Awarded to Thoughtworks Limited

Start date: Friday 1 June 2018
Value: £484,700
Company size: large
Government Digital Service, part of Cabinet Office

WP1598 - Development Capability for GOV.UK Verify

3 Incomplete applications

2 SME, 1 large

9 Completed applications

5 SME, 4 large

Important dates

Published
Monday 23 April 2018
Deadline for asking questions
Monday 30 April 2018 at 11:59pm GMT
Closing date for applications
Monday 7 May 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

Summary of the work
Back end software development to:
- Reduce the time taken to connect services to Verify
- Deliver interoperability with european digital identity schemes
- Perform critical upgrades
- Increase the number of users who successfully pass through the Hub
- Improve reporting and analytics capability
Latest start date
Friday 1 June 2018
Expected contract length
6 months
Location
London
Organisation the work is for
Government Digital Service, part of Cabinet Office
Budget range
We envisage this team will consist of 4 senior developers

About the work

Why the work is being done
Verify is committed to certain levels of service level assurance/availability and the onboarding of both services and identity assurance partners that this work directly supports. Furthermore, we have committed to an increase in uptake targets that need improvements in the system journey to realise.
Verify is also responsible for the UK government's responsibilities within eIDAS by September 2018. Software service provide the capability that supports the development of tooling.
Problem to be solved
To drive the adoption of Verify through delivering on the technical projects described and thereby making the project work better for citizens. This will include the design, installation, testing and maintenance of software systems, working in pair and mob programming in the areas listed above. Milestones for the programme team to be agreed. As well as 5-10% improvement to the Verify completion rate per quarter.
Who the users are and what they need to do
As a citizen
I need to prove my identity digitally both in the UK and in the EU
So that I can use online digital services that require identity authentication
Early market engagement
Any work that’s already been done
Live running service
Existing team
You'll be working as part of a multi-disciplinary digital team including user researchers, designers, product and delivery managers
Current phase
Live

Work setup

Address where the work will take place
The White Chapel Building, 10 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 8DX
Working arrangements
Onsite 5 days a week or 4 days a week with one day working remotely (by day to day agreement) but available on line for meetings, working conversations.
Security clearance
Individuals must either be SC cleared or willing to go through the SC process. GDS will sponsor the process however the cost will be charged to the supplier.

Minimum Baseline Personnel Security Standard by start of contract.

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
  • High capability JAVA (or C#) and Ruby experience
  • Proven experience with microservice architecture
  • Proven agile working / devops methodology
  • Experience of AWS / 12-factor methodology
  • Ability to work independently and move in a fast-paced environment
  • Excellent communication skills
  • Experience of leading teams (pref. multidisciplinary)
  • Experience in passing on knowledge in a structured way
  • Experience in acting as the technical expert in a team
  • Whole team must be ready to start on 1st June
Nice-to-have skills and experience
  • Pair and mob programming experience
  • Understanding of SAML
  • Previous experience in a public sector

How suppliers will be evaluated

How many suppliers to evaluate
3
Proposal criteria
  • Your approach to onboarding your team
  • Experience and competency in micro services
  • Your approach to transferring knowledge and experience to civil servants to support learning from this engagement.
  • Your approach to data privacy and security
  • 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.
  • Must provide evidence that demonstrates meeting the cultural fit criteria
Cultural fit criteria
  • Flexible working
  • Commitment to team working
  • Your approach to resolving technical and business risks or issues in a collaborative way that maximises productivity and business outcomes.
  • Culture of taking responsibility for owning issues and resolving any problems.
  • Commitment to excellence
Payment approach
Time and materials
Assessment methods
  • Written proposal
  • Work history
  • Reference
  • Presentation
Evaluation weighting

Technical competence

65%

Cultural fit

15%

Price

20%

Questions asked by suppliers

1. Individuals must either be SC cleared or willing to go through the SC process. GDS will sponsor the process however the cost will be charged to the supplier. Can GDS please confirm the cost, should we need to avail ourselves of this service?
The cost is around £100 per individual
2. Is this a new requirement to replace, reprocure or to add capacity to the existing team?
This is a new requirement with new deliverables to fulfil an on-going requirement. There is an incumbent supplier however evaluators will consider compliant bids on the basis that awards to the most economically advantageous response that satisfies all the criteria including cultural fit considerations, hence only the only best deemed response as determined by the evaluation panel will be offered the opportunity to contract.
3. Will this project be deemed outside of IR35?
The roles are outside of IR35
4. Experience in Ruby is listed as an essential skill. Can we ask the significance of Ruby as a programming language on this project?
One of our microservices is written in Ruby, the rest are written in Java. We also have supporting tools/scripts in a variety of languages that includes Ruby.