Awarded to Mastek (UK) Ltd

Start date: Thursday 5 April 2018
Value: £9,500,000
Company size: large

The Home Office

IPT L2/L3 Live service support /change

3 Incomplete applications

0 SME, 3 large

5 Completed applications

0 SME, 5 large

• Published: Tuesday 5 December 2017
• Deadline for asking questions: Tuesday 12 December 2017 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Tuesday 19 December 2017 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Supplier to provide a Level 3 application support service service across the following ITIL disciplines:; -Incident, Problem, Change and Event Management; -Release and deployment schedule/management; -Application and infrastructure management; -Capacity and performance management; -Knowledge management; -Systems Operations Management ; -provide sprint estimation and test requirements for new services/enhancements (projects)
• Latest start date: Saturday 30 December 2017
• Expected contract length: 2 years
• Location: London
• Organisation the work is for: The Home Office
• Budget range: £4 - £4.9M

About the work

• Why the work is being done: The Immigration IT Portfolio is delivering around 70 projects which impact over 20,000 Home Office staff and millions of customers worldwide; building a range of internal and public facing digital immigration services to our customers. We require a partner to provide interim Level 3 application support for these digital services. Our medium-term plan is to create and build an in-house capability, we are therefore looking for a partner who can transition the service and knowledge to this capability. Specific skills required are live support services, as per ITIL processes, and as set out in the GDS Service Manual (https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/the-team/set-up-a-service-team#the-service-team-you-need-in-each-phase).
• Problem to be solved: The IPT Digital Services currently receive L3 support from the development partners who are building the solutions. As more products and services go live, there is a need to ensure that development effort is maintained, and 'business as usual' Level 3 support is provided by a more sustainable and economic arrangement. Whilst the Home Office has an in-house live support team, this does not currently support digital applications, and until the Home Office develops its medium term permanent capability, we require a supplier to provide B.A.U. Level 3 support and transition knowledge and support processes from the established development partners.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: People from overseas who want to come to or stay in the UK who are accessing digital immigration services. Home Office Staff who need to make decisions, share information or process applications, who require level 3 application support
• Any work that’s already been done: The Home Office IPT Programme is continually developing new services for both external and internal users, which are being developed using AGILE methods (including the Agile product release phases). These services are currently receiving Level 3 support from the application development partners. The requirement is therefore to transition the support of these products from the Application development partners to the new L3 application support provider
• Existing team: The existing team is a multi-disciplinary agile delivery team, made up of product/service managers, business analysts, developers and design professionals.This team is a mix of customer, contractor and third party partner providers
• Current phase: Live

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Metro Point, Croydon. May require travel to other Home Office locations on request. Travel expenses are not payable within the M25
• Working arrangements: The L3 service is required Monday - Friday 09:00-17:00. (and outside these hours for P1/P2 incidents) The specific application services that the L3 provider will support are:; - Shared Service Bus (manages the flow of transactions between different systems); - In-Country fulfilment (provides a Biometric Residence Card - BRP - to people who wish to come to the UK for longer than six months); - ARC (identification card for Assylum Seekers, pending the decision on their case).; ; Annual business volumes: ; -In-Country BRP - 40,000; -ARC - 48,000; -out-of-country BRP - 370,000; -ICFN Legacy card service (being decommissioned) - 326,000
• Security clearance: Service Provider personnel need to be compliant with BPSS as a minimum, and CTC clearance if working in Home Office buildings. Depending on the nature of the role, if escalated and/or privileged access is necessary then there may be a requirement for SC clearance, which suppliers will need to obtain.

