Expression of Interest: External Resources (Modernization Work)

MITA

The Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) is the public entity vested with the responsibility to provide ICT infrastructure, systems and services to Government that leverage a modern digital ecosystem and contribute towards the definition and execution of the Government of Malta’s digital strategies that sustain a modern digital economy.

More information on the Agency and its activities is available from its website https://mita.gov.mt/

Digital Transformation

The Programme Management Department (PMD) within MITA is looking to augment its internal capacities in order to sustain its modernisation work efforts and become more effective and efficient in providing its services to the Government of Malta, including modernisation works on various IT systems in areas such as taxation, customs, social security, and other public administration interests.

PMD has embarked on a strategy to change its software development methodology to agile and adapting its team structures and work to adopt modern ways of working, including the adoption of Domain-Driven Design and Test-Driven Development principles and techniques, and the repositing artefacts and logging of product and sprint backlogs. This led to an increased effort to break down monolithic applications into microservices that can be modernized with minimum disruption to the Government daily business functions and activities. This way the business logic at the core will be protected whilst promoting de-coupling between the systems. To also promote the rapid discovery of the business processes, practices of storytelling through Event Storming are being used as applicable.  

This digital transformation is bound to bring various opportunities of designing the IT solutions differently and better, integrating Artificial Intelligence and other innovative tools and approaches, and using more recent best practices and methods to achieve real agility.

What is needed?

PMD is looking for external resources to augment their project teams’ capacity to keep up the momentum on the modernisation work.  Resources shall be making use of authorized environments provided by MITA which shall be remotely accessible from within the EU/EEA and those countries considered to provide adequate assurances in terms of GDPR.

From the outset, the following roles are being requested:

• Solutions Architect (technical lead)
• Software Developer (front-end)
• Software Developer (back-end)

Other roles may also be considered, such as:

• Quality Assurance
• Business Analyst
• Scrum Master
• Enterprise Architect

The work shall vary from design, development to quality assurance and implementation.  The resources will be working using modern technologies, state of the art platforms and adopting latest architecture principles in a unique environment setting.  Resources shall also gain exposure to interesting and complex business domains at a national and international level.  They will be part of our multi-skilled energetic project teams who are knowledgeable in their respective areas, resilient and organised.  Agility enablers including domain driven development (DDD), adoption of clean code practices, adoption of CQRS principles, test driven development (TDD) and application of behaviour driven development (BDD) will all be embedded in this modernisation journey that PMD embarked upon to improve our overall business agility and boost our agility in delivery.  

What are the desirable skills required? 

Solution Architect 

• Holds an undergraduate degree in an IT-related field (Malta Qualifications Framework level 6 or equivalent);
• Holds at least three (3) years of work experience in solution architecture and design;
• Holds a valid certification as evidence of a good level of English language proficiency, both written and verbal (e.g. English Matsec or ‘O’ level certification, TOEFL, IELTS, EFSET). The certification must clearly indicate a score that is officially recognised as a pass (or higher) by the certification body concerned;
• Possesses good knowledge of UML standards to enable completion of modelling and visualizations during the compilation of Requirements Analysis and Design of software/system artefacts;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the extraction of business logic from existing software written in different technologies;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of Git or any other source code versioning tool;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of Azure Components: App Services and Azure Storage;
• Possesses knowledge of Azure Components: Azure Service Bus and Azure Application Insights;
• Proficient to write REST APIs;
• Possesses knowledge of the CQRS pattern;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of ASP.NET Core or later version, C#, JSON, OpenXML, HTML5, Javascript and CSS;
• Proficient in Object-Oriented Design;
• Possesses knowledge and skills to:
  • Write anti-corruption layers and other seams to prevent legacy code from influencing new parts of the application; and
  • Write unit tests that are de-coupled from the system under test.
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of Entity Framework Core and is proficient to write data-access layers based on Entity Framework Code-First and the repository pattern. 

