HMCTS Civil, Family and Tribunal Services – Tribunal Jurisdiction

Description

Summary of the work Flexible, outcome based Managed Service, meeting outcomes to timescales, budget and government service standards, delivering digital services to users of Tribunal services including development and live running of Beta services. Will include transition to new supplier and staged transition into business as usual as projects complete. Expected Contract Length 24 months with option to extend for further 25% as per DOS terms. Latest start date Monday 31 May 2021 Budget Range The budget range of the contract is approximately £1.05m for year 1 and £2.75m for year 2, totalling £3.8m. Budget ranges for the extension period will be agreed if required. HMCTS does not guarantee volume or duration of work for the winning bidder. Pricing will be evaluated out of 40% and pricing submission documents will be issued to suppliers who pass Round 1. Suppliers will be evaluated as per DOS criteria. The initial Statement-of-Work and Roadmap is available upon request from HMCTSCommissioningandCommercial@justice.gov.uk. It is recommended that interested parties request this document. Why the Work is Being Done The HMCTS Reform Programme is responsible for delivering the future HMCTS operating model through a portfolio of programmes aimed at delivering pioneering judicial services that better serve the public. The Reform Programme includes modernising the court estate, utilising the latest technology to digitise services where appropriate, speeding up and streamlining working practices, refurbishing buildings to reduce maintenance costs and providing much improved services for users, especially vulnerable witnesses and victims. The Reform Programme includes the CFT Programme, which aims, with its partners, to transform the Civil, Family and Tribunals jurisdictions through the design and delivery of new digital services. These digital services are being developed within a coherent architecture which maximises reuse, and to support the resolution of Civil, Family and Tribunal cases fairly and speedily, providing new routes to justice that fulfil the ambition of an ‘online court’. Problem to Be Solved HMCTS’ Reform includes the CFT Programme (Civil, Family and Tribunal) which is designed to develop efficient, proportionate and accessible services that provide people with access to justice via their channel of choice. Court and tribunal services must work for all their users. HMCTS is seeking a managed service provider to ensure that high quality digital services are developed for the Tribunals jurisdiction that are simple, easy to use and meet the government service standard. The managed service provider will be responsible for delivering the outcomes as specified in the contract and Statement of Work (SOW). Who Are the Users • Appellants in Person/Citizens –These infrequent users are typically experiencing major life events such as appealing decisions by organisations about immigration, asylum and benefits, are bringing an employment tribunal case or similar. • External professionals - such as solicitors, intermediaries and other legal representatives acting on behalf of their clients, local authorities or government departments. • Internal HMCTS staff – such as case workers, customer contact centre support workers, legal operations, finance, administration. • Judicial users – such as judges and their staff. • Other Government Departments (OGDs) Early Market Engagement None Work Already Done The CFT Programme has been running for several years and has delivered improvements to the legal process for all users. The digital services are being developed with a common capability approach; building common features and components once for all services, using a consistent design system, sharing understanding of users and their needs, maximising reuse of design patterns and reducing duplication of design effort. Some projects are in public beta stage whereas some are yet to commence and are only at the design stage. More details will be made available at Stage 2. Existing Team The current development is supplied by one external supplier supported by other CFT based suppliers for UX, QA and Architecture services which will remain separate. It is the intention not to award contracts for the upcoming CFT QA and Architecture procurements to a supplier who is providing services to a CFT Jurisdiction. The team consists of management functions and developers but the exact make up and numbers will be decided by the bidders. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Demonstrable experience of delivering complex transformation programmes, working in multi-supplier teams, managing cross-stream/ team dependencies, and planning with agile teams to articulate detailed delivery plans in 3-6-month blocks (SAFE planning). • Extensive experience of business requirements analysis, epic priority and user story development. • Demonstrable experience in implementing software using the following development practices and processes; Behaviour-driven development (BDD) and Test-driven development (TDD). • Extensive experience of building and maintaining code with a cloud-based infrastructure (e.g. Azure) using supportive technologies (e.g. Kubernetes). • Demonstrable experience with full stack tech products such as - front-end (.Node JS, HTML5, CSS3, SASS, Javascript), back-end (SQL, Java, Java Message Service and Apache ActiveMQ), database (Postgres, Redis, NoSQL). • Extensive experience of working with a complex microservices/platform environments integrating with common capabilities to provide an end to end business experience. • Technical expertise in integration technology (API's, protocols and standards), particularly developing and maintaining micro-services architectures - including