HM Land Registry

User-centred Design and Research Capability Partner

21 Incomplete applications

15 SME, 6 large

26 Completed applications

20 SME, 6 large

Published: Thursday 7 May 2020
Deadline for asking questions: Thursday 14 May 2020 at 11:59pm GMT
Closing date for applications: Thursday 21 May 2020 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

Summary of the work: HMLR is looking for a partner with specialist experience in user-centred design to help build knowledge and capability within the organisation and to help us put users at the heart of our land and property registration services.
Latest start date: Monday 3 August 2020
Expected contract length: The expected contract length is 12 months with the potential to extend up to a 2 year contract term
Location: South West England
Organisation the work is for: HM Land Registry
Budget range: Budget approval is subject to Cabinet Office spending controls, service assessments and HM Land Registry governance. A pipeline of activity is foreseen over the next 24 months, with an indicative budget against the requirements for this capability being approx £3.2m, but that scope could expand or contract. Each SOW will be assigned a set cost to enable tracking. HM Land Registry does not commit to any minimum or maximum spend at this point.

About the work

Why the work is being done: HM Land Registry’s digital and data transformation programmes will deliver a new generation of user-centred end-to-end land and property registration and data services. Currently, applications to change our registers are based around paper or PDF forms, supported by manual checking processes which are highly effective but time-consuming and expensive to provide.

Our transformation programmes will deliver user-centred digital-era services that will improve usability and collect validated data in order to make it simpler, cheaper and faster to view or change registered property information.

We’ll use state-of-the-art fraud detection to protect the integrity of the register and transform our internal systems, replacing multiple paper-based systems with a single, digital solution with high levels of automation.

Built on a suite of modern common components and a new technology platform, our services will be cost-effective to maintain and iterate, open APIs and data standards will encourage others to reuse government land and property data in their own software and services.
Problem to be solved: Our change programmes are ambitious and we need experts in service, interaction and content design, user research and digital libraries to support our delivery teams. We need to be able to react quickly to ensure we have the right people on the right teams to meet our programme goals and objectives.

This will also help us improve our user-centred design capability by giving our internal people the opportunity to work alongside and learn from more experienced people in the same specialist digital roles.

We need a partner who will play an active role in our thriving design and user research communities of practice, taking the opportunity to pass on skills and experience, eg through peer reviews.

We need to improve our service design capability to show how everything fits together and:

• bring delivery teams, stakeholders, operational and frontline colleagues together with a sense of shared purpose
• identify common problems we need to solve, to help with prioritisation and planning and reduce duplicated work

We also need to improve our capability to record, consolidate and share the insight we gain from user research so that everyone in the organisation can use it to improve their understanding of our users.
Who the users are and what they need to do: • As a conveyancer, change a property’s ownership and other registered details so that the title information is updated to reflect new ownership and interests after a sale or transfer
• As a lender, confirm that a mortgage or other financial charge has been added or removed for a title as part of a sale or transfer
• As a HMLR caseworker, check applications that can’t be processed automatically so that the proposed register change can be made or rejected
• As citizens, businesses, government and not-for-profit organisations, find and view registered title, ownership and interests and title extents for land and property registered in England and Wales
• As businesses, government and not-for-profit organisations, access and use land and property data so that it can be used for planning, research and/or commercial purposes
Early market engagement: Not applicable
Any work that’s already been done: HMLR’s digital and data programmes are in year 3 of a 5 year funding approval. Work has initially focused on improving efficiency and reducing waste from the way we process applications to view, create or change registered information on land and property. We have completed significant user research with internal and external user groups and created detailed service maps and blueprints for end-to-end services. We have an emerging design system for internal and external services.
Existing team: • Digital delivery teams within HMLR change portfolio
• Design community of practice at HMLR
• User research community of practice at HMLR
Current phase: Not applicable

Work setup

Address where the work will take place: Seaton Court, 2 William Prance Road, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 5WS, although travel across England for user research may be required. Regular travel between Plymouth and Peterborough is expected for work on digital libraries.
Working arrangements: Minimum 3 days co-location per week strongly preferred, as most roles will be embedded within digital delivery teams.
Security clearance: HM Land Registry requires all supplier staff to have baseline personnel security standard clearance (BPSS). Some work may require security clearance checks - this will be detailed in the statement of work.