Additional information

• Additional terms and conditions: This contract will probably be deemed outside the intermediaries legislation (IR35) but could be affected by factors outside HO control. HO assumes no liability and will grant no guarantee of status.; ; The Buyer shall have no right to, nor seek to, exercise any direction, control, or supervision over the Supplier in the provision of the services. The Supplier shall endeavour to co-operate with the Buyer’s reasonable requests within the scope of the services, however it is acknowledged that the supplier shall have autonomy over their working methods

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:
  • Experience in L3 support services to meet the Digital by Default Service Standard https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard/report-performance-data-on-the-performance-platform
  • Defined, scalable and repeatable operating model which not only safeguards service support, but protects resource allocation
  • Experience in providing timely investigation/escalation and resolution of issues to ensure these are iteratively improved utilising insight, customer feedback, analytics and other data sources
  • Experience in creating effective knowledge articles and work instructions to assist the L2 provider with a "Shift Left" approach, freeing up available resources to concentrate on more compex tasks
  • Experience of balancing live support requirements with change to ensure product is fit for purpose and operationally relevant
  • Experience in definition of (and obtaining stakeholder buy-in to) service definition and delivery approaches
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Demonstrable experience of providing L3 support in multi-team agile delivery programmes
  • Experience in working in government in within a similar context
  • Demonstrable experience of providing visible, confident and inspiring day-to-day leadership, delivering and empowering others to execute activities
  • Evidence of investment in staff in the form of training and development plans mentoring and other career opportunities and FTE turnover

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 5
• Proposal criteria:
  • Demonstrate responsibility for delivery and ongoing management of L3 support for high-qulity digital products/services
  • Demonstrate approach to knowledge management/knowledge creation and skills transfer in a comparable L3 setting
  • Value for money
  • Illustrate core team skills/strengths, including CVs of key personnel
  • Demonstrate understanding of L2/L3 support boundaries, and how L3 can support "shit left" principles of continuous service improvement
  • Demonstrate experience of managing L3 ITIL processes within an Agile delivery project environment and experience with supporting other IT development approaches (e.g. Waterfall)
  • Domain knowledge of Home Office business requirements and issues
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Approach to service readiness
  • Approach to stakeholder management
  • Approach to developing a One Team approach
  • Approach to the development of client capability
  • Approach to people development
• Payment approach: Fixed price
• Assessment methods:
  • Written proposal
  • Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  65%

