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Procurement details: RM1043.8-1-Government Legal Department Intranet Redevelopment - Alpha and Beta Phases-closed

23

Applications submitted

Two stage

Call-off procedure

£300000

Value

Outside scope

Off-payroll status

19 July 2024

Application Closing Date

1. Context and requirements

About adding context and requirements: test
Pre-market engagement: n/a
Work done so far: A discovery was completed in February 2024 which identified a prioritised list of user stories developed from user and business needs, opportunities to improve and a potential technical design approach to meet the needs. The recommendation from discovery was to prototype and test the following in alpha in SharePoint Modern: - different approaches to a devolved publishing workflow allowing a level of self-publication for teams and automating site creation - an improved information architecture and interaction design that aligns to government digital design patterns This establishes the preferred technological approach for the beta phase.
Which phase the project is in: Alpha
Existing team: The supplier will work with digital specialists and subject matter experts at GLD in an Agile multidisciplinary team to deliver the alpha. GLD will provide: - programme manager - subject matter experts (from the Communications team) - M365 developers - business engagement manager - content designer
Address where the work will be done: Government Legal Department, 102 Petty France, London SW1H 9GL
Working arrangements: The majority of work can be completed remotely. However, to help develop a collaborative agile team culture, the supplier should be able to attend workshops and meetings with stakeholders in our London office from time to time. Any travel and subsistence expenses should be within those costs budgeted at the outset of the project and shown separately. All travel and subsistence expenses will need prior approval.
Provide more information about your security requirements: Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)
Latest start date: 2024-09-02
Enter the expected contract length: 6 months
Special terms and conditions: This contract will be formed of alpha and beta stages. If the delivery of alpha is successful, the Buyer will choose to proceed with beta. If the alpha stage is unsuccessful or the Buyer chooses not to proceed with beta the contract will be terminated and no further costs incurred.
Write the term or acronym: Eagle
Write the term or acronym: GLD
Explain the term or acronym: The name of Government Legal Department's intranet
Explain the term or acronym: Government Legal Department
Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes
Indicative maximum: 300000
Indicative minimum: 200000
Confirm if you require a contracted out service or supply of resource: Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply
Summary of work: Delivery of the alpha and beta phases of an intranet redesign project, updating it from SharePoint Classic to SharePoint Modern.
Where the supplied staff will work: London
Where the supplied staff will work: No specific location (for example they can work remotely)
Why the work is being done: The current version of the intranet has been in use since 2016 and is based on SharePoint Classic, which is no longer being supported by Microsoft. Alongside the functionality issues being caused by the outdated technology, the discovery phase also identified access and usability issues for end users and a number of opportunities to improve.
The business problem you need to solve: The following pain points were identified in the discovery phase: - The current structure, design and navigation is preventing users from accessing the information they need - The layout doesn't work well with smaller screens - Users with assisted digital requirements are having difficulties using certain parts of the intranet - There are significant access issues for employees based in other government departments which means they cannot get core information and don't feel part of GLD - The ‘People Finder’ tool isn’t providing useful results - The current publishing model causes a bottleneck for internal teams The opportunities to improve are: - Improved information architecture and interaction design that aligns to government digital design patterns - A devolved publishing model that allows a level of self-publication and content management for teams - Workflow authorisation and site creation automation using PowerAutomate workflow functionality - Fully WCAG 2.2 compliant, for web content on a variety of desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices - Integration with MS Apps (OneDrive, M365, Office (inc. SharePoint), ServiceNow, and any other required integrations
First user type: Intranet users
First user type: Content publishers
Enter more details about this user type: GLD employees using GLD IT and GLD employees based in other government departments using their IT
Enter more details about this user type: GLD employees who have permission to publish content for their business area

