Department for Transport

Blue Badge Beta to Live Contract

4 Incomplete applications

2 SME, 2 large

2 Completed applications

2 SME, 0 large

Published: Thursday 20 September 2018
Deadline for asking questions: Thursday 27 September 2018 at 11:59pm GMT
Closing date for applications: Thursday 4 October 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

Summary of the work: The supplier is required to:
• Host/support the service
• Support LA’s in terms of queries/questions/disputes raised (including invoicing LA’s)
• Continuously improve the service, focussing onthe backlog
• Move the service from Public Betato ive, asper the GDS standards
Important Additional Information can be accessed via this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UgJ7DiG7-FTYObcgZGQ3joUuq6awjv_v/view?usp=sharing
Latest start date: Monday 12 November 2018
Expected contract length: 12 months from start of go-live (currently scheduled for 1st January 2019)
Location: London
Organisation the work is for: Department for Transport
Budget range: The price you provide will be recovered from Local Authorities.

Please see Additional Information document for further details.

found on the link contain in" Summary of the Work" section

About the work

Why the work is being done: The new Blue Badge service is currently in Beta. DfT requires supplier to operate the service and deliver it from Public Beta to Live, Including passing the GDS live service assessment. . The Beta backlog needs to be delivered within the timeframe and continuous user research and testing is also required.
Problem to be solved: There are currently circa 3 million Blue Badge holders in the UK. Badges can last up to 3 years. Around 1 million Blue Badges are produced annually. Citizens can apply for a Blue Badge either in person or online. The contract for the current online application, Local Authority interface and central record ends in December 2018.

The supplier will:
• Deliver the Beta backlog&iterate the service
• Host&support the new service currently being built
• Assist with management&delivery of Continuous Improvement plan
• Provide support to Local Authorities
• Pass GDS Live assessment
• Support transition to ongoing ‘live’ supplier.
Who the users are and what they need to do: High level user needs captured below:

As a citizen
I need to complete the application process online
So that the application process is quick and efficient

As a local authority administrator
I need to be able to manage and issue Blue Badges in my area
So that I can provide a service to citizens
As a local authority enforcement officer
I need to check the validity of a badge
So that I know whether to take action or not
Early market engagement: No early market engagement has taken place with suppliers for this requirement.
Any work that’s already been done: The Discovery and Alpha phases were completed in 2017. Beta started in April 2018. Private Beta is scheduled to begin on 15th October and the GDS beta assessment is scheduled for 20th November.

The Badge Management system has been built, but will not form part of private beta. The citizen online application MVP is nearly complete and will be ready for private beta
Existing team: The supplier will be working with the DfT colleagues in London and DfT colleagues in Swansea, as well as leads from various Local Authorities. The core team is:

Anthony Ferguson – Senior Responsible Owner (London)
Keith Hughes – DfT Head of Parking & Blue Badge Policy (London)
Daniel Fyfield – Service Owner (Swansea)
Adam Griffiths – Product Manager (Swansea)
Current phase: Beta

Work setup

Address where the work will take place: DVLA, Longview Road, Morriston, Swansea SA6 7JL

Great Minster House, 33 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 4DR

You will also be required to visit various Local Authorities throughout the UK.
Working arrangements: We expect a full time engagement from delivery teams to meet the required outcomes.

We expect this to be a full time, 5 day per week basis (Monday to Friday). We value co-location, therefore we do expect face to face dialogue, in the spirit of the service standard, on a weekly basis.

Show and Tells will be conducted remotely, or in either London or Swansea.
Security clearance: Current Baseline Security Clearance (BPSS)

Additional information

Additional terms and conditions: Standard Framework and Call Off Terms and Conditions. Any expenses shall be submitted in line with DfT standard T&S policy.

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 understanding and ability to deliver digital services/products to the Government Digital Service standards

• Demonstrate experience in iteratively improving and successfully taking complex, high volume transactional digital services from public beta through to Live service

• Demonstrate a successful approach to completion of required Security Health Check, Penetration Testing, Service Readiness, and release reviews as part of quality and acceptance tests

• Demonstrable experience of transitioning a multi-faceted and complex service

• Be able to deploy an effective multi-disciplinary team able to start work no later than 1st January 2019.

• Proven track record of working with Local Authorities.

• Demonstrable evidence of excellent planning, coordination, communication and project management skills.

• Have demonstrable experience of delivering IT services that has millions of users.