  Cultural fit

  5%

  Price

  30%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. CLARIFICATION OF BUDGET FIGURE: The DOS advert states a budget figure of £4.5-5m - please note this is an ANNUALISED figure. We anticipate that the total value of the contract will be £9-£10m over 24 x months (£4.95-£5m p.a.)
• 2. 3. Please clarify the date from which this service is required, being cognisant of the Christmas/New Year period and the need to mobilise/on-board a significantly sized team.: We Anticipate EVALUATING expression of interests (first stage) responses during the first working week of January 2018. This will be followed by short-listing, and the issue of ITT to down-selected bidders. We would anticipate appointing a preferred bidder by the end of February 2018, and envisage a 3 x month ramp-up and transition period. Initial resources are therefore likely to be required FROM March 2018, ramping up to a full team by the end of May 2018
• 3. The opportunity is called “IPT L2/L3 Live service support” but in the text only ever refers to provision of L3 application support and associated service management – is this correct?: The scope of the service is to provide Level 3 application support (inclusive of a small amount of development work - "small changes/fixes". ; ; The reason the opportunity is called "L2/L3" is to set the L3 requirement in context. The Home Office has a Level 2 provider in place, and part of the requirement is to improve the maturity of the ITIL processes, including at the boundary of L3 and L2 support. The winning bidder will need to work with the L2 provider's Continuous Improvement Programme to drive service improvement
• 4. Please clarify the date from which this service is required, being cognisant of the Christmas/New Year period and the need to mobilise/on-board a significantly sized team.: See above for clarification on anticipated start dates.
• 5. What level of commitment will the current development partners make towards enabling knowledge transfer to the L3 supplier (and thence onward to the L2 via shift left)?: All Programme partners have signed up to a collaboration charter, which embeds the principles of "One Team". This is supported by a Home Office governance structure that is designed to manage a multi-supplier environment.; ; In terms of the incumbent, The Home Office will work with them and the winning supplier to develop a detailed exit and knowledge transfer plan, although we would anticipate that the winning supplier will have a tried and tested transition approach to support this work.
• 6. Is there any TUPE liability likely from the current Agile/DevOps team, or can the Authority confirm that all existing team members have roles beyond this scope of work?: The Home Office is not aware of any TUPE liability associated with this contract. The incumbent provides the staff, and the contract is term limited to 2 x years. However, the Home Office will clarify any TUPE considerations with the incumbent ahead of contract award.
• 7. The specification states a number of annual business volumes: -In-Country BRP - 40,000 -ARC - 48,000 -out-of-country BRP - 370,000 -ICFN Legacy card service (being decommissioned) - 326,000 a. Please confirm what types of transactions these volumes relate to. b. Can the Authority provide a breakdown of the service volumes for the work in scope (events, incidents, problems, changes, releases, etc)?: The Home Office will request a report to be run to provide top-level ITIL/Service Management stats. Once this has been completed, we will publish details on how this can be accessed by Bidders (likely to be via email request to a central mailbox)
• 8. This type of application support requirement can usually benefit from a leveraged “factory” approach rather than a dedicated team, using shared resources to maximise the breadth of available skills, maximise efficiency and minimise costs. Is this something the Authority is willing to consider?: Yes.; ; The only caveat is regarding the Home Office security requirements - SC clearance is required for any partner working on live systems containing live data.
• 9. What service operations and management technologies/tools are in place today (eg for event/incident management, infrastructure management etc), what are being implemented and what additional tools are expected under this contract?: Service Now is the Home Office's primary ITIL service management tool. We use JIRA for workflow and ticket management. We will provide more information regarding infrastructure toolsets shortly.
• 10. Is it expected that this is an onsite service provision, or is remote service delivery acceptable?: Although the Home Office is content with remote delivery conceptually, service delivery location requirements are primarily driven by Home Office Security requirements. All supplier personnel need to have BPSS (or equivalent) to work for the Home Office. CTC clearance (minimum) is required to access Home Office systems; SC Clearance is required to work on Live Home Office systems (in an IT support sense), although there may be certain processes that do not require full SC clearance, and the Home Office is happy to work with the provider to identify such processes/roles.
• 11. Can you confirm the expected volume of incidents to be handled monthly or annually on each of the systems?: See answer to Q.7. - we will revert
• 12. Can you provide a breakdown of the incident stats by resolver groups (i.e. L2/L3): We have investigated the stats that are currently available, and unfortunately these are only summarised at an L2 resolution level at this stage. We are working on the data sets, and will look to provide these to bidders who are selected to proceed from the EOI to ITT stage. We apologise that we have been unable to provide these at this time.
• 13. Can you confirm the technologies that are in scope for 3LS in relation to the Shared Service Bus, In -Country fulfilment and ARC for both the infrastructure and application platforms? 2. Is the scope of L3 support cover for the infrastructure as well as the application? Or is the infrastructure already supported by the Digital Services Platform team and 3LS would liaise with them to resolve issues?: ANSWER 1 of 2; skills, role and tech; ; SOA Developer: ; - Oracle SOA Suite 11, BPM, BPEL, Java, SOAP, REST, XML, XSD, WSDL, XSL, Alfresco, Oracle PL/SQL ; ; ETL Develope:; - ETL (Talend + Active EON + Oracle PL/SQL); ; UI Developers::; - Grails, ; - groovy; ; JBoss Fuse Developer; - JBoss Fuse; - Java; - Xml transformation; - Tomcat; - Active MQ; - Camel; - PostgreSQL; ; Tester: ; - Test Automation; - Manual Testing; - Selinium; - SOAP UI
• 14. Support Roles and technology (continued): ANSWER 2 of 2; ; DBA:; - Oracle DB; - Dev Ops; - Jenkins; - Puppet; - Hiera; - AWS ; - Terraform; - Weblogic/Oracle SOA admin; - Unix / Unix Shell scripting; - Tomcat; - Alfresco Admin; - Active Eon; - JBoss Fuse Admin; - PostgreSQL; - Oracle DB; - NginX; - Squid; - Python; ; The infrastructure is looked after by the current L3 team and EBSA.