Additional information

Additional terms and conditions: The standard terms and conditions of a DOS framework agreement call-off contract apply.
Any claim for travel and subsistence will be made in accordance with HM Land Registry's travel and subsistence policy. T&S will not be paid for travel to the ‘home’ office (Plymouth) specified in the SOW.

Skills and experience

Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.

Essential skills and experience: Demonstrable experience of supporting agile digital software development in large scale programmes in public sector environments through coaching, pairing and mentoring

Demonstrable experience of using service design to frame whole problems for users, for example by designing service blueprints, experience and user journey maps

Demonstrable experience of facilitating design thinking through workshops with users, industry bodies, senior leaders and other stakeholders to support transformation

Demonstrable experience of delivering user-centred interaction design, using code and Axure RP to prototype responsive and accessible services that meet government service standards

Demonstrable experience of effective content design for services, creating content for digital and offline channels, from task-focused guidance down to microcopy in services

Demonstrable experience of planning, carrying out and providing insight from user research, including usability testing, unmoderated user testing and accessibility/inclusive research

Demonstrable experience of creating and populating digital libraries, including capturing, cataloguing and organising knowledge assets and helping users easily present, locate and search for information

Demonstrable experience of supporting customers to build in-house capability, including transferring knowledge effectively

Demonstrable experience of promoting a collaborative culture in your organisation, particularly when working in partnership with customers and as part of a multi-supplier team
Nice-to-have skills and experience: Experience of assessing services against government service standards

Experience of developing and establishing design patterns

Experience in writing (and coaching others to write) clear, effective user stories and needs

Carrying out effective user research through remote usability testing

Developing and cataloguing MS Sharepoint-based resource libraries

Following GDPR and data security best practice in user research

How suppliers will be evaluated

All suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal.

How many suppliers to evaluate

Proposal criteria

Delivery and accountability - Your approach to capturing clear deliverables and taking accountability for achieving these deliverables, including managing your people on site as part of a multi-vendor, multi-disciplinary environment.
Quality - How you ensure commitment to the quality of the deliverables, outcomes and people and ability to rapidly identify/ remedy / replace if an issue occurs.
Capability - Your approach to upskilling an organisation and building capability.
Capacity - Your ability and approach to deploy multiple resources at customer locations specifically in the South West.

Cultural fit criteria

User-centricity - How you champion the value of user research, user-centred design, and evidence-based decision making,
Working with others - How you have collaborated effectively with multiple organisational stakeholders and multiple vendor personnel in order to achieve successful outcomes for both the organisation and its users.
Knowledge transfer - Your approach to transferring knowledge to permanent staff within the client organisation .
Stakeholder management - How you work with senior stakeholders to influence transformation strategy for an organisation and its services.

Payment approach

Capped time and materials

Additional assessment methods

Case study
Work history
Reference
Presentation

Evaluation weighting

Technical competence

45%

Cultural fit

20%

Price

35%

Questions asked by suppliers

1. Can you advise how much of the indicative budget against the requirements for this capability of approx £3.2m is for the first 12 months of the contract vs. the full possible 24 months?: The £3.2million is estimated over the potential 24month contract. We would expect to see some work (eg digital library) complete in the first 12 months.
2. Can you tell us more about the current state of your digital libraries? Do they exist already or are you looking to build new ones from scratch? What information do they contain? How do you curate them?: User research is saved within folders in a variety of platforms (including SharePoint and Google Drive) for different projects, containing videos, raw material, insights, feedback presentations and audio clips.