2. Assessment Criteria
About assessment criteria: test
Select your pricing model: Capped time and materials
Additional assessment methods: Presentation
Additional assessment methods: Case study
Create your scoring criteria: 3
How many suppliers to evaluate: 3
Technical competence: 60
Cultural fit: 10
Social value: 10
Price: 20
Essential skills and experience: 40
Nice-to-have skills and experience (optional)
Technical questions: 60
Describe the essential skill or experience:: Expertise in iteratively prototyping, designing and building services in SharePoint Modern which meet both user needs and the GOV.UK Digital Service Standard
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 17
Describe the essential skill or experience:: Experience of using agile methodology to deliver services at all phases of the product lifecycle (discovery, alpha, beta, live)
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 17
Describe the essential skill or experience:: Expertise in migrating data from legacy systems
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 17
Describe the essential skill or experience:: Experience of working in integrated teams with customers and other suppliers
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 17
Describe the essential skill or experience:: Proven experience of communicating with a range of stakeholders, advocating for user needs and working to the government Service Manual
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 17
Describe the essential skill or experience:: Knowledge of technical and security standards aligned with the Technology Code of Practice
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 15
Describe the nice-to-have skill or experience:
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30
Explain the technical question:: Outline your proposed approach to delivering the alpha and beta phases of the intranet redesign.
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 20
Explain the technical question:: How would you ensure that the new intranet meets the required WCAG accessibility standards?
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 20
Explain the technical question:: Outline your approach to resolving intranet access issues for those employees who are based in other government departments using non-GLD IT equipment?
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 20
Explain the technical question:: Outline any anticipated risks and dependencies, and your approach to managing them.
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 20
Explain the technical question:: Provide a realistic timeframe for both the alpha and beta phases of the project.
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 20
Your question: Demonstrate how you have worked collaboratively and transparently with stakeholders and multidisciplinary project teams.
Enter a weighting for this question: 50
Your question: Demonstrate how you have successfully delivered agile projects in non-agile environments. What were the challenges and how did you overcome them?
Enter a weighting for this question: 50
Explain the social value question: Please provide evidence of your actions to invest in the wellbeing and the mental and physical health of the workforce would be allocated to this contract.
Enter a weighting for this question: 50
Explain the social value question: Detail how your organisation seeks to reduce its impact on the environment with reference to climate change.
Enter a weighting for this question: 50

3. Timeline
Publication of stage 1: June 20, 2024, 12:47 PM
Clarification period closes: June 28, 2024, 5:00 PM
Deadline for suppliers to submit their stage 1 responses: July 19, 2024, 5:00 PM

Clarification questions and responses

There are 10 questions and clarifications relating to this opportunity.

1. Please can you confirm whether the £200 - £300K is cover both stages of the project or phase 1 only many thanks in advance

This is to cover both phases.

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 13:05

2. Are you currently using SharePoint on premise and if so, which version, or is it SharePoint Online already. • What licences do you have already in place for SharePoint Online and are they planning on making changes to licences. • Do you have licences for Copilot for Microsoft 365 already? If not, would purchase of this be considered part of the project costs, e.g. coming off the 300k budget. • Do they have any licences for using Power Apps/Automate with premium features? • How many users do you have? Of this, how many work in the comms team, how many are or would need to be publishers. • They have mentioned a phased approach, an Alpha, Beta and go live, the project timeline is estimated at 6 months, is that to complete all 3 stages or only the Alpha?

"1. GLD is using SharePoint Online though the current intranet uses SharePoint Classic (Online). 2. GLD has 3,600 E5 licences. 3. No. 4. The E5 licence includes basic use of PowerApps/Automate. 5. GLD has 3,600 users of which 14 work in the Communications team. We haven't yet confirmed how many publishers there will be but we anticipate that there will be at least two publishers per team across the organisation. 6. The timeframe of 6 months is for alpha and beta."

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 13:04

3. 1) is the current environment hosted on SharePoint 2016 on-premises? 2) has it already been decided that the destination Intranet will be hosted on Microsoft 365 or are they considering other platforms?

"1. The current intranet is a custom application using SharePoint Classic (Online). 2. Yes. GLD has invested heavily with Microsoft 365 and are looking to leverage the existing suite of tools available."

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 13:03

4. Q: How many users are there in the GLD M365 tenancy? (Needed for license costs)   Q: Is the budget provided inclusive of ongoing costs such as support and/or licensing?   Q: Are there external/guest users who will be accessing the intranet? (Extranet type functionality)   Q: Are you only considering SharePoint out of the box solutions, or can a 3rd party SharePoint intranet product be used?