RESTful APIs using JAX-RS and messaging using JMS. • Experience of agile testing/QA strategies and automation including Building unit and e2e: Jasmine, Karma, Protractor, Webdriver, Sourcelabs, Codecept, Mocha, Chai, WebDriver, Sinon.js, SuperTest, CucumberJVM, Gatling, Pa11y. • Expertise operating DevOps and continuous integration/ deployment principles such as Jenkins, Kubernetes, Ansible/Terraform, virtualisation for developing, e.g. Docker, Vagrant to build dev VMs proficiency. • Ability to scale up development teams quickly to meet requirements, e.g. scaling to deliver through private and public beta. • Ability to work with other teams developing common components for reuse: how they communicate requirements and work with those teams to ensure consistency and commonality in delivery. • Demonstrable understanding of applying appropriate security controls within a complex digital transformation. Nice to Haves • Experience of working in highly regulated environments with high transaction volumes. • Experience of working with workflow integration engines e.g. Camunda. • Experience of working on large volume API integrations with a multi supplier/ market model. • Experience of working on platform as a service (PaaS) e.g. Azure Cloud Native Platform • Experience of working as a team to pass GDS assessments or similar for external services including preparing and presenting work for assessment panels. • Demonstrate experience of knowledge transfer to the buyer’s organisation to build permanent back-end capability including user guides and training. Work Location Primarily London and remote working (post pandemic) Working Arrangments HMCTS services are built to government service standards using a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) essential. SoWs will be issued to define the development outcomes of each project phase and typically span three to six months. For any work performed at a non-base location and outside London (outside of the M25), all reasonable travel and expenses costs shall be met in accordance with the rates set out in the MoJ travel and subsistence policy. All expenses will require prior approval from HMCTS before being reimbursed. Security Clearance All supplier resources must have a Baseline Personnel Security Check (BPSS) which must be dated within three months of the start date. Any development work that requires access to production areas within HMCTS IT systems will require SC clearance which the supplier should provide. For further guidance see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-baseline-personnel-security-standard Additional T&Cs The initial Statement-of-Work (SOW) will be Capped Time & Materials but the Buyer reserves the right to use alternative payment mechanisms such as Fixed-Price, Incremental Fixed Price or Time & Materials for future SOWs. Suppliers shall provide transparency on the rates paid to resources and third-parties in the supply-chain on request enabling full visibility of charges and costs including overheads and profit-margin in an auditable form. There will be a 4-week transition period working in conjunction with existing service providers. HMCTS Reform use a monthly project performance dashboard to measure Supplier performance and to agree rectification plans where appropriate. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Please explain how you would deliver the outcomes for this service including previous examples. (8%) • Please give an example of where you have previously approached transition from an existing supplier to minimise disruption to the project. (5%) • Please detail your approach to the leading and owning of such a project on a managed service basis to ensure an effective and efficient delivery, incorporating previous cases. (8%) • Please outline your approach, with examples, to implementing software using the following development practices and processes - Behaviour-driven development (BDD) and Test-driven development (TDD). (4%) • State your approach, with examples, to the handing over of live services to buyer teams and other supplier teams –developing buyer capability and capacity and maintaining an exit strategy (5%) • Outline how you approach working with other teams developing common components for reuse including how you communicate requirements, and work with those teams to ensure consistency and commonality in delivery(8%) • Please outline lessons learnt from previous managed service contracts that you would utilise in this contract. (5%) • Please explain how you plan to sustain pricing within changing market conditions and how the proposal offers value-for-money for HMCTS. (8%) • Please provide evidence of communication skills, working with all stakeholders, gathering and interpreting feedback and communicating to technical/non-technical audiences. (4%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Describe your approach for working with multi-vendor and client teams across multiple projects at different locations with examples. (2%) • Explain how you would develop and share good practice and processes, including how you would support HMCTS to develop its in-house capabilities. Use previous examples. (2%) • Please explain how you will ensure collaboration at all levels of delivery between users, team members, and management. Give examples of how you will maximise the value from collaboration.(1%) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 55% Cultural fit 5% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers 1. Who from your team will be scoring applications for this opportunity and what positions do they hold? Three civil servants are planned to be on the Panel for Round 1 and Round 2. Their roles are:Senior Project Manager;Programme Manager for CFT;Enterprise Data Architect;Pricing shall be evaluated by the Commercial team. 2. Can you please advise the timelines of this procurement (e.g. shortlisted companies notified, anticipated contract award)? It is anticipated that suppliers shall be informed as to whether they have been shortlisted to Round 2 of this process around the end of April, although this is subject to change. Announcement of the successful supplier has been anticipated for mid May, although this is also subject to change. 