RFQ date and drop in session

There has been a slight change of plan for the release of the RFQ document for this tender.

The document will be available for download on Wednesday 13th April.

There will be a drop in session on Thursday the 14th April where you will be able to ask questions about how to fill the document out to members of the project and procurement team if you are unfamiliar with the process.

If you are interested in this then please sign up on the eventbrite site – http://bccwebfuture2.eventbrite.com/

If you cannot make the event you will still be able to ask questions via this eProcurement system.

The closing date for return of the RFQ document is 12 noon on 12th May 2011. This will be followed by a period of evaluation and the list should be finalised by the end of May.

Expressions of interest

Following on from the previous post. An advert has now gone out for companies to express their interest in joining an approved suppliers list for the councils future web development projects.

You have to register at https://procurement.bristol.gov.uk/supplierselfservice/, the reference number is 4228 (Web Services Approved Supplier List).

Suppliers need to be able to demonstrate skills in a range of web related disciplines and have the capacity and experience to take forward a range of projects.

• The RFQ will be available to download from our e-Procurement system on 14th April 2011
• The same day you will be able to book a session to meet and discuss the process with members of the project and procurement team.
• Deadlines for return of the RFQ is 12 noon on 12th May 2011

To reiterate this is not to build our CMS, which is currently underway, but to be on a pre-qualified list of suppliers. Members of the list will be asked to quote for specific web projects in an ongoing programme of work which is currently being developed.

• The list will be circa 6 – 10 approved suppliers
• It will require pre-qualification:
  • Experience
  • Specific areas of expertise
  • Hourly rates
• List will be updated annually
• Total work will be up to value of £150k per year

Large items will go through a separate tender process following our procurement regulations

Future website projects

Thanks to all those who attended the follow-up event on the 8th March, you can find a link to a PDF of the presentation below. To summarise:

The implementation of the new web platform was severely delayed at earlier stages, making swift progress now critical to our business needs. It will support many of our major change programmes that will deliver substantial cost savings in the coming months, so to avoid further delay we are using our existing framework partner for the initial build. However we want to establish a list of approved suppliers now to enable those future projects to start as soon as possible.

The future projects will cover areas such as website design, new online transactional services, user testing and extending the Drupal platform. We are also open to innovative suggestions from the community about how to utilise the new platform and work in collaboration with the council.

The approved suppliers list will be made up of between 6 – 10 companies. They will be selected from a shortlist of companies who have completed a pre-tender questionnaire that covers expertise, experience, hourly rates etc.

The list will be updated annually and the total value of the work will be up to £150k per year. Relevant companies on the list will be asked to quote for particular projects. Large value projects will go through a separate tender process following our procurement regulations.

We will be defining a process for working with the platform and a set of criteria and standards to work to.

Next Steps:

• End of March – advertise for expressions of interest
• Start of April – send out pre-qualification questionnaire
• Early April – drop-in session for those needing help with the PQQ
• End of April – shortlist candidates
• End of May – finalise list
• June – kick off briefings with our framework partner
• July – select initial project(s) and initiate first work packages

Presentation 8th March 2011 (PDF 95Kb)

Next steps

Further to our decision to use Drupal as the underlying platform to replace the Bristol City Council website we have asked our existing systems partner, to assist with the initial implementation. This will be a piece of work to design and configure the system. The council will put the required infrastructure in place and build our website on the new platform.

Replacement of the web site is a critical project for the council that supports many of our major change programmes. In particular, it enables the reduction in the cost of our service delivery by moving to cheaper channels such as the web, delivering substantial savings. The project is already running very late and we now need to progress it urgently to deliver a solution this summer and more quickly realise the efficiencies in these follow projects.

We are committed to the principle that the future development of the new web site, once in place, will use a much more flexible approach and be accessible to local companies. After engaging with the local developer community:

• we have changed our choice of technology platform, selecting an open source technology solution (Drupal) that is more widely supported by local suppliers.
• we will be putting in place a commercial framework to enable local suppliers to bid for future work to further develop the site. We anticipate having this in place by July this year.

