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Procurement details: Department For Education Financial Systems Development Delivery Service

8

Applications submitted

£4680000

Indicative Budget

Potentially in scope

Off-payroll status

26 January 2023

Application Closing Date

1. Context and requirements

About adding context and requirements: test
Pre-market engagement: N/A
Work done so far: Significant work has been completed to harmonise all the entities within Business Central and develop improvements however this is not fully complete. The other projects on the programme pipeline are at various levels of maturity and delivery, ranging from Discovery through to Live. Existing services are in a state of continuous improvement with an ongoing pipeline of Agile releases already planned.
Which phase the project is in: Not applicable
Existing team: There is an existing external managed service in place delivering this work which will require a robust handover if a new supplier is appointed. The supplier will receive Statements of Work (SOW), they will engage with a coherent internal delivery team. They will also engage with other managed services and Suppliers. The wider DfE's finance community will actively define scope of the pipeline. We are looking for a range of standard GDS roles to deliver the Departments Digital requirements to improve and develop the financial systems/interfaces.
Address where the work will be done: The Managed Service can deliver work where they see appropriate. At times it may be necessary and/or most effective to deliver services on site. The primary location of the deliverables will be at DfE site - Cheylesmore House, Coventry, although travel to other DfE sites to support business facing workshops and meetings including collection of requirements should be anticipated.
Working arrangements: The Delivery Partner will be issued a Statement of Work detailing the digital work commitment. Delivery progress will be governed via an existing Governance Board and Steering Group chaired by the SRO. The oversight of the work will be the responsibility of the Deputy Director (SRO) The supplier will be required to provide weekly progress/performance updates to the Head of Financial Systems and any role that the Department moves these responsibilities to. The working week will be Mon-Fri. System releases may be deployed over weekends/bank holidays to ensure continuity of services.
Provide more information about your security requirements: Security Check (SC)
Provide more information about your security requirements (optional): The successful supplier will demonstrate their compliance with ISO27001. Their employees should be security cleared (SC) or be willing to undertake SC level within 4 weeks of the Contract being awarded.
Latest start date: 2023-05-01
Enter the expected contract length: 2 years
Extension period
Special terms and conditions: Standard Framework and Call Off Terms and Conditions. Expenses must be pre-agreed and comply with DfE Travel and Subsistence (T&S) Policy. Primary work locations stated in SoW will not attract expenses. No parking is available on site. Suppliers must provide sufficient guarantees to meet the requirements of GDPR in line with Procurement Policy Note 03/17 Changes to Data Protection Legislation & General Data Protection Regulation Contract and Vendor Management will form a key part of governance and suppliers will be expected to complete cyber security questionnaire and Financial Viability Assessment.
Write the term or acronym
Explain the term or acronym
Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes
Indicative maximum: 4680000
Indicative minimum
Provide further information: A pipeline of activity is foreseen over the next 24 months. The current committed budget is £4,680,000 inclusive of applicable VAT liabilities (£2.37m - year 1) and are not to exceed the approval limits with the potential to extend to £2.31m for year 2. The indicative budget against the requirements for this capability is £2.34m per year, but scope could change. The Department will define the delivery requirements within each Statement of Work and the Supplier will be expected to provide a breakdown of requirements to fulfil this deliverable. Each SOW will define the cost of deliverables to enable tracking.
Confirm if you require a contracted out service or supply of resource: Supply of resource: the off-payroll rules may apply
Summary of work: We are looking for a managed service to deliver and develop our Financial Systems and Services. The delivery is a mix of continuous improvements to the financial systems and the end-to-end identification and delivery of new systems and service delivery (covering Discovery-Alpha-beta-live) as defined on the Programme pipeline.
Where the supplied staff will work: West Midlands
Why the work is being done: The DfE is responsible for timely and secure distribution of circa £ 100bn of public funds to educational institutions, teachers, employers, suppliers and staff. The Department's financial accounting and financial reporting systems are Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) and Adaptive Planning. We operate several related corporate systems and services across a suite of federated digital products - including payment technologies, identity verification Commercial (Jaggaer) and HCM (Workday) services, publishing tools and other internally facing services – via digital interfaces (largely enterprise API's). To ensure we can administer public services effectively, maintain pace with industry best practice, government policy and technological opportunities and risks, we operate a programme of sustained investment and renewal of our technology stack, processes and data. Services are provided to a range of entities within the Department’s accounting group in a ‘captive’ shared service model. The ongoing maintenance, security and development of the financial systems and interfaces is paramount to ensuring the Department can fulfil its responsibilities to continue to account for and pay monies into the education sector on a timely, transparent, and secure basis. The Department’s financial systems have a defined pipeline of developments to improve and develop over the next 2 years.
The business problem you need to solve: The DfE require a delivery partner to fulfil the digital delivery and development of the DfE's financial services. This will require a wide range of technical and delivery roles to successfully deliver significant change. The delivery team will form a programme of work and will be responsible for; continuing the delivery of harmonising the entities/companies within Business Central to ensure that they have the same (where appropriate) standard operating model, to develop enhancements for Business Central to secure the move to SaaS, deliver existing pipeline of improvements to Business Central via a backlog of requirements, ensure security patches are deployed to Business Central, implementation of a payments solution and develop and enhance the supporting API's. We anticipate that the team will be required to deliver outcomes for 5-10 projects at any given time from the Programme pipeline.
First user type: DfE Financial System Users
Enter more details about this user type: As one of approx. 1,800 users of DfE financial systems, dependent on my role, I need to be able to complete the following tasks so that DfE can comply with relevant Accounting Standards, UK Law and Managing Public Money (not an exhaustive list): • Raise, goods receipt and approve purchase orders and ensure that suppliers and education entities are paid securely timely and accurately so that they can continue to deliver DfE policies • ensure robust and accurate budget and forecast management • collect information from various internal and external stakeholders • evidence that all transactions have the relevant evidence and approval • identify and diagnose IT related issues and user requests in a timely manner so that they can deliver DfE objectives • raise system improvement ideas and track their delivery and success in order to enable processes to be completely more efficiently and economically All the above needs to be done with minimal risk and error, be fully transparent and recorded accurately.