Software Developer (Front-End) 

• Holds an undergraduate degree in an IT-related field (Malta Qualifications Framework level 6 or equivalent);
• Holds at least three (3) years of work experience in software development and systems analysis;
• Holds a valid certification as evidence of a good level of English language proficiency, both written and verbal (e.g. English Matsec or ‘O’ level certification, TOEFL, IELTS, EFSET). The certification must clearly indicate a score that is officially recognised as a pass (or higher) by the certification body concerned;
• Possesses good knowledge of UML standards to enable completion of modelling and visualizations during the compilation of Requirements Analysis and Design of software/system artefacts;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the extraction of business logic from existing software written in different technologies;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of Git or any other source code versioning tool;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the design of prototypes;
• Proficient in the use of ASP.NET CORE MVC, JQuery, HTML5 and Bootstrap;
• Possesses knowledge of C# and front-end frameworks (Angular or Blazor). 

Software Developer (Back-End)

• Holds an undergraduate degree in an IT-related field (Malta Qualifications Framework level 6 or equivalent);
• Holds at least three (3) years of work experience in software development and systems analysis;
• Holds a valid certification as evidence of a good level of English language proficiency, both written and verbal (e.g. English Matsec or Ordinary level certification (Malta Qualifications Framework Level 3 or equivalent), TOEFL, IELTS, EFSET). The certification must clearly indicate a score that is officially recognised as a pass (or higher) by the certification body concerned;
• Possesses good knowledge of UML standards to enable completion of modelling and visualizations during the compilation of Requirements Analysis and Design of software/system artefacts;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the extraction of business logic from existing software written in different technologies;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of Git or any other source code versioning tool;
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of ASP.NET Core, REST API, C#, JSON, and OpenXML;
• Proficient in Object-Oriented Design;
• Possesses knowledge and skills to:
  • Write anti-corruption layers and other seams to prevent legacy code from influencing new parts of the application; and
  • Write unit tests that are de-coupled from the system under test.
• Possesses knowledge and skills in the use of Entity Framework Core and is proficient to write data-access layers based on Entity Framework Code-First and the repository pattern.

What is being expected from the contracted resources?

The contracted resources are expected to:

• Other (contracted resources will be involved in the drafting of documentation, reporting, etc as the work may necessitate through the structures provided and practicality)

Economic Operators (including natural and legal persons) may submit their expression of interest to render these services. This expression of interest is to include:

• An overview of the Economic Operator including (where applicable) company size, services, Company Registration Number and registered office
• Contact details
• Information on staffing capacities including number of resources, their respective roles and mobilization/onboarding timeframes
• Information on staffing costs (on the basis of a rate per hour excluding VAT) for each role proposed, and any other associated costs for the rendering of the services
• Any applicable terms and conditions proposed for the rendering of the service including the provision of a Master Service Agreement
• Feedback relating to the possibility of providing MITA with a presentation of how the service being requested is intended to be provided, and to further discussions with the Agency to explore possible future collaboration.

Economic operators are to note that any eventual contract shall be construed to be a Contract for Service with the Economic Operator (and not a contract of service with the resource/s proposed) in line with the provisions of the Public Procurement Regulations (Malta).

Expressions of Interest are to reach the Manager (Contracts and Legal) on cmd.mita@gov.mt up to the 22 July 2022 (deadline extended from the 15 July 2022)

All information submitted shall be treated with strict confidence.

This issuance of this expression of interest does not constitute a commitment on the part of MITA to issue a request for bids, award a contract, or pay any costs incurred in preparation of a response to this call.

Information Session

An Information Session shall be held online on the 20 June 2022 (10:00 CEST) to provide an overview of the work involved and how MITA intends to work with the Economic Operators.

Registration is closed.

Click here to download the presentation. 

Click here to download Clarification Note 1 relating to the presentation.

Click here to download the GDPR Adequacy Questionnaire.

Click here to download the MITA Processor to Sub-Processor Data Processing Agreement.