Awarded to Unboxed Consulting Ltd

Start date: Monday 1 February 2021
Value: £910,000
Company size: SME

Buckinghamshire Council

Better Buckinghamshire Digital Support

6 Incomplete applications

5 SME, 1 large

8 Completed applications

8 SME, 0 large

• Published: Wednesday 18 November 2020
• Deadline for asking questions: Wednesday 25 November 2020 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Wednesday 2 December 2020 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Buckinghamshire Council is a new unitary authority formed in April 2020 from five former councils. We have developed a new website and now need to design, develop and migrate the services that are still delivered through the legacy websites, using user-centred approaches
• Latest start date: Monday 1 February 2021
• Expected contract length: 2 years
• Location: South East England
• Organisation the work is for: Buckinghamshire Council
• Budget range: Up to £910,000 over the contract duration

About the work

• Why the work is being done: In April 2020 the five former councils in Buckinghamshire became a unitary authority, Buckinghamshire Council. The new authority has created a Service Improvement (SI) team to work with departments across the authority to review and redesign services, following the principles of User Centred Design.; ; A new website, Buckinghamshire.gov.uk, launched in February 2020, but many services are still delivered through the five legacy district and county council websites (as well as a large number of microsites and sub domains) which gives a disjointed and inconsistent customer experience.; ; The Better Buckinghamshire Reset and Recovery Programme is being led by SI and aims to consolidate the current disparate services into a coherent suite of user-focused, county-wide services.; ; This new contract will provide the expertise to continue development of the website and provide the skills and resources needed to consolidate, redesign and migrate content from the old sites so that they can be closed by April 2022, at which time the old domains are scheduled to be withdrawn by MHCLG.; ; This project supports continuous improvement of end-to-end services as we redesign local government in Buckinghamshire.
• Problem to be solved: We have built a new website that’s based on the needs of users, is accessible, and consistent with the GDS Technology Code of Practice. We now need to consolidate and transfer information and services that are still delivered through the legacy digital estate in a way that is consistent with the principles of UCD and reflects the new council’s vision. The new services should make it easier for people to find information, complete tasks and understand what they need to do next.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: The new services will need to meet a wide range of user needs for residents, businesses and visitors. Some indicative high-level user needs are:; ; As a resident/business/visitor, I need to quickly access the right information and services online, so that I can meet my needs.; ; As a content publisher, I need a simple and intuitive interface, so that I can create and manage useful content.; ; As a developer of a digital service, I need to access content and data via an API, so that I can reuse canonical data.; ; As a resident/business/visitor, I need to be kept informed about the status of my service request, so that I can be confident my needs are being dealt with.
• Early market engagement: There has been no early market engagement
• Any work that’s already been done: A MVP website launched Feb 2020 and functionality has been added iteratively since then (eg new content types, simple forms, search improvements, accessibility improvements, rate this page etc) and some services are in the process of being migrated to the new site (Family Information Service, Libraries). However, at time of writing only 6% (by volume) of legacy content had been migrated.; ; Discovery work has been commissioned to support some service reviews (customer services, highways and parking) and some pre-discovery work has been done with the planning service.; ; A design system and content strategy have been developed.
• Existing team: Service Improvement Board (Governance); Head of Digital (Product Owner); Website team; Service Improvement Digital team; Suppliers of existing websites
• Current phase: Live

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Buckinghamshire. The home base for the team is Aylesbury.
• Working arrangements: In the current circumstances we anticipate the team will work remotely and communicate via MS Teams (preferred), Zoom or Google meetings. Other communications tools used include Slack, Miro, Trello. Agile ceremonies will be held by video conference and show and tells for each sprint hosted (and recorded) via Teams.

Additional information

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:
  • Demonstrate experience of developing complex websites based on Wagtail CMS (25 points)
  • Experience of building and maintaining positive long-term relationships with delivery team, internal stakeholders and other contractors working on different aspects of service design (15 points)
  • Have experience designing high volume digital services that meet a wide range of user needs (10 points)
  • Have knowledge of the user needs of local government service users (10 points)
  • Deliver in line with the Government service standard and technology code of practice (5 points)
  • Design services that meet accessibility legislation and best practice (5 points)
  • Design services for users with low digital literacy (5 points)
  • Have experience of developing content strategy (5 points)
  • Provide an agile multi-disciplinary team including user research, service design and product development (5 points)
  • Have the ability to work with internal IT teams to arrange hosting and integration with existing services (5 points)
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Provide evidence of having passed a government, local government or NHS digital service assessment (3 points)
  • Develop digital and design skills with in-house teams (3 points)
  • Demonstrate experience of delivering end-to-end service transformation (3 points)

How suppliers will be evaluated

All suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal.

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 5
• Proposal criteria:
  • Experience with the underlying technologies
  • Approach and methodology
  • How the solution meets user needs
  • How the solution meets the organisations’ policy or goal
  • Identification of risks and dependencies with a plan to manage them
  • Team structure
  • Value for money
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Work as a team with colleagues from across Buckinghamshire and with existing suppliers
  • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions
  • Take responsibility for their work
  • Support the learning and development of Buckinghamshire colleagues
  • Be comfortable standing up for their discipline
  • Can work with stakeholders with low technical expertise
• Payment approach: Capped time and materials
• Additional assessment methods:
  • Case study
  • Work history
  • Reference
  • Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  60%

  Cultural fit

  20%

  Price

  20%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. Would you be open to exploring a partnership with a UK based firm that utilizes a combination of UK based team members working alongside Eastern European for example, offering a hybrid model for success?: Yes we would be willing to consider this if the hybrid approach delivers our essential requirements. You would need to clearly explain how you would manage the contract when working with an overseas partner.
• 2. Can you please confirm whether support and hosting is in scope?: No, hosting and support is out of the scope of this contract
• 3. Can you please provide some indication of the volume /size of the estate to be migrated?: The estate to be migrated sits mainly on buckscc.gov.uk, aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk, chiltern.gov.uk, wycombe.gov.uk and southbucks.gov.uk and their subdomains. In total there are about 4,500 pages, but this includes a lot of overlap between legacy sites and a lot of old content that will need to be archived. There are also a number of microsites that will potentially be migrated as part of the service reviews.
• 4. Is there an incumbent in place and if so are they bidding for this opportunity?: Yes there is an incumbent supplier. It is likely they will bid, but we have not discussed with them in detail
• 5. In view of the requirement for Wagtail development, would you accept a subcontractor arrangement for the Wagtail development part of the requirement with ourselves acting as prime. Or is the preference to have one agency deliver all of the work?: We would consider a subcontractor arrangement. You would need to make clear in your proposal how responsibilities are divided and how you would manage the relationship to deliver the required outcomes