• Significant UX and user testing credentials

• Proven experience of passing GDS ‘Live’ Service assessments.
Nice-to-have skills and experience: • Experience of working with Central Government agencies.

• Demonstrable evidence of delivering full services on behalf of Local or Central government.

• Demonstrable experience of utilising Open source technologies to affect change.

How suppliers will be evaluated

How many suppliers to evaluate

Proposal criteria

• How you will engage with Local Authorities&other stakeholders prior to contract start date to ensure that the new contract will go-live with no disruption to the service (15%)
• How you plan to work with and support Local Authorities during the contract (including how you plan to manage the invoicing process) (10%)
• How you plan to deliver the backlog items and what plans you have to ensure that new backlog items are identified for longer term continuous improvement (15%)
• Proposed team structures, including details of resource, positions and responsibilities throughout Beta. (including CVs of key members) (10%)
• Proposed methodology and approach to service transition from Beta to Live (5%)
• Proposed methodology to hand over to the ongoing supplier of the service after Live is achieved. (5%)

Cultural fit criteria

• Experience of working as a team with central and local government and other stakeholders and suppliers (5%)
• Proposed approach for working remotely (and co-located where possible) as part of the DfT Project team. (5%)

Payment approach

Fixed price

Assessment methods

Written proposal
Case study
Work history
Presentation

Evaluation weighting

Technical competence

60%

Cultural fit

10%

Price

30%

Questions asked by suppliers

1. 1. Please could you confirm the technology stack that has been established 2. Does DfT have a DevOps team that will be involved in future releases, or is this part of the ongoing requirement 3. Who would be raising incidents as per the incident management requirement 4. Is a service desk function required 24x7?: 1. Prototyping – GOV.UK front-end toolkit, header and footers, Node.JS
Back-end – Java 9Application container – Spring Boot
Web service framework – JAX-RS
Web templating– Thymeleaf
Datastore – PostgresSQL
Message broker – ActiveMQ
Job scheduler – Cron
Monitoring – ELK
Build tool – Gradle
Continuous integration environment – Jenkins
Source control – Git
Repository manager – Gitlab
Automated testing – FluentLenium
2. DfT will have a Product Manager and Service Owner only
3. Local Authority Users of the service
4. No. 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday.
2. Can you tell us who the current supplier is for Beta, and who the supplier was for Alpha, and who the supplier was for Discovery please?: Valtech UK were / are the supplier for all three phases.
3. Are you open to having delivery team located offsite 4 days per week and onsite one day per week?: DfT are open to all solutions relating to co-location and remote working.
4. Could you confirm that the criteria point "Proven experience of passing GDS ‘Live’ Service assessments" is indeed essential? As there have only been around 40 successful GDS live assessments so far you are limiting this opportunity to a handful of suppliers.: Thank you for your clarification question. Following internal discussions DfT has decided to move this criterion to the Desirable section and will no longer be evaluated as an Essential criterion.
5. In order to determine the price per badge please can DfT inform us the amount to be collected on behalf of APS: DfT is not permitted to share this information at this moment in time. This information will be shared with the successful bidder once this procurement has concluded.
6. Please can DfT provide readable versions of the diagrams in the associated PDF: please see link below