3. Also, can you confirm if shortlisted suppliers will have the opportunity to present? As this was not stated in the published requirements, supplier presentations will not be required. 4. Who is the incumbent and how long they have been the incumbent? The incumbent has been in place since May 2018. HMCTS will not be advising the name of the incumbent supplier. 5. Who are the current third-party suppliers? HMCTS will not be advising the name of the incumbent supplier. 6. Please can you clarify who is the current development supplier? HMCTS will not be advising the name of the incumbent supplier. 7. Is there an existing incumbent? Yes there is an incumbent supplier and HMCTS will not be advising the name of the incumbent supplier. 8. Is there an incumbent? If so, who is the incumbent supplier(s)? Yes there is an incumbent supplier and HMCTS will not be advising the name of the incumbent supplier. 9. We requested the statement of work and roadmap document (as mentioned on the notice) last week but still haven’t received it – is the listed email address correct? HMCTSCommissioningandCommercial@justice.gov.uk Yes the email address is correct. The draft SoW has now been distributed to those who have requested a copy. 10. Can you confirm if the incumbent supplier is also a supplier for one of the current UX, QA or Architecture services? HMCTS cannot confirm whether the current supplier is an incumbent for UX, QA or Architecture Services. 11. When you mention a Managed Service, can you please clarify what you are meaning by that? HMCTS are looking to procure a managed service. Each SoW will have clear output based outcomes and deliverables. The successful supplier shall be responsible for "how" these are delivered and for the performance management of their staff. 12. Can you confirm if the Department is willing to sponsor SC clearance of supplier staff if the need arises? As HMCTS are procuring a managed service, it would be the supplier's responsibility for obtaining security clearance for their staff. 13. Is the Department willing to consider the use of near-shore or off-shored staff as part of the delivery team? The current position is that HMCTS has a strong preference for onshore due to the challenges with obtaining an equivalent level of assurance for services/capabilities delivered from outside of the UK. Whilst we can consider all requests, they will be subject to risk assessment/analysis. 14. In question “Demonstrable understanding of applying appropriate security controls within a complex digital transformation.”, can you please elaborate which security controls you are you asking evidence of? Security controls can include any measures that has been taken to govern, protect, detect and respond to unwanted access to Digital Assets i.e Websites/Applications/Database). HMCTS would like to see what tooling you are familiar with using as security controls. 15. With regards to Question 2 Experience of working with workflow integration engines. Is the question looking for experience of workflow products such as Camunda, specifically on automating business processes, or is it wider than that to focus on other integration technologies such as Biztalk? Yes the question is looking for experience of using workflow product. Camunda would be worth highlighting if applicable alternatively other tools would be useful to mention within your response. 16. One of the questions mention “high transaction volumes” – Can you please advise the level of these? The estimated volumes are 425,000 cases for First Tier Tribunals with 32,000 for Special Tribunals. This is subject to change. 17. For question “Experience of working in highly regulated environments with high transaction volumes. ” would you accept a non-UK (Northern Europe) case study of a highly regulated government department/environment? There is no preference on which examples are used to show experience. Suppliers shall be evaluated on whether they have addressed all areas of the question and scored accordingly. 18. Why are HMCTS not disclosing the incumbent suppler? HMCTS does not see how disclosing the current incumbent supplier would be beneficial to the procurement process. 19. There are mentions of Java technologies in the requirements. Would it be acceptable to use different platforms such as Node.JS and.NET, or is this strictly Java oriented? The platform is predominantly Java and Node.JS based 20. Please clarify what you mean by “Market Model” in context to large volume API integrations? Examples of working on a large volume integration environment which involves multiple suppliers, multiple teams building APIs which have to work together and exchange information. 21. For question “Experience of working in highly regulated environments with high transaction volumes. ” can you please elaborate what you mean by highly regulated environments? A "highly regulated environment" simply means a controlled environment whereby changes must go through a predefined change governance and assurance process and often requires an formal approval. 22. In question “Experience of working on large volume API integrations with a multi supplier/ market model.”, Are you looking for an experience where we have designed and built the APIs to be consumed by a range of suppliers? Please provide an example of having designed, built, integrated with APIs which are owned or consumed by other suppliers.