The amount of research completed is significant but the way it’s stored makes it difficult to find and use, hence the need for a centralised, catalogued library. We have completed early investigations and research into what’s needed but have neither built a library nor decided how research will be stored, catalogued/curated or shared.
3. Is there an incumbent supplier? If so who is it?: We do not currently have a user-centred design and research capability partner. We are moving to individual capability contracts to support our transformation portfolio because we now have separate practices and communities for specialist digital roles, each led by heads of practice. Two of our transformation programmes are currently supported by our delivery partner Kainos.
4. Which UCD design roles does this procurement cover?: Service designer;
Interaction designer;
Content designer (for services);
User researcher
5. Given the contract value, do you have any expectations of the minimum turnover the winning supplier must have in order to be considered financially sound enough and with a good enough track record to be awarded the contract?: This is not an area we will be assessing at this stage of the procurement exercise.
6. Can you explain how the price element of the second-round scoring will work?: Price will be assessed based on a rate card analysis and opportunity for suppliers to propose where they are able to demonstrate added value.
7. One of your Nice to Have criteria is – Developing and cataloguing MS SharePoint-based resource libraries – What do you feel it is about SharePoint experience specifically that makes it a differentiator between different suppliers?: SharePoint is already in wide use within HMLR and meets our security requirements for storing large amounts of sensitive data. Whilst we are open to alternative solutions, any new tool would need to be fully assessed and approved by our information security team and other key stakeholders.
8. Who is the current incumbent and how long have they been in place?: We do not currently have a user-centred design and research capability partner. We are moving to individual capability contracts to support our transformation portfolio because we now have separate practices and communities for specialist digital roles, each led by heads of practice. Two of our transformation programmes are currently supported by our delivery partner Kainos.
9. Who has done all the work in the initial 3 years, if you have 5-year approval why are you now awarding the remaining 2 years to someone else?: The move to individual capability contracts reflects the fact we now have separate practices and communities for specialist digital roles, underneath heads of practice.
10. If you have a preferred technology stack, what are the main technologies?: The majority of our frontend stack is written in Python using the Flask framework. However, we are also trialling React on some projects now. UX prototypes use NodeJS and the ExpressJS framework based on a cross-government prototyping kit. In future we would like to explore using Node/Express for all non-dynamic web services. In terms of UI frameworks we use the GOV.UK Frontend components from the GOV.UK Design System, with minor alterations for an internal HMLR Design System where needed. These UI's are backed by a multitude of RESTful APIs for service orchestration and/or data resource interaction.
11. Is there an incumbent?: We do not currently have a user-centred design and research capability partner. We are moving to individual capability contracts to support our transformation portfolio because we now have separate practices and communities for specialist digital roles, each led by heads of practice. Two of our transformation programmes are currently supported by our delivery partner Kainos.
12. Who is on the panel?: Responses will be reviewed by heads of practice and/or lead designers and user researchers
13. In your requirement – "experience of assessing services against government service standards" please can you elaborate further on the level and type of assessments you're interested in?: We are interested in your experience of ensuring services meet the government service standard at each phase of development.

For example, UCD experts who have assessed services as part of a panel, running mock assessments, supporting teams preparing for assessments, supporting other designers and researchers etc.
14. "Demonstrable experience of planning, carrying out and providing insight from user research, including usability testing, unmoderated user testing and accessibility/inclusive research" – are you looking for a single example covering all of these. If not, given the 100 word limit, what is your expectation?: We are expecting suppliers to demonstrate that they have experience of planning, carrying out and providing insight from user research.

Types of research should include usability testing, unmoderated user testing and accessibility/inclusive research and any other relevant experience you have.
15. Do you have incumbent agencies or preferred supplier relationships in place?: We do not currently have a user-centred design and research capability partner. We are moving to individual capability contracts to support our transformation portfolio because we now have separate practices and communities for specialist digital roles, each led by heads of practice. Two of our transformation programmes are currently supported by our delivery partner Kainos.
16. Do you have any restrictions on the maximum day rate chargeable for any role or under any Statement of Work?: We will not be applying a restriction of the maximum day rate chargeable as we do not want responses that only meet that rate. We expect that suppliers will provide competitive responses to the pricing schedule.
17. One of your questions reads "Demonstrate experience in providing skills across various Product Management roles including Associate and Senior roles". What does Associate mean in this context?: This question is related to a separate procurement exercise and has been addressed there. Please refer to the answer shared on the Product Management Capability Partner.
18. Do you require delivery and engineering resource for the project?: This procurement exercise is for user-centred design and research capability only.
19. Can you please clarify what you are referring to by MS Sharepoint-based resource libraries?: Using SharePoint as a place to create a digital library for storing, sharing, and accessing user research and insights.
20. We would be grateful if you could explain further what you mean by "digital libraries". Please could you give an example of the type of content in the digital libraries, and how information is currently stored?: A digital library, digital repository, or digital collection, is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital media formats.

