Government Digital Service, part of Cabinet Office

WP1544: Agile development Team to improve the technical documentation pages for GDS products

4
Incomplete applications
1 SME, 3 large
2
Completed applications
2 SME, 0 large
Published Thursday 1 March 2018
Deadline for asking questions Thursday 8 March 2018 at 11:59pm GMT
Closing date for applications Thursday 15 March 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

Summary of the work The intended outcomes for this project are to improve the design and usability of the Technical Documentation format and Services Toolkit within the Government as a Platform Programme. The existing Technical Documentation format being built on produces a static website and the intention is that this will remain.
Latest start date Monday 30 April 2018
Expected contract length 2 months
Location London
Organisation the work is for Government Digital Service, part of Cabinet Office
Budget range Maximum £52,000 excluding VAT (includes £2,000 for expenses)

About the work

Why the work is being done GDS provides a range of digital platforms that are used by teams across government. Each platform requires some technical documentation to be able to be integrated into government services. This project is primarily to improve the experience for the users of this documentation. GDS have already conducted user research to understand the issues - this is to work with a GDS content and interaction designer to provide the technical solution building on the existing pages and technologies used.
Problem to be solved Usability improvements to technical documentation format (Note: accessibility, progressive enhancement and responsive design must be taken into consideration according to the service standard):
- Add in document search functionality that feeds back immediate results broken down by document section (also needs to have a non js enabled fallback)
- Add ability for multi-page documentation as the format is currently just one long single page (making docs easier for navigation and analytics tracking)
- Enable URL redirects when section heading changes are made
- Add section for API reference info
- Create an API explorer integration with the tech docs format.
Who the users are and what they need to do As a service owner I need to know what platforms are available to me so that I can reduce the cost and time of developing or changing my service.
As a technical architect I need to know whether a platform is suitable for me to integrate into my service so that I can design my technical solution.
As a developer I need to know how to integrate a platform into my service so that I can implement the solution.
Early market engagement
Any work that’s already been done GDS has already completed user research to understand the issues and has considered design approaches to resolve the issues.
Existing team The supplier will be working with a team from GDS. In the team will be: user researcher, interaction designer, product manager, technical architect. None of these roles will be full time throughout the contract but they will be available for the supplier.
Current phase Live

Work setup

Address where the work will take place The White Chapel Building, 8 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 8QS
Working arrangements GDS envisage the supplier team will work in close collaboration with the GDS team but this will not necessitate onsite working throughout the project. GDS would propose the use of hangouts and slack or similar for regular communications. However some face-face communication will be necessary - perhaps weekly meetings. The supplier should propose their preferred approach.
Security clearance BPSS

Additional information

Additional terms and conditions All expenses must be pre-agreed with between the parties and must comply with the Cabinet Office (CO) Travel and Subsistence (T&S) Policy.

All vendors are obliged to provide sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures so that the processing meets the requirements of GDPR and ensures the protection of the rights of data subjects. For further information please see the Information Commissioner's Office website:https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-reform/overview-of-the-gdpr/

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
  • Minimum of 3 years experience designing and delivering outcome based services that meet both user needs and business requirements
  • Minimum of 3 years experience building user facing web applications
  • Experience providing skills across various developer roles across front and back end development
  • Experience with Ruby based static sites (e.g Middleman, Jekyll), Modern client side web practices (HTML5, component based design, modular CSS), API documentation tooling (e.g. OpenAPI/Swagger, Blueprint, RAML)
  • Experience of producing documentation micro sites, with a good understanding of how to present useful documentation for developers
  • Experience working to defined coding standards, producing a clean/easy understandable git history and utilising modern development testing practices
Nice-to-have skills and experience 3 years experience working on agile projects

How suppliers will be evaluated

How many suppliers to evaluate 4
Proposal criteria
  • Proposed technical solution
  • Proposed approach and methodology
  • How the approach or solution meets users needs
  • Estimated timeframes for the work
  • Value for money of the proposed solution
  • Team structure and organisational make-up
  • Please provide Work Histories of all proposed team members. All submitted Work Histories will be scored as a set.
  • All proposed team members must provide evidence that demonstrates they meet all the cultural fit criteria
Cultural fit criteria
  • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers
  • Transparent and collaborative when making decisions
  • Have a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes
  • Collaborating closely with colleagues in order to meet users’ needs
  • Delivering consistently within an agile environment
Payment approach Capped time and materials
Assessment methods
  • Written proposal
  • Work history
  • Reference
  • Presentation
Evaluation weighting

Technical competence

60%

Cultural fit

20%

Price

20%

Questions asked by suppliers

1. Which products in particular? Products involved are GOV.UK Pay, PaaS, Verify, and Notify. API explorer will be for Pay only.