"1. 3,600 licensed users will be accessing the intranet. Users have an E5 licence which includes the DLP/Data Governance features (i.e. Purview). 2. The budget is exclusive of support and licensing. 3. Yes, approximately two-thirds of GLD staff are based in other government departments and are classed as external/guest users. 4. Yes, GLD's approach is to utilise most of the out of the box features provided by Microsoft so that the solution can be developed and supported inhouse and inline with Microsoft's roadmap and release approach."

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 13:02

5. 1. “Expertise in migrating data from legacy systems” Can you clarify what type of data is in-scope for migration and how many systems are in-scope? 2.How much development is expected to be required? Is the intention to replicate areas of the intranet in SharePoint modern? 3.Is the current solution on-prem SharePoint or SharePoint online? 4.Can you clarify if the current solution is not supported, or if it's on-prem: is it end of life? is there a hard deadline to get off by? 5. Do you have DEV & TEST SharePoint environments? 6. Do you have DEV & TEST Power Platform environments? 7. “GLD will provide: - subject matter experts (from the Communications team)” Can you clarify if you are providing SMEs on the information in the solution, and expecting the supplier to provide technical SMEs? Or are you providing both types of SME?

"1. Migration of data will be from our existing intranet which uses SharePoint Classic - this includes but not limited to: SharePoint Pages (HTML), .docx, .pdf, .xlsx. 2. Yes. The last three years of news posts, articles and active SharePoint pages. 3. The current solution is a SharePoint Classic intranet using SharePoint Online. 4. The current solution was built using a custom application on SharePoint Classic - Microsoft are aggressively moving to SharePoint Modern and some web-parts have already stopped working with the Classic SharePoint 5. GLD has a dev and test tenant, in addition to the live production tenant 6. GLD has a dev and test tenant, in addition to the live production tenant 7. Correct, GLD will provide subject matter experts on the intranet content, but the supplier is expected to provide technical expertise. The supplier and GLD staff will work together as one Agile multidisciplinary team to deliver the new intranet. We have 1FTE M365 developer who will be included in the team to help with development and to ensure a smooth handover to live service."

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 13:01

6. Will it be possible to get a copy of the "Comprehensive SharePoint Discovery Report" referenced in the discovery PowerPoint? • Will it be possible to get more detail regarding the integrations to ServiceNow, Peoplefinder and any other required integrations that exist with the current Eagle service? • Is the visual design envisaged to be based on the out of the box SharePoint Online Modern experience or more customised? Or will this be answered during the alpha testing phase as users get to review prototypes? • Have any page designs or mock-ups been prepared and if so, can they be shared? • Why as stated, do co-located teams not have direct or easy access to the intranet and the information it contains? Do all users trying to access Eagle have Microsoft licenced accounts to log in with? What kinds of problems are users having with access? • How many licenced users are there and what Microsoft licences do they have? • System Resilience was highlighted as a pain point. How does the lack of system resilience manifest itself? • The Statement of Requirements states that to deliver the alpha, GLD will provide M365 developer resources. We have our own M365/SharePoint development team, is it preferred to use the GLD development resources?

"1. Information is availabe by request only to eaglerfp@governmentlegal.gov.uk. Please submit requests by 5pm on Wednesday 3 July. 2. Integrations to ServiceNow are via M365 Search Connector, People Finder uses a SharePoint List. No other integrations. 3. The visual design will be part of the alpha phase. Where possible we want to use out of the box SharePoint. 4. No designs have been done. 5. Co-located teams use the IT equipment of their host department which can present access issues. 6. Yes, all users have E5 licences. 7. 3,600 licensed users will be accessing the modern Intranet. Users have an E5 licence which includes the DLP/Data Governance features (i.e. Purview). 8. The current intranet solution uses SharePoint Online Classic. Some web-parts have been deprecated by Microsoft. 9. The supplier and GLD staff will work together as one Agile multidisciplinary team to deliver the new intranet. We have 1FTE M365 developer who will be included in the team to help with development and to ensure a smooth handover to live service."