Our user research is currently stored in team folders and Google Drive. We want a centralised library for storing, sharing, and accessing user research and insights.
21. Can you give more information regarding the types of assets that will be captured and catalogued in the SharePoint resource libraries and their use cases, and confirm if the users are internal to HM Land Registry or external e.g. citizen, professional users?: Audio, Audio transcripts, video, text, images, presentations, still images, digital documents.

We conduct research with both internal and external users.

The library’s users will be internal - eg user researchers, digital development teams and wider stakeholders.
22. Is there a current incumbent providing this or similar functions?: We do not currently have a user-centred design and research capability partner. We are moving to individual capability contracts to support our transformation portfolio because we now have separate practices and communities for specialist digital roles, each led by heads of practice. Two of our transformation programmes are currently supported by our delivery partner Kainos.
23. How many concurrent projects do you envisage running at any one time?: We are currently running 22 agile cross-functional delivery teams, most of which require interaction designers and user researchers.
24. Will the research artefacts, such as the end-to-tend service blueprint be made available prior to proposal?: No, proposals should give examples from your previous experience.
25. Can more information be shared regarding the new technology platform that has been implemented?: All applications will be deployed to our platform-as-a-service, built using an opinionated stack of open source software over commodity cloud services. This supports the full lifecycle of core systems, from development to operation. In terms of the deployment pipeline, Jenkins is used to build images and run automated tests, SonarQube for code quality analysis, Nexus for depdendency management, OpenShift Container Platform uses Kubernetes to deploy Docker containers, Helm configures those containers and Twistlock provides inspection for the lifetime of that container. This is all deployed on a mix of AWS and on-premise infrastructure.
26. Are there any incumbent suppliers?: We do not currently have a user-centred design and research capability partner. We are moving to individual capability contracts to support our transformation portfolio because we now have separate practices and communities for specialist digital roles, each led by heads of practice. Two of our transformation programmes are currently supported by our delivery partner Kainos.
27. Outside of the HMLR team, are any further collaborations anticipated?: Successful suppliers will be working within a multi-supplier environment. For example, with our capability partners for business analysis and product management.
28. How well formed or how far has the vision for the new service delivery been defined?: Considerable work has been done and we now need to bring the various elements together. The successful supplier will work with us on high-level service design work that will help us develop and realise our vision for land and property registration services.
29. What expectations are there regarding the size of team required by the supplier: We are currently running 22 agile cross-functional delivery teams, most of which require interaction designers and user researchers.

We anticipate the supplier will need to provide 2-5 interaction designers and 2-4 user researchers at any point in time to work on our 22 teams. The average duration for each role is expected to be between 6 to 12 months, depending on the project. We expect that service design and digital library expertise is likely to be provided at programme and community level respectively.
Our business strategy provides a high-level overview.
30. Are there any high-level dates/a roadmap that can be shared at this point, to provide an overview of anticipated rollout of any newly defined services/products?: Our business strategy provides a high-level overview: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662811/HM_Land_Registry_Business_strategy_2017_to_2022.pdf
31. Do you have your own research labs in house?: We do not have a dedicated research lab. We use GDS and other governmental labs (which are in the main free to use) for research with citizens. Our researchers generally do contextual research with professional users in their workplace. We also do remote usability testing.
32. Are you looking to source research labs as part of this opportunity if you do not have these in house?: We are not looking to source research labs as part of this opportunity.
33. What knowledge management or cataloguing software do you use to optimise taxonomy and search in your knowledge assets?: We have completed early investigations and research into what’s needed but have neither built a knowledge/research library nor decided how research will be stored, catalogued/curated or shared.

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