The Government Digital Service is seeking a supplier partner to provide support to “urgent EU exit-related projects” across Whitehall over the coming year.
GDS is seeking to award a 12-month contract worth up to £1m to a provider that can offer specialist individuals or teams in four key areas: product management; delivery management; user research; and software development.
The digital agency said that it is likely to require the chosen supplier to provide about five teams to work on projects in discovery or alpha phase, as well as up to 10 delivery teams. Additionally, GDS may call on the firm to provide “occasional one-off resource”.
“This will be a starter contract to allow time-critical work relating to EU exit to commence, while alternative arrangements are put in place,” the contract notice said.
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The discovery teams will typically consist of professionals from the following disciplines: user research; service design; product management; delivery management; and technical architecture.
Once services are ready to enter development, GDS will require teams consisting of: delivery managers; product managers; developers; web-ops engineers; content designers; performance analysts; user researchers; and interaction designers.
The chosen partner will likely be required to work on between three and five projects at any one time.
The contract notice added: “The supplier will work with internal government stakeholders from a range of disciplines, including architecture, security, policy, service and product management, finance, and delivery management. Knowledge transfer back into HMG (HM Government) will be required to enable HMG to improve internal capability to build and support the services.”
The winning bidder may also need to work with other suppliers, GDS said, in areas such as data extraction and setting up test environments.
The majority of work undertaken by the supplier is expected to “take place within the M25”, although some projects may require travel to other parts of the country. The scope and terms of work required will be detailed in individual statements of work for each project, and no minimum spend over the course of the contract is guaranteed.
“Suppliers will deploy teams, or part teams, at short notice working with departments and their arm’s-length bodies to deliver discovery or development outcomes,” GDS said. “The majority of work will be based on customer sites – the sites and working arrangements for a particular project will be specified in a statement of work.”
Bids for the work are open until midnight on 29 May, with a contract scheduled to commence no later than 15 July.