HMCTS Reform Systems Engineering Service

Description

Summary of the work A Devops service provision providing pipelines, automation and infrastructure that enables project development and Product teams to deliver quality digital products rapidly to support the business as well as supporting and enhancing Live services to Citizens and internal staff. Expected Contract Length 2 Years Latest start date Wednesday 1 August 2018 Budget Range The anticipated service will consist of multiple teams. Suppliers progressing to the "proposal" stage will be issued with a template to complete the financial section of this tender. The total Supplier charge, along with the total blended day rate of all resources will be evaluated as per evaluation criteria. Why the Work is Being Done HMCTS is undergoing an extensive reform transformation enabled by a technology work stream. Civil, Family and Tribunals (CFT) is one of the programmes of work enabling the transformation. The CFT Programme’s main technology objective is to develop efficient, proportionate and accessible digital services delivering access to justice via appropriate modern channels. The digital services being created are underpinned by an infrastructure and pipeline services capability for all HMCTS Digital services, as the organisation moves towards an in-house digital services capability Problem to Be Solved To provide devops, infrastructure and software related platform and pipeline services to in-house and SME development and product teams in a consistent way that promotes consistency and maximises reuse and adheres to government standards Who Are the Users As a developer I need to rapidly create and deploy quality code to meet the digital business needs. As a service manager I need to provide business services to users and citizens and third parties to the standards expected by government As head of digital operations I need to know that our digital platforms and services are reliable, scalable , supportable and efficient As a citizen I want to be able to use HMCTS Digital services at times that are convenient to me Work Already Done An existing service has been provided that has taken the programme from initiation to the start of public betas for a number of digital services and supporting digital products and components Existing Team The new team will be working with multiple SME providers across a variety of services ranging across all of the GDS design phases, together with working closely with Digital Operations Live support capabilities providing citizen facing live services Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Demonstrable ability (including references) of providing a devops, infra/software pipeline service supporting digital services, operating at a rapid rate and scale of change (3%) • Evidence how and where you have created, operated and enhanced CI/CD capabilities including technologies involved (3%) • Evidence the resources proposed have expertise operating DevOps and continuous integration/ deployment principles. E.g. Jenkins, Terraform, AppInsights, Security Controls. Experience /Knowledge of Azure PaaS and IaaS (3%) • Evidence experience of operating digital services utilising Azure technologies showing how sensitive security requirements are met and maintained including operating, maintaining firewalls,WAFS, other security appliances for secure government services (3%) • Evidence of experience of establishing, operating and enhancing large scale digital services and the associated support capability (describe the size and scale of the project/product teams to support) (3%) • Evidence experience of providing a development team support capability in an agile continuous delivery environment for a large digital change programmes, as well as supporting multiple large citizen facing services(3%) Nice to Haves • Evidence of providing a Systems Engineering capability service to a major transformation programme impacting more than 500,000 users a year (1%) • Experience of building and supporting services for citizens, professionals and internal users (1%) • Experience of embedding interval failover testing - (ChaosMonkey etc.) (1%) Work Location 102 Petty France, London, SW1H 9AJ and HMCTS Birmingham, B16 6TZ (some UK Travel may also be expected) The authority may consider suppliers hosting project teams at their own premises. Any benefits offered by suppliers in this scenario should be reflected in the value for money section of the written proposal. Working Arrangments The team should provide an on-site presence all working days, including for releases out of hours. Out of hours support for live services can be done remotely Security Clearance Many roles require access to production systems and live data, therefore will require SC clearance. All other staff will require BPSS. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Describe how you would operate and improve the service to support both end-users and multiple programme teams. Detailing process, resource and prioritisation approaches to enable HMCTS inhouse future state(5%) • Articulate how you envisage the overall service model operating to facilitate the ability of HMCTS to ramp up/ ramp down or swap out SME providers whilst ensuring quality and interoperability(5%) • Provide a proposed service organisation structure with roles and skillsets to provide the service (5%) • Propose how you would provide cost effective support for the Citizen facing digital services and the associated product/development teams (5%) • Describe how you would enable HMCTS to achieve its vision of the business owning and operating its digital services for the areas covered by this tender (4%) • Explain your approach to onboarding the existing service without adversely impacting the existing programme delivery timelines or the live services (5%) • Provide CV's for your proposed team key members artulating how their skills and capabilities would provide the necessary services(4%) • Provide case studies of relevant previous engagements where you have done this before, artulating any lessons learnt and challenges that could have been avoided(4%) • Describe how you are able to flex your service offering to meet rapid changes in demand as well as changes in technology (4%) • Describe how you will report on service attainment. Identify which measures are most appropriate to drive the desired outcomes and to enable identification of areas for improvement (5%) • Explain your service approach that will support and enable GDS digital by default, agile at scale, automation, CI, CD and live product support, how you’ll manage work, maintain quality (4%) • Describe how you would transfer the service/skills/knowledge developed during the remaining 4 year development programme to a civil service operated, live digital operations centre, located remote from the programme team(4%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Explain how you’ll ensure collaboration at all levels of the project and programme delivery between users, team members and management. Give examples of where you have taken this approach (1%) • Explain how you would maintain a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes and provide examples of this (1%) • Explain how the team intend to create/enhance a DevOps culture (1%) • Explain how the supplier will coach, mentor and support the civil service apprenticeship scheme (1%) • Provide evidence on how the supplier have worked closely with partner suppliers to provide a comprehensive DevOps service (1%) Payment Approach Time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 75% Cultural fit 5% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Under ''Essential Skills'', you ask about ''Evidence how and where you have created, operated and enhanced CI/CD capabilities including technologies involved''. Can you specify which technologies you would like us to elaborate on? Reference any technologies that could be deemed relevant to your example, the problem we are trying to solve, and the tender as a whole. 