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 13:00

7. could you please consider the following questions please: The timeframe is given as 6 months – can you clarify whether this is for the Alpha phase only or for both Alpha and Beta (based on experience we strongly believe that 6 months is not adequate to deliver both Alpha and Beta phases)? Can you confirm whether the indicative budget is for both phases of work or just Alpha? We are concerned that there is a very short turnaround to deliver the proposal once suppliers are notified that they have been shortlisted and further assessment documents published. Can this be reconsidered? Could you confirm what you are expecting the supplier to deliver and what the split will be between them and the GLD staff listed? Can you provide information relating to the total number of staff and the number of departments? How many other Government departments are staff who would need access co-located in? Is there currently a team that manages and supports the intranet?

"1. The timeframe of 6 months is for alpha and beta. 2. The indicative budget is for both phases of work. 3. Unfortunately the turnaround time can't be changed. The project needs to be delivered within this financial year and therefore we need to complete the procurement process swiftly. 4. The supplier and GLD staff will work together as one Agile multidisciplinary team to deliver the new intranet. 5. The total number of staff is around 3,600 split into four high level business units. 6. We have staff based in about 15 other government departments. 7. Yes, we have an internal development team that supports the intranet as part of our M365 tenancy"

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 12:58

8. Can you please clarify if the members of the existing GLD team will be available to work on the Alpha/Beta full time , e.g. the M365 developer and content designer? If not then what percentage of their time will they be available?

Yes, GLD will provide 1FTE M365 developer and 1FTE content designer to work on the project.

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 12:57

9. In the tender documents their is no nice to have requirements outlined. Can you confirm these are not needed for stage 1? Also, in the 6 essential skills response section. Is the 750 character limit for the answer to all 6 questions, or 750 characters per question

"1. Yes, all essential skills and experienced have been outlined. There are no nice to have requirements. 2. The limit is 750 characters per question."

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 12:56

10. 1. How many licensed users will be accessing the modern Intranet? What licences do they / will they hold? Is the Department willing to acquire additional licences to implement the required Data Governance/DLP requirements? 2. Are you using SharePoint for controlled documents such as HR policies and procedures? 3. Is there an incumbent in place for this work? has that incumbent been involved in this process? 4. Are you open to the use of a SharePoint in a Box product such as our Mercury Intranet product which derisks and accelerates the delivery of advanced intranet capability https://www.id-live.com/mercury/ 5. Are you already using Teams for collaboration beyond video calls? 6. Do you collaborate / share information with external orgs / users? 7. What SharePoint knowledge do the IT teams, and other stakeholders, have? 8. What legacy systems are in scope for migration? 9. Are all planned platforms (devices/browsers) in line with current MS supported devices? 10. What change management processes are in place?

"1. 3,600 licensed users will be accessing the intranet. Users have an E5 licence which includes the DLP/Data Governance features (i.e. Purview). 2. No. Currently this happens outside of SharePoint and is a manual process. GLD has recently migrated business units to OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint, however, the practice of controlling documents i.e. versioning/approval etc. is manual. 3. No, the current intranet is managed by an internal team. An external supplier was used for the discovery phase. 4. No, GLD's approach is to utilise most of the out of the box features provided by Microsoft so that the solution can be developed and supported inhouse and inline with Microsoft's roadmap and release approach. 5. Yes. 6. Yes via Teams Guest access only. 7. The GLD project team have moderate/advanced understanding of SharePoint. The whole organisation migrated to the use of OneDrive, Teams and Sharepoint in 2022, so our stakeholders have end user knowledge of SharePoint but limited knowledge beyond that. 8. Custom application using SharePoint Classic. 9. Yes. GLD manages its platforms and devices internally and are in line with current MS supported devices for GLD internal users only. 10. There is an established change management process in place for improvements to the live intranet. Requests are made to the Digital team, which are then scoped, sized and estimated before being developed, tested and a change request raised (via a change approval board). They are then deployed to production, with supporting communications, guidance, training and support. The alpha and beta phases for the new intranet will follow standard agile prioritisation processes."

Last Updated: 1 July 2024, 12:54

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