We recognise that some of you will be disappointed not be able to bid for this initial piece of work, but we are look forward to being able to work with some of you more closely in the future.

To kick off the next phase we are holding a meeting at the council house on Tuesday 8^th March, 4.30pm to 5.30pm. We will be running through the envisaged future programme of work for the new platform and the proposed procurement process. Register here: http://bccwebfuture.eventbrite.com/

Luke

It’s Drupal

Hi

Bristol City Council has chosen Drupal for its new website build, read more here – http://www.bristol247.com/2010/12/27/bristol-digitals-can-cash-in-on-new-council-website/

The next few weeks will be spent planning the implementation and I’ll update you once that’s agreed. For those who are interested in working with us in the future, all council tenders are published through the councils e-Procurement system – https://procurement.bristol.gov.uk/supplierselfservice/ – so make sure that you’ve registered.

Progress?

Sorry about the gaps between postings on here. This is because we’re keen to come to a good decision and also I’m afraid that I’m not a natural blogger.

Thanks to everyone who responded after the roundtable event. Several different points of view were expressed and we’ve been considering the various options.

No decisions yet on how we’re going to take this project forward. We’ve continued looking at Magnolia as a CMS and are reviewing our requirements for a portal. We have also begun an evaluation of Drupal to see how the two compare, which is another reason for the delay.

We hope to have made a decision on the way forward by the middle of December, which we will post here.

New blog pages

I’ve added a couple more pages / tabs to this blog. These are to discuss the feedback from the event on the 10th September and the design work.

Please feel free to contribute.

Presentations from Friday’s event

Powerpoint version’s here

Powerpoint version’s here

Filming of this session, kindly produced by Connecting Bristol, can be found on their site.

We are  still open minded – so please keep the advice and alternative suggestions coming in:

• Have we got the right requirements?
• Are the proposed solutions right or are there significantly better alternatives (quality / cost)?
• Identify future opportunities – how we can make best use of the platform?
• Future opportunities – how we can make best use of the new platform?

Please send your thoughts to  luke.smith@bristol.gov.uk by 24 September

Roundtable Discussion about Bristol City Council’s Future Web Platform – 10 September

Earlier in the year, Bristol City Council invited a wide range of people from the local digital community to come along to an event to discuss our web presence.  At the time, we were part way through a procurement exercise to buy a new web platform – an all in one package with the necessary support to build our site on it, and integrate it all with our mass of back office systems.

We got a great turnout, and really positive engagement both on the day, and through follow-up activity online. A few months on, we’d like to invite you along to a follow up event.

PROGRESS

First the bad news – the progress update on our procurement exercise.  The short story is, our approach failed to find us a supplier that could meet our specification for a web platform and subsequent build and integration work at a price we could afford.

The good news though – and what we’d like to discuss with Bristol’s digital talent – is the opportunity this provides us to take a fundamentally different approach.  We’re now minded instead of going to the market for a package deal, to look at buying the best (and most affordable) open standards platform (if not also open source) – and then having bought something that lots of people can work with, go to the market separately for build and integration jobs.

That’s the short story.  Now we are taking stock and planning our new approach – on Friday 10 September we are holding a roundtable discussion at the Watershed, please come along and have your say. Help guide us towards something that might both suit our needs, whilst also stimulating opportunities for the local supplier market.

We would invite you to consider our website brief, as a basis for this roundtable discussion.  The functional and non-functional requirements and the Bristol City Councils – Web-site tender being used to assess the current marketplace.

To register your place, please visit http://bccweb.eventbrite.com

Twitter #bccweb

Web conference videos

Video of our web conference on 9 March is now on YouTube.

1: Introductions

2: Website vision by Peter Holt

3: Where we are now by Paul Arrigoni

4: Breakout and plenary feedback

5: Plenary feedback continued

6: Wrap up and next steps

Sorry the sound quality is not fantastic – but we did want to make the event more accessible to those who are as interested but couldn’t make it on the day.