Agile Development Services for Funding Systems

Description

Summary of the work We’re looking for an experienced partner to iterate and continuously improve several components/products of our digital funding service. The components will exist in beta as minimum viable products. Other GDS phases may be needed in order to iterate them further. Expected Contract Length 2 years Latest start date Monday 3 January 2022 Budget Range Up to a maximum value of £9.97m Why the Work is Being Done The Funding Directorate within the ESFA is expanding and enhancing its digital funding service to cover more parts of the end-to-end process for administering non-competed grants. The Funding Service already has the capabilities to enable ESFA operators to calculate, contract, publish and authorise payment of grant funding. We are currently developing additional products to transform our data management and improve our assurance over the use of grant funding. We are looking for an agile partner to help us complete the development of these new products, iterate and improve them beyond a minimum viable state, and complete Funding Directorate’s digital transformation by contributing to a service that covers all parts of our value chain. The Funding Service enables internal users/operators to administer funds, and external users/customers to access and exchange all the information needed to understand their funding and deliver on the objectives of the grants. The primary customers are the providers delivering public education and training nationally, and they receive £64bn funding managed by ESFA. It is important that ESFA allocates and pays funding to the highest standards of accuracy and timeliness, and that we can gain an appropriate level of assurance over the use of significant public funds. Problem to Be Solved The Funding Service’s digital journey currently begins with the calculation of allocations or the design of contract/funding agreements, depending on the funding type. The preceding steps in the grant giving process happen off-service. The data we use in calculations is extracted from other services, validated, quality assured, amalgamated, and then uploaded. The Funding Data Service (FDS) will make data import and management a digital journey. In its MVS state FDS will bring provider data into the Funding Service via an API, and enable operators to approve it for use in calculations before releasing for consumption. We envisage FDS handling all the types of data needed in calculations, and supporting more parts of the operational process. To improve the assurance over the use of public funds paid through the Funding Service, we are developing another two products, a design tool called Plan Your Grant and a configurable digital forms builder. If all grant managers design their grants to a consistent standard – setting the level of conditionality appropriate to an assessment of risk – and then monitor compliance with those conditions using digital forms, ESFA will achieve the desired level of assurance with the minimum burden on grant recipients. Who Are the Users As an ESFA operator of the Funding Data Service I need to be able to gather various types of data, validate and quality assure it, approve it for use in grant calculations, and release it to downstream components of the Funding Service. In some cases, I will need to bring the results of calculations and payments back from other parts of the Funding Service to be used in the baseline data for future allocations. I also need to create a complete and accessible audit trail of all this important activity. As an ESFA operator of the digital forms builder, I need to be able to quickly create and configure basic claim and assurance forms to meet the assurance requirements of a particular grant. In some cases, I may also need to design small data collections – where an individual grant requires information that isn’t currently collected by the wider Department. In all cases, I need to launch these forms through the customer facing platform of the Funding Service (MYESF), so that my end users (grant recipients) do all of their interactions with Funding Directorate in one place. Early Market Engagement An early market engagement event was held on 18th October 2021, with the slides used on the day and Q&A responses shared to each supplier on the lot, as per the contact details provided by CCS. Work Already Done The Funding Service already has three established products, Calculate Funding Service, Funding and Contracting Service and MYESF. Together these components allow Funding Directorate to calculate, contract, publish and authorise payment of non-competed grant funding. We are in the process of developing three new products, Funding Data Service, Plan Your Grant, and a configurable digital forms builder. These three new features have been through discovery and alpha phases, and have either recently moved into beta or are due to do so shortly. So, by the time a supplier is chosen, all three products will be at advanced stage of being built. Existing Team The existing teams are comprised of multi-disciplinary agile delivery skills. Typical team size is up to 15 for each product, with a skills mix such as service/product/delivery managers, business analysts, developers, testing, architecture, user research and design professionals. The teams have permanent product managers; the rest of the roles are managed resources. The new supplier will be expected to provide resources across all or any of these roles according to the business need for the initiative. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Experience of successful agile product management, using knowledge of user needs and business goals to set priorities for delivery teams • Experience of successful agile development, software patterns, continuous integration and Test Driven Development • Experience of successfully delivering frontend and backend development, and Implementing APIs for internal and external use • Experience in successfully building SaaS and PaaS services in Microsoft Azure • Experience in successfully building scalable server-less cloud-based web applications using Microsoft Azure stack • Detailed knowledge and experience of C#, .NET, ASP.NET MVC, REST API, Cosmos DB optimisation • Detailed understanding of front-end web development (HTML/CSS/JS/SignalR) • Provide evidence of building funding systems and/or services within the last 2 years • Proven experience of successfully supporting customers to build in-house capabilities and ensure effective knowledge management and transfer Nice to Haves • Experience in working with identity and access security in Microsoft Azure PaaS environment • Experience in building services to high quality standards such as, or similar to, the UK Government Digital Service standards. • Evidence of successfully delivering Minimum Viable Product solutions within compressed timelines Work Location The supplier can work remotely in the United Kingdom. The primary locations for ESFA service owner and product managers will be Cheylesmore