital-outcomes-and-specialists-buyers-guide 32. What improvements do you see in the service over the potential lifetime of the contract? There is a stated strategy of moving from Children's monolithic applications based on COTS products to DWP Reference Architecture that is based on events and microservices principles. This will not be big-bang and complex transition planning is underway and will continue to evolve whilst we operate in bi-modal IT mode over the next 5 - 7 years. We govern changes every two weeks and evaluate how best to cater for change balancing all factors including cost, time, quality, feature/benefits and strategy. 33. How long is the contract for? Anticipated contract length will be up-to 2 years with a possible 6 month extension period. 34. Do you foresee that there will be a TUPE undertaking? We believe TUPE would apply to this contract. Information will be provided to shortlisted Bidders as part of the RfP. 35. Is organisational transformation and organisational change management and end user training part of the services to be provided? Supporting Organisational transformation and change may be required but end user training is not a requirement. 36. How many people are we talking about here? Is it 30, 40, 50 people? Or is this the suppliers decision? Suppliers will be asked to bid against a proposed resource profile for both Application Development and Live Service Support. 37. What is your ITSM Tool? Service Now 38. Are there any key tools essential to the running of the app we should be aware of? Service monitoring is performed centrally by first line support (User experience control centre). Additionally L3 Application support require access to logs maintained on staging server. There is also ELK which is used to provide OI. We use WCC to manage the Informatica Batch. BMC for additional Monitoring. OEM - Oracle product. 39. Could you please share with us the deck which was presented at the early market engagement event. Yes, we have made the early market engagement event presentation available.Please refer to the Opportunity Notice published on the DWP e-procurement tool. https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/guest/go/public/opportunity/current 40. Is there a presentation or any additional documentation presented during the early market engagement event that we are able to access? Yes, we have made the early market engagement event presentation and additional documentation available.Please refer to the Opportunity Notice published on the DWP e-procurement tool. https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/guest/go/public/opportunity/current 41. Given that this is augmentation of DWP resources without fixed outcomes (yet) is this likely to be rate-card based in terms of scoring? This will be a contract for the provision of digital services. Outcome based deliverables will be defined within individual statements of work. Suppliers will be asked to bid against a proposed resource profile for both Application Development and Live Service Support. Further detail will be provided to shortlisted Bidders as part of the RfP. 42. What is the expected/anticipated Total Contract Value? The Total Contract Value has not yet been finalised. The budget for this requirement will be set in accordance with spending review rounds by Treasury and so can flex significantly depending on national and departmental priorities. It is likely, but not guaranteed that a budget between £7million and £15million per annum could be assumed as a guide. 43. Are the SLAs in fact SLAs with service credits, or GSOs? (i.e. more of a KPI) For DWP’s Service Management model to be effective, each supplier who interfaces with it must comply with a set of obligations covering the service management processes and their associated tooling interface requirements.These are Generic Service Obligations (GSOs) and they are designed to:Ensure each supplier is aware of how we need them to support the broader organisation and end-to-end supply chainEnsure we align suppliers to a common way of working in support of the DWP business needsInclude measures for obligations that are seen as key to the supplier’s ability to deliver the highest quality service to DWP. 44. What Improvements do you see in the service? There is a stated strategy of moving from Children's monolithic applications based on COTS products to DWP Reference Architecture that is based on events and microservices principles. This will not be big-bang and complex transition planning is underway and will continue to evolve whilst we operate in bi-modal IT mode over the next 5 - 7 years. We govern changes every two weeks and evaluate how best to cater for change balancing all factors including cost, time, quality, feature/benefits and strategy. 45. 1)Please confirm who the incumbent provider is, and how long they’ve been the incumbent.2)Please confirm the budget for this requirement. 1) Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) are the incumbent supplier, contracted since 2018 for a broadly equivalent service scope.2) The budget for this requirement will be set in accordance with spending review rounds by Treasury and so can flex significantly depending on national and departmental priorities. It is likely, but not guaranteed that a budget between £7million and £15million per annum could be assumed as a guide. 46. What are Current FTE numbers of staff/skillsets of resources to deliver the Service? Roughly how many people currently support the Application? Please refer to the Opportunity Notice attachment Annex 5 published on the DWP e-procurement tool: https://dwp.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/guest/go/public/opportunity/current