2. ''essential skills'', you ask us to include references. Are you looking at us providing references at this stage? References in the form of examples to the client work are expected. We will ask for actual references and case studies in the proposal stage where required. 3. What have been your sources to fulfil resources requirements on the project - is the existing team made up of only contractors, resources from multiple SMEs? The existing team and programme as a whole is made up of resources from multiple SME's. These have been resourced using a range of CCS frameworks and also includes Civil Servants. 4. Would the proposed resources work within a centralised team or would they be embedded in multiple work streams? The resources providing the capability will have to provide services related to central functions as well as providing capability to the development teams. In the proposal stage we will ask for Suppliers' recommended approach as to how best to deliver this. 5. Please could you throw some light on size of the team and the skill-level of the resources you are looking at? We will ask for resource costs for junior, intermediate and senior roles. The make up of the team will be proposed by the suppliers at proposal stage, with HMCTS providing further insight to allow suppliers to propose the most appropriate resources. 6. What is the budget that has been allocated for this? HMCTS has not set a budget for this opportunity however suppliers should bear in mind that the evaluation criteria for price is set at 20% of the total score. This will be charged as T&M and will be for a service outcome capability. Delivering the outcomes using resources agreed by both parties. HMCTS will work with the winning supplier to define the statements of works, and will cost these on the basis of the required resources. 7. Do you require support roles over and above Junior and Senior DevOps roles, for example: Lead Engineer or Delivery Manager? In the proposal stage you will have the opportunity to define your recommended organisational structure, and the roles you wish to utilise. Your structure should reflect what you believe will enable you to provide the best quality service whilst maintaining value for money. 8. You mention you are likely to need multiple devops teams. Can you give an expectation of the likely scale of the work? To clarify there will be a single DevOps capability that provides services to multiple devlopment and product teams. Currently there are in the order of 10 development teams. 9. To clarify the working arrangements: >The team should provide an on-site presence all working days - does this mean that the whole team does not have to be fully onsite, as long as at least some team members are onsite every day? >including for releases out of hours. Out of hours support for live services can be done remotely - We take the above to mean that there is a need to provide remote out of hours support for live services, but it's unclear whether there's also a need to provide onsite out of hours support to support development/other services? We expect resources to be on either in London or Birmingham, 5 days a week. Where there are releases out of hours, we expect the resources to be able to be based on-site. Out of hours support as a whole can be done remotely. 10. You mention 10 development teams - How big are these teams (as in how many resources per team)? This varies by team. Each team resource count is increased when required for specific features/functionality and decreased when development cycles complete sufficiently. 11. Is there a reason for the change in technology requirements from AWS to Azure? This section of the programme is required to be hosted within the Microsoft Azure Cloud space. 12. Do you plan on using the Crime programme's Azure platform or do you intend to build one of your own? The digital change programme is designed to work toward collaborative platforms with the ability to share information in order to create an efficient Justice system. 13. What part do you expect DevOps to play in enhancing digital services? There will be a single DevOps capability that provides services to multiple devlopment and product teams. The skills and experience requirements are listed and include a close relationship with developers and delivery services, to enhance CI/CD pipelines to facilitate new features as and when required by service management 14. For the criteria "Evidence experience of providing a development team support capability in an agile continuous delivery environment for a large digital change programmes, as well as supporting multiple large citizen facing services", are you asking for evidence of separate instances of each or an example from an environment where a large digital change programmes supports multiple large citizen facing services? This criteria is requested to evaluate the suppliers past experience in delivering a capability that is able to facilitate stable, secure and scalable services to citizens. Each supplier should evaluate and draw from past experience to articulate their ability to fullfil this function. Suppliers should add as much evidence as they deem fit to achieve this within the framework. 15. For the criteria "Evidence of experience of establishing, operating and enhancing large scale digital services and the associated support capability (describe the size and scale of the project/product teams to support) " are you referring to enhancing actual HMCTS digital services or the DevOps service? As DevOps is an integral part of service delivery (by supporting the development life cycle) of bringing new features/services and enhancing existing ones to citizens, there would be a requirement to understand the ability for the supplier to focus on facilitating the enhancement. 16. One criteria asks for evidence the resources proposed have expertise in....however you state in the specification that the resource profile will only be shared at shortlisting stage. This means that we will not know what resources will need to be provided at this stage, which makes this criteria unanswerable. Evidence the resources proposed have expertise operating DevOps and continuous integration/ deployment principles. E.g. Jenkins, Terraform, AppInsights, Security Controls. Experience /Knowledge of Azure PaaS and IaaS. The requirements are listed in the criteria. The capability should be able to draw resources who have and can demonstrate these. 17. Will the relevant SLAs be given to shortlisted bidders? Yes 18. What are the Out of Hours requirement for this service? Each service will have it's own requirements that will need to be catered for. As an overall principle services should be available and any degraded experience would need to be supported and rectified. 19. Are you referring to WAFS as “Wide Area File Services” or “Web Application Firewall”? WAF refers to Web Application Firewall 20. The DOS guideline allows us to quote only one example per question. Are you okay with us quoting more than one example (i.e more than one client) per question as long as we address the requirements of the specific question? More than one example is acceptable where the criteria requires. 21. Who is the incumbent provider(s) for this service? The programme can confirm there is an incumbent supplier delivering the works. The incumbents supplier name is irrelevant to this tender.