Awarded to Rainmaker Solutions

Start date: Tuesday 26 June 2018
Value: £124,500
Company size: SME

Hackney Council

Discovery phase and development of an MVP for a ‘Hackney Welcome’ service

4 Incomplete applications

3 SME, 1 large

15 Completed applications

13 SME, 2 large

• Published: Sunday 4 March 2018
• Deadline for asking questions: Friday 9 March 2018 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Sunday 18 March 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Discovery and development of an MVP that joins-up council services for people moving in to the borough.
• Latest start date: Monday 16 April 2018
• Expected contract length: 6 months
• Location: London
• Organisation the work is for: Hackney Council
• Budget range: Up to £130,000 exc VAT for the project.

About the work

• Why the work is being done: The council wants to understand whether it can join-up services around people’s life events. ; ; Over 70,000 people are believed to move in to Hackney over a five year period. More than 20,000 people have registered a change of address via the Council’s ‘One Account’. ; ; On moving in to the Borough, many residents may need to:; - registering to vote,; - paying Council tax, ; - apply for a parking permit, ; ; Others may benefit from:; - library membership, ; - leisure centre memberships,; - school applications; - knowing when bins are collected; - finding their councillor’s advice surgery
• Problem to be solved: On moving in to the Borough, citizens can access individual services. ; ; Once a citizen is registered for Council tax, their details are likely to be available on Citizen Index, enabling authentication for online services. ; ; However, in common with most local authorities, the Council does not promote these as part of a package or product, or proactively enable residents to access relevant services.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As a newly arrived user I need to:; - register for council tax so that I meet my obligations; - get a parking permit so that I can park in a parking zone; - access library and leisure services so that I can benefit from public services; - know when my bins are collected so that I can put my rubbish and recycling out; - register to vote so that I can vote; - apply for a school place so that I can send my child to school; - get involved in the community so that I have networks
• Early market engagement: We are working with different agencies on two pieces of work to discover whether we can join-up council services for residents in debt.; ; The Council’s One Account is provided by Capita’s Advantage Digital product.
• Any work that’s already been done: The council has provided a number of services online (particularly council tax, parking, library services, tenant rent accounts).
• Existing team: We do not currently have a team dedicated to this project, but would be able to provide user research, developers and access to subject matter experts. We would expect a product owner to be identified through this piece of work.
• Current phase: Not started

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Hackney Service Centre, 1 Hillman Street, E8
• Working arrangements: We would prefer a team onsite for 3 days a week, most weeks in order to engage with the relevant services and build broader engagement with the style of working (eg through show and tells).

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:
  • Provide a multi-disciplinary team, including user research, service design, front-end and back-end developers
  • Demonstrate a track-record of user-centred design and Agile approaches
  • Have delivered a service that’s been assessed against a government service standard
  • Demonstrate experience designing services for a wide range of digital skills and confidence
  • Share their work freely and openly with the Council and the wider community
  • Be able to build or design a tool that’s so good, people prefer to use it
  • Show how it can support development of REST APIs to Hackney’s standards
  • Experience of developing design patterns that can be re-used for other services
  • Be agnostic of any particular software, enabling us to consider a range of options to meet user needs
• Nice-to-have skills and experience: Experience of working with apprentices - ideally from Hackney

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 4
• Proposal criteria:
  • Understanding of user needs from the service
  • Clarity of the approach
  • Experience from a similar project
  • Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals
  • Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers
  • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions
  • Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service
• Payment approach: Capped time and materials
• Assessment methods: Written proposal
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  60%

  Cultural fit

  5%

  Price

  35%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. Will a recording or transcript of the Q&A session held at 5.30pm on Wednesday 7 March be made available for those unable to join at the time?: We will try to record and share the session.
• 2. Could you please clarify what is meant by the "Hackney’s standards" in the essential requirements?: We have set out a set of standards for our API layer at https://github.com/LBHackney-IT These remain work in progress so we are happy to receive advice on other ways of developing REST APIs.
• 3. You’ve listed “Experience of working with apprentices - ideally from Hackney” as a nice-to-have requirement. How would you like apprentices to be involved in this project?: We encourage suppliers to work with apprentices. The Hackney 100 programme enables businesses to take on Hackney-based apprentices. We do not necessarily expect an apprentice will work on this project - though if the company already employs an apprentice, we would welcome them as part of the team.
• 4. Have any decisions been made around the tech requirements, and are there any that are mandated to integrate with the Capita system (if Capita Advantage Digital is to be retained)?: No decisions have been made in advance of the discovery phase.
• 5. What roles will you be providing to the project from in house resource and are there there any specific roles that you require to work on premise?: We have available a delivery manager, user researcher and .NET developer resource to support the project, should the agency wish. We do not necessarily expect the agency to work on premise for the duration of the project but key events (show & tell, sprint planning) will need to be highly engaging.
• 6. The opportunity states that a product owner will be identified during the discovery, is this foreseen to be a full time role as the project progresses or will they need support from us in this?: It is unlikely we will identify a product owner that will be able to support the project full time. We hope that a member of staff will demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm that they grow into the role, and find time to fulfill it, during the course of the project.
• 7. Do you have a preference when it comes to the technology used to build the MVP?: No.
• 8. Can we get access to your website analytics account or are you able to provide analytics reports?: Yes - on commencement of the project
• 9. Are you able to provide estimates on how many people will be using the service once built? e.g. How many people will be moving to the area?: We would assume the product, at maximum capacity would be used by c. 10-20,000 people per annum.
• 10. Are you able to provide logins for your One Account service so we can review how this currently works?: Yes - on commencement of the project
• 11. How old is your current website and what technology is it built on?: The website was redeveloped within the last two years and the CMS is licensed from Goss Interactive Ltd.
• 12. What systems / services will your chosen supplier need to integrate with (if any) as part of the MVP? And what technology do these use?: This depends on the scope of the user need. However:; - council tax and benefits services are administered by Capita’s Academy; - housing services are administered by Civica’s Universal Housing; - parking services are administered by Liberator’s eStreet