Development of Health & Social Care Standards Register and Alpha of contribution model features

Description

Summary of the work This project is to build a digital service that provides a registry of the key data and information standards for health and social care that meets the needs of care providers, their IT suppliers, standards owners and creators, and central teams performing digital and IT assurance and managing procurement frameworks. Expected Contract Length 4 months with potential for 4 month extension to cover Phase 2 Latest start date Monday 20 September 2021 Budget Range Up to £500,000 (VAT inclusive) for Phase 1 Why the Work is Being Done As set out in the Technology Vision, NHSX is committed to setting national open standards for data and interoperability. The needs of users of health and social care standards are not currently being met. There is no single place to go in order to easily find which standards apply to a particular setting, provider or use case, which are mandatory, and how to implement them in a way that delivers benefits. The aim of this work is to create a digital service – the Standards Registry – which will meet these needs by providing a core catalogue of existing standards and supporting materials that is easy for users to search and navigate; and a community tools to enable standards owners/publishers to update and maintain standards. To date, the program has completed a discovery and alpha of the core catalogue. This phase of work will seek to build the core catalogue features in CKAN to a grade that would support private beta, while creating and testing in alpha maintenance and contribution models for keeping the directory up to date Problem to Be Solved ● Development - build standards directory o Build the standards directory using CKAN, an open source data management system o Develop an independent frontend that will communicate with the data management system using APIs. This should provide enough decoupling so that additional features can be built which aren’t supported by CKAN and reduce vendor lock-in o Populate the directory with interoperability standards, APIs and services as supplied by NHSX - this could be via APIs, manual methods or website scraping ● Research and design - run an alpha into maintenance/contribution model o Explore sustainable models for keeping the directory up to date o Explore involving the interoperability community more in standards development and surfacing their resources/learning for national use o Develop service design for the maintenance and contribution functions Who Are the Users User groups: health and social care providers suppliers of digital / IT products and services to health and social care providers standards owners/creators procurement teams managing central frameworks digital and technology assurance teams User needs include: Difficulty finding standards Need an easy way to explore all interoperability standards, APIs and services in health and social care to get an overview of what exists Need to know which standards, APIs and services apply to my product/service or care setting Need to know key details such as a standard’s version number, whether it’s been assured and whether it has any dependencies so I can decide on the use Need to know if new or updated standards are in development so I can support them Need to know if an older version of standards exist so that I can support it if necessary Low levels of understanding Need to understand how to use standards correctly so that interoperability can be achieved Need to see case studies of interoperability standards in practice so I can understand the real-world benefits and learn Lack of mandation and enforcement Need to know if interoperability standards are mandatory for my use case so I can meet my obligations Work Already Done Discovery work, and alpha of core standards catalogue publishing and search features Existing Team The work will be with the NHSX Standards and Interoperability team, and incoming product manager. Supplier should be able to provide a product manager on an interim basis if required. Supplier will be required to conduct knowledge and skills transfer to an in-house or third party team to run and maintain the service. Current Phase Alpha Skills & Experience • Demonstrable knowledge of the CKAN platform • Demonstrate knowledge or experience of data standards and interoperability • Demonstrate experience of developing a digital service to public beta according to requirements of the government digital service standard, using agile methodology and working in the open • Demonstrable experience of applying the principles of user centred design and service design to the delivery of digital services, according to the government digital service standard • Demonstrable experience of conducting user research and alpha work in the UK health and/or social care system Nice to Haves • Demonstrate experience of taking a program through the government digital service standard assessments • Demonstrate experience of delivering projects using CKAN • Demonstrate delivery of similar projects (e.g. data portals, standards registries, information catalogues etc.) Work Location The work can be performed from any location, but it will be coordinated by staff in NHSX and NHSE/I’s London and Leeds Offices (NOTE - these staff are currently working remotely). Working Arrangments Work may be carried out from multiple locations including the Supplier’s offices. Attendance at NHSX offices in London and in other locations around England may be required for meetings. Given the potential impact on local services over the next few months, the project will likely be carried out completely remotely. Security Clearance BPSS Additional T&Cs Expenses will be paid in alignment to Department of Health and Social Care terms and conditions where prior authorisation has been obtained. Expenses will not be payable for London or where the resource is home-based. Subject to approval of budget, successful completion of a government service standard assessment and internal governance, this work may be extended to cover private and public beta work, with handover to an in-house team occurring during this extended period. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Approach to working in collaboration with in-house teams and health and social care organisations [10%]. • Approach to applying the principles user centred design and service design in agile delivery to build a digital service in the health sector [10%]. • Approach and methodology to develop and test a range of approaches for developing maintenance and contribution models [10%]. • Knowledge and experience in working with CKAN and data hubs or catalogues [10%]. • Approach and methodology to knowledge and skills transfer for service handover [10%] • Estimated time frames, team structure, skills and experience [10%]. Cultural Fit Criteria • How you have established trusted advisory relationships with senior stakeholders in complex organisations [6%]. • Outline your approach to working with a wide range of stakeholders including ones who have little knowledge of agile or user centred design, exampling established productive, collaborative relationships [6%]. • Outline your style &approach to working transparently & collaboratively when making decisions and recommendations, with at least 2 examples of how you have used the techniques successfully [8%] Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Is there an incumbent supplier? No 2. The first Essential requirement is “Demonstrable knowledge of the CKAN platform”. Would you accept demonstrable knowledge of equivalent open source data management systems? What impact would experience of equivalents, rather than CKAN specifically, have on the scores awarded? Would suppliers with CKAN experience automatically be awarded higher marks? We conducted a review of open-source data management systems and the recommendation was CKAN. Suppliers will have the opportunity to review design, and if on the basis of technical merits the service would benefit by use of an alternative open-source technology without compromising timetables we will consider. This should be on the basis of technical merits of the technology, suppliers should be able to deliver using CKAN in the event that this remains the preferred architecture.We will accept experience with other open source equivalent technologies. Scoring will be based primarily on the depth and breadth of experience and examples. 3. Can you provide a more detailed breakdown of the expected user groups and stakeholders? i.e. health and social care providers. The full discovery report can be found here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CrOL3SKY58o-132OKgFdqQNco1CCOK8X/view?usp=sharing 4. Can you provide any examples of standards / services that will be expected to be included in catalogue? Some of the existing standards types can be found at: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/information-standards/information-standards-and-data-collections-including-extractions/publications-and-notifications/information-standards-notices 5. Can more of a description be given as to what phase two would encompass? For example, the features to be included in any independent front-end. Phase 2 will be to build the technology implement the functionality to support the contribution model prototyped and tested during the Alpha, and run private and then public beta for both the catalogue and supporting collaboration tools that enable the contribution model - it is difficult to be more specific as to what those features will be as developing the service design and required features that meet the needs of standards creators and their stakeholders is part of phase 1. 6. Is is acceptable that our demonstrable CKAN experience is based overseas...? Yes, provided they are able to engage and collaborate during UK hours. 7. Is it acceptable to propose a hybrid UK/overseas team as part of remote working...? We understand the requirement for BPSS clearance. Yes, provided they are able to engage and collaborate during UK hours.