2. Assessment Criteria
About assessment criteria: test
Select your pricing model: Capped time and materials
Additional assessment methods: Presentation
Additional assessment methods: Reference
Additional assessment methods: Case study
Additional assessment methods: Work history
Create your scoring criteria: 3
How many suppliers to evaluate: 5
Technical competence: 55
Cultural fit: 5
Social value: 10
Price: 30
Essential skills and experience: 17
Nice-to-have skills and experience (optional): 3
Technical questions: 80
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Extensive experience in delivery of large-scale finance projects including ERP implementation and migration of live, operational datasets
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Experience of delivering / developing software that complies to Government security guidelines or equivalent10
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Experience of delivering and continually improving services that utilise Microsoft Azure hosting and API Management
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Ability to easily scale resources up or down based on project needs and work effectively and collaboratively with other delivery teams to achieve shared goals and objectives
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Experience in Agile Business Analysis and product backlog creation and management
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Strong understanding of technical and business use of Dynamics Business Central or equivalent, E-Invoicing and payment technology (Open Banking, etc..). Knowledge of Business Central developments required to move to SaaS
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Experience of managing and proactively engaging internal stakeholders and building relationships to support successful digital/business transformation
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Experience of using Government Design Principles and Digital Service Standards or equivalent to deliver digital services, outlining the principles applied, methods adopted and ability to deliver successful outcomes
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Experience of cost v benefit analysis and benefits management with the ability to present results and analysis clearly
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the essential skill or experience:: • Experience of delivering business change effectively, identifying and articulating with and to end users impact of upstream/downstream business processes (including non-digital change) and securing and/or providing assurance over adoption
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Describe the nice-to-have skill or experience:: • Experience of working in partnership with technical delivery teams
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 25
Describe the nice-to-have skill or experience:: • Experience in designing services that meet both user needs and business objectives
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 25
Describe the nice-to-have skill or experience:: Experience of complex database management, data architecture and non-functional performance improvement (eg maximising processing speeds/telemetry)
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 25
Describe the nice-to-have skill or experience:: • Experience of working with a Microsoft Gold Partner
Enter a weighting for this skill or experience in whole numbers, for example 30: 25
Explain the technical question:: Demonstrable experience of technical competence in the identified technologies / processes and delivery practices.
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: Demonstrable experience of understanding/ability to deliver finance products/services
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: • Demonstrate approach to knowledge and skills transfer and experience of doing this
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: • Value for money: Demonstrate a transparent financial structure and fair pricing for the Service
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: Risk: demonstrate experience in the identification of key assumptions, dependencies, risks and issues, with robust mitigation plans
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: • Evidence of implementing continuous improvement, utilising tools such as lessons learnt, with subsequent benefits embedded into future work across both the supplier and customer
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: • Demonstratable experience of understanding/ability to produce cost v. benefit analysis/benefits management
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: • Evidence of utilising client time as efficiently and effectively as possible, across multiple projects, including planning for contingencies
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: • Demonstrable experience of delivering projects in line with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework including configuration and change controls
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Explain the technical question:: • Evidence of high-quality User Acceptance testing, process documentation and benchmarking, please describe your approach and how this will be shared with DFE
Enter a weighting for this technical question in whole numbers, for example 30: 10
Your question: Approach to developing a "One Team" approach and experience of implementing
Enter a weighting for this question: 25
Your question: Demonstration of a proactive approach, taking responsibility for work and resolving issues quickly, without an over-reliance on the client team. Please provide an example of when this has taken place
Enter a weighting for this question: 25
Your question: Demonstration of working collaboratively in a multi-disciplinary team and experience of doing so
Enter a weighting for this question: 25
Your question: • Focus on delivery – Demonstrate your experience focusing on delivery and achievement of goals whilst taking responsibility and owning your own outcomes
Enter a weighting for this question: 25
Explain the social value question: • Social Value (equal opportunity and wellbeing) - Provide evidence of your company's approach to diversity and inclusion and your ability to manage the wellbeing of your team (10% of the overall marks available).
Enter a weighting for this question: 100

3. Timeline
Publication of stage 1: January 12, 2023, 12:00 AM
Clarification period closes: January 18, 2023, 4:00 PM
Deadline for suppliers to submit their stage 1 responses: January 26, 2023, 4:00 PM

Clarification questions and responses

There are no questions and clarifications relating to this opportunity.

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