RM1043.8-1-Cabinet Office - FSET Recruitment Platform Development and Enhancement - Lot 2

Description

Summary of work The Fast Stream and Emerging Talent (FSET) team is inviting bids for the provision of technical development and live support services: maintaining, updating, enhancing and trouble-shooting issues that may occur during the operation of our bespoke recruitment platform. The services will be offered as two lots - lot 1 will focus on live support and maintenance activities whilst lot 2 will focus on enhancement and development. This is lot 2 - Development The scope of work will cover: Work with Lot1 supplier to handover all developed features for future on-going live support (3rd line and some 2nd line are envisaged); Quality assurance and performance testing; Security testing; Accessibility testing; Development and/or enhancement of integrations with existing and/or new third party test and assessment platforms Development and enhancement of the candidate interface Development and enhancement of the admin interface Development of unspecified emerging requirements including changes to the existing Platform functionality. Where the supplied staff will work No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Why the work is being done In line with the government’s digital strategy, FSET has been working to make our recruitment activities ‘digital by default’. In autumn 2015 the Authority appointed a supplier who conducted a successful agile development programme, providing both development capability and live support activities as part of our public beta development. The Authority re-appointed the supplier after G-cloud procurements in February 2018 and May 2020. The Authority is now coming towards the end of this contractual engagement with their incumbent supplier and are returning to the market to seek a supplier or suppliers to provide them with on-going development, technical and live support for our services over the next two to four years. This procurement will consist of two lots - Lot 1 (Live Support and Maintenance) and Lot 2 (Development). Potential suppliers are invited to bid for either Lot 1 or Lot 2 or both depending on their interest and capability. The business problem Our bespoke recruitment platform requires ongoing support and maintenance throughout the year and in particular during the months of September to March during our annual recruitment campaigns. This platform supports the recruitment of graduates into the Civil Service Fast Stream and our Internship programmes. The decision to build a bespoke platform was taken in 2015 because at that time no off the shelf product on the market could meet our complex business requirements - today this remains the case. This procurement is seeking to appoint a supplier capable of providing direct development support to enhance interfaces, integrations and our code base in line with ongoing business requirements and our users needs. The people who will use the product or service User type: Candidate - Fast Stream Definition: As a candidate I need to be able to provide personal information and undertake the required online testing and virtual assessments so that I can secure a place on the Fast Stream. User type: Candidate – Internship Definition: As a candidate I need to be able to provide personal information and undertake the required online testing and virtual assessments so that I can secure a place on the Summer Internship Programme. User type: Admin user Definition: As an admin user, I need to be able to see candidate details, test results and availability so that I can manage who proceeds through our assessment process and who receives a job. User type: Admin manager Definition: As an admin manager I need access to management information reports so that I can assess what pass marks to set for each scheme, for each test phase and can control the numbers who receive a job in line with the number of roles we have to offer. Any pre-market engagement done A pre-market engagement exercise was carried out in 2022 to gauge the capability and interest of potential suppliers on the digital outcomes framework. The results of that engagement exercise have helped us to define our requirements for this procurement. Work done so far The Authority supported by our incumbent supplier successfully delivered our recruitment service into public beta: www.apply-civil-service-fast-stream.service.gov.uk/fset-fast-stream. This service is operated through our FSET Recruitment Platform - a bespoke product that provides the functions of a traditional Applicant Tracking System (ATS), together with event scheduling, integrated online assessments, notifications and performance feedback. The service collects candidate application data, including (some sensitive) personal information and scheme preferences. Candidates who submit their applications are then taken through a series of online tests, an assessment centre (currently virtual) and final selection boards which narrow down the 50,000 annual applications to around 1500 successful appointments (across both FS and SIP pipelines) annually. The service has three separate access routes – an open candidate facing application which anyone can access and apply to the Authority’s schemes during campaign windows; a similar open application that the Authority’s assessors utilise remotely for entering evaluation scores and feedback to tests, which is invite only; and a restricted-access admin interface only accessible from allow-listed IP addresses – used by FSET staff and the Authority’s service provision partner. The service that the Authority has built is hosted on the HMRC Multi-channel Digital Tax platform (MDTP) – this is a fully-fledged platform as a service offering. There is multi-active data storage across two data centres and the architecture is based on common and bespoke micro-services; full operational management support is offered by the MDTP team and the Authority’s incumbent supplier. The Authority’s code is Scala-based and they utilise Mongo db for data storage; Jenkins, Jira, Confluence and github are used to facilitate all development and deployment activities. Which phase the project is in Beta Existing team Our core team consists of a Product Manager and a Business Analyst, both civil servants who have worked on the project for 8 and 6 years respectively. Address where the work will be done Our office is located 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ. Work will be carried out remotely, but we may on occasion wish to hold in person meetings either at this location or, if suitable, the supplier's own premises. Working arrangements We would like to continue the working arrangements whereby we form one team with the suppliers personnel, working remotely as a rule but on occasion holding meetings in person to workshop issues, review progress etc, if this is felt to be beneficial by either party. It is envisaged that a degree of user research will be required and it is likely that the supplier personnel may need to undertake some travel to enable this. Security and vetting requirements Security Check (SC) More information about the Security requirements: Supplier personnel will have access to sensitive personal information relating to our candidate population, as such we require that all staff hold SC clearance. Latest start date 8 July 2024 Expected contract length Contract length: 2 years 0 months 0 days Optional extension: 1 years 0 months 0 days Budget Indicative maximum: £541000 Indicative minimum: The contract value is not specified by the buyer Further information: A budget of £324,000 is available for year one and £217,000 is available for year two. Contracted out service or supply of resource? Supply of resource: the off-payroll rules may apply Terms and acronyms Term or acronym: CS Definition: Civil Service Term or acronym: CO Definition: Cabinet Office Term or acronym: GPG Definition: Government People Group Term or acronym: FSET Definition: Fast Stream and Emerging Talent Term or acronym: FS Definition: Fast Stream Term or acronym: SIP Definition: Summer Internship Programme Term or acronym: HMRC Definition: His Majesty's Revenue and Customs Term or acronym: MDTP Definition: Multi-channel Digital Tax Platform Term or acronym: GDS Definition: Government Digital Service Term or acronym: NCSC Definition: National Cyber Security Centre