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In November 2015, on the verge of commencing an a Department of Health supported procurement, the Cabinet Office intervened. They asked for us to review:
Intellectual property (IP) rights and ownership
HEE’s capability
Contract length
The procurement was put on hold and eventually cancelled. We reformed the Programme to review an in-house “build” option, as this would close-off Cabinet Office concerns i.e., we would own IP, we would build our own capability, and remove contract constraints.
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Jan to March 2016 - We procured a Digital Partner to run Discovery phase to look at the following:
User stories to inform first development priorities and verify the findings of the Output Specification (the work originally undertaken in the Summer of 2015).
Technical architecture and other aspects.
Future sourcing and procurement options (Strategy).
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Full business case
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Off the back of the Discovery, a Full Business Case (FBC) was written and approved by the HEE Board, the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office.
Provides view on the approach and the investment case The FBC developed the strategic, economic, commercial, financial and management cases for TIS.
Scope is The scope in the FBC was trainees and learners - note that the “commissioned programmes” was dropped , as they were originally in scope.due to wider organisational change. In scope was:
Doctors
Dentists
Pharmacy
Scientists
Public Health
The HEE Board approved the FBC on the following conditions:
TIS would be transformational.
TIS will be developed iteratively through time – not “big bang” i.e. agile.
Adopt “Digital by Default” and the GDS Service Standards.
Procure a Digital Delivery Partner to start us off.
Systems will be built in-house where unique, otherwise “buy” i.e. build or buy.
Development Team co-terminus with TIS with a high focus on “the business” and user needs.
TIS will be for the business and user-centric.
Will deliver benefits e.g. rationalisation of our system estate.
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Digital Partner
June 2016 - We ran a competitive procurement to select a Digital Partner to set us up with the ability to build TIS. Engine Partners (Transform) we selected.
Their broad role was to
Deliver Discovery by running an Alpha, Beta and Live.
Transfer knowledge and skills to HEE staff to enable self-sufficiency.
To enable HEE to build own products in conformity to the Government Service Design Manual
This was the type of thing incorporated into the Alpha phase, which covered the first three months to c. August 2016.
The Beta phase ran until through to November, and covered six sprints, and this a snip of an update…
As indicated in the above “snip”, we were starting to face the reality of recruiting technical staff at the time. Recruiting to developer roles would be a significant problem, not helped by a national recruitment freeze that curtailed our ambitions.
We did a lot of work around UCD, the Service Standards and Agile to our users and stakeholders, and headed off a couple of political problems around delivery and the demand for specifications, and the below is an example slide we used.
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