Awarded to Softwire Technology Limited

Start date: Friday 16 October 2020
Value: £300,000
Company size: SME

Cabinet Office

Development of new user journey on Register to Vote

10 Incomplete applications

9 SME, 1 large

4 Completed applications

4 SME, 0 large

• Published: Tuesday 25 August 2020
• Deadline for asking questions: Tuesday 1 September 2020 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Tuesday 8 September 2020 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Build of a new journey/new functionality for the Register to Vote digital service, on an existing serverless front-end, and a containerised middle tier on the public cloud.; ; The build of the new features must be completed by 31st December 2020, ready for testing and deployment January/February 2021.
• Latest start date: Friday 16 October 2020
• Expected contract length: Up to 6 months, dependent on project scope.
• Location: No specific location, for example they can work remotely
• Organisation the work is for: Cabinet Office
• Budget range: Up to £300,000; ; 290 - 360 days of work - to encompass the build of the new user journey, the associated changes to API endpoints and system mid-tier, and the build of an alternative manual mechanism to pass data between IER DS and local authorities.; These days should include: engineering, tech lead, testing, and delivery management services for the project.

About the work

• Why the work is being done: The work is to introduce new features/a new user journey to improve the online voter registration service offered to the public in time for the 2021 elections.
• Problem to be solved: The work is to introduce new features/a new user journey to improve the online voter registration service offered to the public in time for the 2021 elections.; The new iteration of the service is designed to increase the functionality of the system for the public and administrators at local authorities.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As a member of the public; I want to:; apply to register to vote using the online Register to Vote service, so that I can vote in UK elections; ; As a local electoral officer; I want to:; Download data from the Register to Vote service into my electoral management system so I can process applications.; Upload data into the Register to Vote service to verify elector information.
• Any work that’s already been done: The alpha phase of the project is due to complete early October and includes:; Prototyping and creating UX designs for solutions; User research; Workshops; Planning for the Beta phase; Gathering evidence and evaluation of benefit versus cost
• Existing team: It is anticipated that the Supplier will supplement the existing internal team which comprises of:; ; Cabinet Office team: Product lead, Service Owner, Delivery manager, User Researcher, Content Designer, Technical Architect, Policy leads, Governance leads; GDS: Information Assurance Consultant, and further operational, architectural and cyber security support.; Other suppliers who provide service support and hosting for the live service.
• Current phase: Alpha

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Offsite (must be in the UK)
• Working arrangements: Supplier can work from their offices or securely from home. You will collaborate with the Cabinet Office team on a daily basis.
• Security clearance: All individuals, including developers, with access to data, infrastructure, credentials, source code, architectural designs and other sensitive assets as defined by the Buyer must hold, or be prepared to undertake National Security Clearance to Security Check (SC) level or above, and be U.K based.

Additional information

• Additional terms and conditions: 290-360 days, encompassing the build of the new user journey, associated changes to API endpoints and system mid-tier, and the build of a manual mechanism to pass data to local authorities.; Days should include: engineering, tech lead, testing, delivery management.; ; Build must be completed by 31 December 2020, ready for testing and deployment January/February 2021.; ; The build will be:; Cloud first: any development will be on existing AWS infrastructure; User-focussed; Accessible: using accessible components and GDS designs where available; Secure; Integrated; Transparent; ; The Supplier must hold Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO27001:2013 prior to commencing the engagement.

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:
  • Recent experience designing and developing highly available, robust, resilient and performant public facing digital services that experience unpredictable spikey traffic patterns
  • Recent experience designing and developing highly secure digital services, conformant with all relevant NCSC cloud security principles and the Minimum Cyber Security Standard
  • Recent experience designing and developing services using AWS Lambda (NodeJS / TypeScript)
  • Recent experience designing and developing services on the Amazon Web Services ecosystem with cloud-native toolsets, such as API Gateway, SQS, RDS and DynamoDB.
  • Recent experience designing and developing compliant HTML, CSS and JavaScript code, using techniques such as responsive design and progressive enhancement
  • Recent experience designing and developing digital services that meet common accessibility compliance requirements e.g. WCAG Level AA and above
  • Recent experience of service and API design and implementation using Play (Scala) and DropWizard Frameworks
  • Recent experience of designing and implementing services using containerisation and container orchestration (e.g. Docker) approaches
  • Recent experience of developing systems using non-native tooling and services e.g. Github, ConcourseCI, Splunk
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Familiarity with the Twelve-Factor-App methodology
  • Familiarity with GaaP services e.g. GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Design System.
  • Familiarity with the Government Digital Service Standard (DSS) and the GDS Way

How suppliers will be evaluated

All suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal.

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 3
• Proposal criteria:
  • Design and architecture
  • Functional testing (e.g. BDD, unit testing, pairing, code reviews)
  • Non-functional testing (e.g. load testing incl. serverless, ITHC)
  • Compliance (e.g. DSS, TCoP, MCSS, ISO, WCAG)
  • Delivery, reporting & governance
  • Plan, timeframe, risks & mitigations
  • Team structure, consistency & expertise
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Corporate and social responsibility
  • Working effectively within governance frameworks
  • Working as a single collaborative and transparent team
  • Taking responsibility for the deliverables
  • Ability to engage with a broad range of stakeholders and existing suppliers
  • Taking initiative to solve problems and improve final solutions
• Payment approach: Time and materials
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  60%

  Cultural fit

  15%

  Price

  25%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. You mention that you would consider remote delivery. Do you have any geographical restrictions? Would nearshore be considered – for example, Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria, with provisions for collaboration and onsite presence as and when required?: As mentioned under the Security Clearance info: All individuals, including developers, with access to data, infrastructure, credentials, source code, architectural designs and other sensitive assets as defined by the Buyer must hold, or be prepared to undertake National Security Clearance to Security Check (SC) level or above, and be U.K based.
• 2. The requirements suggests up to 360 days of effort. Given the deadline of end December 2020 we assume much of this work-days will be completed in-house. How many of these days are being procured externally? Or, put another way, how many external resources are considered necessary to complete the external work requirement?: This is an outcome based procurement to deliver the requirement articulated and to be delivered within the timeframe identified. We had suggested number of days as a guide to the expected scale of the work for your information only. It is expected that the supplier will recommend a team appropriate for delivery of the requirement.