House in Coventry, Bishopsgate House in Darlington, and Sanctuary Buildings in London. Any travel to sites to be approved and will follow the DfE's travel and subsistence policy. Working Arrangments This will be a 5 day per week commitment and detailed working arrangements, including team location, size and make-up, will be contained within each statement of work. Day to day delivery will be governed by standard agile delivery techniques. These could be either a Kanban or a scrum approach (depending on the work) but the standard agile ceremonies appropriate to those will be undertaken. Security Clearance Personnel from the Service provider need to have both BPSS and an enhanced DBS check. Suppliers will be required to complete a supplier security assurance form to ensure they meet the required standard for DfE e.g. Cyber Essentials. Additional T&Cs Expenses must be pre-agreed and comply with DfE Travel and Subsistence Policy. Any expenses shall be submitted in line with DfE standard T&S policy. Primary work location stated in SoW will not attract expenses. No parking is available on site. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • • Technical competence in the identified technologies and agile practices • • Experience and methodology in approach to agile project using both Kanban and scrum • • Evidence of experience of effectively communicating progress, using a range of communication methods, to engage a wide set of users across government audiences, which include senior level stakeholders • • Demonstrate understanding/ability to successfully deliver digital products/services to Government Digital Service standards, or equivalent. • • Demonstrate approach to knowledge and skills transfer to enable the transition of service delivery to the business • • Demonstrate the ability to promptly mobilise expertise to scale up the team and flex resource when needed and to respond to fluctuating requirements • • Ability to demonstrate good value for money for the UK tax payer • • Demonstrate understanding of the challenges of agile service delivery in a multi stakeholder environment • • Demonstrate ability to build effective funding systems and/or services Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team – Collaborate, establish good working relationships, generate team spirit • Innovate – Act on initiative, drive improvements, balance risks • Build capability – Encourage learning, share knowledge, address capability gaps, act on feedback • Have effective measures with respect to health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health, in the contract workforce • Have a commitment to equal opportunities with respect to workforce diversity and inclusion • Actively support relevant sector-related skills growth and sector skills sustainability Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 35% Cultural fit 15% Price 50% Questions from Suppliers 1. Who is the incumbent supplier and how long have they been providing the service? Methods Digital Ltd have been providing the services for the Grant Management system for 12 months. Solirius Consulting have been providing the services for the FDS System for 12 months. 2. Can you please provide an anticipated timeline for this procurement that includes dates for:- Shortlisting Notification for Stage 2 – Submission Deadline for Stage 2 – Presentation – Evaluation period -Award Notification? We expect the timeline to be - Notification for Stage 2 (19/11) - Written proposal deadline 2 (29/11) - Presentation Days (06/12 & 07/12), Award Notification (16/12). These timelines are indicative only and subject to change. 3. Can you confirm if shortlisted suppliers will have the opportunity to present? Shortlisted suppliers will be invited to give a presentation for stage 2, along with a written proposal response. 4. Would ESFA permit the development of wireframes and prototypes in near shore locations (within the EEA)? We would not permit near-shoring or off-shoring for the purposes of this particular procurement. 5. Would ESFA permit Quality Assurance/Testing undertaken via a combination of near shore locations (within the EEA) and a supplier's UK Office? We would not permit near-shoring or off-shoring for the purposes of this particular procurement. 6. Would ESFA permit the development undertaken via a combination of near shore locations (within the EEA) and a supplier's UK Office? We would not permit near-shoring or off-shoring for the purposes of this procurement. 7. Can we access the Q&A responses from the early market engagement event? Both the slide deck and Q&A responses were sent to each supplier on the lot in accordance with the contact details provided by CCS. If those contact details were no longer relevant or staff were OOO when these were sent, please send a question containing the relevant email address to which the documents should be sent. You will be forwarded the documents and a response to the question will not be published as a clarification response. Questions are received anonymously via this portal. 8. Who from your team will be scoring applications for this opportunity and what positions do they hold? Our evaluation panel will be a mixed disciplinary panel to ensure an accurate scoring of all aspects of supplier bids, consisting of:Head of Service Delivery ResourcingTechnical Lead - Funding ServiceDeputy Service Owner - Funding ServiceGrant Management Product ManagerWe won't be disclosing the identities of our panel at this time 9. Can you give an indication of the number of people you’re likely to need at the start of the contract in January? While we are procuring a managed service provision and would expect the winning supplier to provide a solution to the Statements of Work in this period, we would anticipate a team that would cover initial exploration and information discovery. This would be initially a smaller team which would then quickly ramp up to full agile teams over two months. 10. Would you be open to collaborative bids from suppliers approved on the marketplace and if so how would you like to see it presented? We will be awarding to a single lead supplier but we would accept a sub-contracting arrangement or consortia bids, so long as the arrangement is detailed in the bid itself. In the circumstance of a consortium being shortlisted or successful, we would require evidence of an MOU between the lead organisation and other members to evidence the collaborative working relationship for this requirement. 11. 1) Is there a pricing ask (daily rates for given roles etc.) as a part of the response? 2) Will the chosen supplier be transitioning in from the incumbent vendor? If Yes, is there any transition period defined? If No, is this separate piece of work than what is already being done by incumbent vendors? 1) Only shortlisted suppliers will be assessed on the pricing component at stage two, through a rate card evaluation.2) There will be a handover period with appropriate deliverables accounted for within the first Statement of Work. We have planned in approximately 2 months of handover activity.