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CggQJxxOsMF28sIfffdhen7VX24o_L6H
7. What is the price per badge for production via APS? And, is this guaranteed not to increase during this specific contract period?: DfT is not permitted to share this information at this moment in time. This information will be shared with the successful bidder once this procurement has concluded.
8. What is the nature and level of support required by LAs?: The supplier will have to provide support to local authorities who may have general enquiries such as system access issues, querying why a blue badge has not been delivered, invoice disputes etc. DfT is not able to provide information around volumes
9. How are LAs currently invoiced by the incumbent? Will this system be expected to be taken on by the successful supplier of this tender?: The incumbent supplier invoices each local authority individually each month. Each local authority provides the incumbent supplier a purchase order (some provide one for the full year and some provide more than one throughout the year), and funds from those purchase orders are drawn down by each invoice. DfT understands that the invoices are generated automatically. The successful bidder does not need to take on this system and must propose its own solution
10. Could you please describe how the scenario in Section 17.1 of the 'Additional Information' could work? We don’t understand how a supplier could invoice LAs without collecting money.: 17.1 refers to the supplier invoicing local authorities for the services that the supplier will provide. 17.2 refers to the supplier invoicing local authorities for the services that the supplier will provide and the services that APS will provide. APS will be manufacturing and delivering the physical blue badge.
11. With respect to TUPE, please can you list the parts of the current live service that will be transferred, and/or the areas of the incumbent’s business that are to be taken over?: The DfT has provided a list of personnel that the incumbent supplier believes should transfer across to the new supplier. However, DfT strongly advises bidders to obtain their own legal advice around TUPE and how it will apply under the new contract.
12. What is the forecast growth in eligible Blue Badge holders, during the lifetime of the contract?: The DfT is planning to widen the eligibility criteria during 2019. We are currently forecasting a 5% increase in badges issued during the first year of the new rules applying
13. Is population growth / immigration expected to increase the number of eligible Blue Badge holders? If so how does that forecast to effect the number of valid Blue Badge holders during the lifetime of the contract?: The DfT is planning to widen the eligibility criteria during 2019. We are currently forecasting a 5% increase in badges issued during the first year of the new rules applying
14. Will DfT guarantee a minimum number of Blue Badge transactions during the lifetime of the service, if so what would that be?: DfT cannot provide any guarantees around the minimum number of Blue Badge transactions. However, information outlined in the document provides guidance to bidders around historical transaction volumes.
15. Will DfT accept any other commercial proposals as opposed to price per badge?: The DfT will need to be consistent in its approach to evaluating cost and so bidders will need to submit proposals in line with the requirements of the contract.
16. In order to compare suppliers, how will DfT evaluate price relative to services being offered?: Bidders will have to provide a fixed price per badge based on the requirement. DfT will then evaluate cost in line with the usual cost evaluation procedure
17. With regards to 'Demonstrate a successful approach to completion of required Security Health Check, Penetration Testing, Service Readiness, and release reviews as part of quality and acceptance tests' Is the supplier expected to do the testing – or be subject to the tests?: Penetration testing is a key requirement for all services going live. This is usually procured independently. The supplier is expected to undertake all other testing such as unit test, dev test, integration, UAT and other testing.
18. To what extent does the department provide coordination, escalation and inter-LA dispute resolution?: The DfT will undertake usual contract management activities and will act as an escalation point between local authorities and the supplier in the event that a dispute cannot be resolved. Under these circumstances, DfT will engage with the supplier to seek a resolution. DfT will provide support to both the supplier and LA’s throughout this process.
19. For cash management – is the supplier expected to build the actual cash management facility for receiving monies from the LAs and paying the printer?: Bidders will need to propose possible solutions for this process.
20. Will the supplier be expected to hold intermediate funds as part of the 2-part transaction?: Bidders will need to propose a solution, as per section 17.2 of the Additional Information document, that will outline how they will manage the process of invoicing Local Authorities on behalf of the badge manufacturer (APS) and how this process will be managed with APS.
21. Will the scores from the evidence round be used for final evaluation or solely for the purposes of shortlisting?: The scores from stage 1 will be used for shortlisting purposes. They will not be used for evaluating during stage 2.
22. How important is any driver to save money for the LA s as part of this solution?: An important part of this procurement is seeking the most competitive price for local authorities whilst ensuring a quality service for both local authorities and disabled people
23. What roles and resource are DfT expecting to provide throughout the lifetime of this contract?: Service Owner and Product Manager
24. Can we ask what criteria DfT will be using to judge whether an evidence answer 'exceeded' requirements and therefore scores full marks (3)?: The DfT is not able to release this information.
25. What is the timeline for procurement after the first stage (suppliers to providing evidence to the listed skills and experience)?: DfT intends to notify successful suppliers who will progress through to Stage 2 on 10th October. The current intention is to provide a deadline of 24th October for Stage 2 bids. If presentations will be required these will be held on 29th October with the view of notifying the successful supplier on 30th October.
26. What is the main location this work is expected to be carried out and does the supplier have control over where the work is delivered?: The supplier can have control over where the work is covered. There will be a requirement for travel to London and Swansea and other locations within the UK to work with Local Authorities.
27. Can the supplier of this service host the reconciliation, invoicing and billing within your existing AWS infrastructure?: Yes
28. To what level are the local authorities already engaged and what commitments and availabilities already exist?: DfT currently presents fortnightly show and tells to 207 local authorities. DfT sends email updates to LA’s every week and we’ve created a communications channel in Slack allowing all 207 LA’s to communicate with the project team and with themselves. DfT also holds ad-hoc meetings with LA’s individually and as part of larger groups.
LA’s are aware of the activities and milestones of the project and how it will impact them. They understand that the current contract will expire and when the new contract will start. They also understand our plans around private/public beta and the GDS beta assessment

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