UK SBS IT17374 UK Research and Innovation Website Discovery

Description

Summary of the work A team is required to analyse existing research and metrics and perform new user research, develop user stories and provide recommendations on future technology requirements that will lead to the development of the UKRI corporate site and determine the way forward for the nine Council websites. Expected Contract Length 3 months Latest start date Monday 8 January 2018 Budget Range £20,000 - £30,000 excluding VAT to include: • Staffing costs • Review and analysis of existing user research and website metrics • Quantitative and qualitative user research, including recruitment of participants • Any use of user research studios • Delivery of documentation and final reports and analysis Why the Work is Being Done UK Research and Innovation will bring together the seven Research Councils, Innovate UK and a new organisation, Research England in April 2018. We are now developing a long-term digital strategy in line with the Digital Service Standards. This includes the process to evolve the UKRI interim website into a permanent corporate web presence, to understand user and audience needs across the entirety of UKRI and the nine partner organisations (councils), to define the role of the corporate UKRI website, to explore long-term web technology requirements, and to determine the benefits, risks and costs of making all Council websites similar. Problem to Be Solved To discover the needs of all users across UKRI and the councils, which will define the role of the UKRI corporate website and the council’s websites, through analysing existing user research and web metrics and carrying out new user research. To gain an understanding of users’ experience, particularly the inter-relationship between the Council’s websites and the UKRI site to define the best structure and navigation experience for our audiences. To understand the future technology requirements of the UKRI site, ensuring the development of a service that is fit for purpose and capable of scaling with the organisation. Who Are the Users •As a funder I need to publish our objectives, priorities and funding opportunities so that researchers are informed. •As a funder I need to show the impact of our research so that all users are aware of the value of that research. •As a researcher I need to be informed of developments and opportunities so I can apply for funding. •As policymakers in government, business and the third sector we need to be aware of research so we can use it to inform policy. • As the public/media we need to know about the research and its benefits and impact. Early Market Engagement None undertaken Work Already Done The nine councils have conducted user research over the years and routinely collect and analyse metrics. Existing Team While UK Research and Innovation will not launch until April 2018 a Shadow Communications team has been established to lead the development and delivery of internal and external communications strategies during transition to the new organisation. The Shadow UK Research and Innovation Communications team leads the strategic and operational development of the website and other associated channels, working closely with digital communications and technical teams in partner organisations, BEIS and the Government Digital Service (GDS). The UKRI Digital team currently consists of: • UKRI Strategic Lead, Digital • UKRI Digital Project Manager • Cross-Council Web Managers, developers and publishers Current Phase Not started Skills & Experience • Demonstrate how you will apply your skills and expertise to… (Please answer the below questions in relation to this overarching question) • Critically evaluate previous user research and web metrics and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project • Use a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods in the user research and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project • Develop interview and survey questions that gets beyond superficial opinions (what users say) to reveal user goals (what users want) and how this will ensure successful project delivery • Conduct user interviews and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project • Gather and interpret the results of surveys and interviews and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project • Provide expert interpretation of results and present outputs clearly and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project • Present data in ways that can be used to drive design: e.g. personas, user stories, user journey maps, and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project • Critically evaluate current and future technology needs of the UKRI website and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project • Provide a final report with a clear summary of key findings and recommendations and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project Nice to Haves • Demonstrate how you will apply your skills and expertise in… (Please answer the below question in relation to this overarching question) • The Government Digital Service’s Design Principles and Digital Service Standard and its application to internal products and services, and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project Work Location No specific location Working Arrangments The team will work remotely, but will be expected to maintain a full working pattern that will allow them to meet project deadlines, with face-to-face team meetings at Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, SN2 1FL to report on progress. Travel and Expenses will be reimbursed in line with the BEIS Travel and Subsistence Policy. Security Clearance Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) Additional T&Cs Under GDPR rules UKRI reserves the right to audit the supplier or any of its sub-contracted services. • Third party storage, retention and destruction of data policies must align to UKRI policies. • Service Organisation Control (SOC) Reports, or similar, should be provided to give additional assurance of the controls within the third party. Third party use of data (whether passed to subsidiaries or additional third parties) and whether all of these organisations must adhere to UKRI requirements including for Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria • Demonstration of technical approach and expertise that will support this approach • Team structure • Proposed methodology, activities and analysis • How the approach or solution meets our needs • Estimated timeframes for the work Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstrate how you will work transparently and collaboratively with the UK Research and Innovation project team throughout this project • Demonstrate how you will engage with internal stakeholders to gain buy-in from senior leaders throughout this project Payment Approach Fixed price Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 10% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. What is the required frequency of face-to-face team meetings? The supplier should specify the required frequency of face-to-face meetings. 2. Are there any personas already in existence across all organisations? If so, how current are these? There are personas in existence, the most recent being approximately 1 year old. 3. Does the agency or agency personnel applying for this have to have BPSS security clearance BEFORE they apply or can it be done, if successful? BPSS security clearance can be acquired if the agency is successful. 4. What is the role of UKRI? Will it replace the existing 7 research councils and RCUK? UKRI will include the 7 Research Councils, Innovate UK and the newly formed Research England. This will create a single strategic research and innovation funding body, which will build on and protect the strengths and values of the current system. UKRI will deliver a strengthened strategic approach to future challenges and a maximisation of the value and benefit from government’s investment of over £6 billion per annum in research and innovation. 5. Who will be the target users of the UKRI web site? Our target users are: Researchers across all disciplines and career levels, policymakers in government, businesses and the third sector, the general public and the media. 6. When you say "Critically evaluate current and future technology needs of the UKRI website and how this will ensure the successful delivery of this project" are you looking for a detailed technology critique or a more strategic technology overview? At this stage we will require a strategic overview of the available tools and systems, checking any risks or constraints associated with them and which will enable UKRI to build a sustainable system which can be easily managed and allows for ongoing improvements. 7. Do you have a view on the likely scale of the user interviews that will need to be undertaken? Due to the complexity of the Research Council ecosystem we believe it would be necessary to conduct user interviews with participants from across multiple disciplines and career stages, user interviews should also cover our internal users and users who are involved in policymaking and the general public. The amount is up to the supplier and should be included in the proposed solution. 8. How extensive is the existing user research? Number of reports? Extensive user research was carried out by the councils when they moved to a unified CMS and Innovate UK carried user research on their move to .gov.uk. Ad-hoc research has been carried out since that time, but research that takes account of UKRI has not. 9. Who will be the target users of the UKRI web site? Our target users are: Researchers across all disciplines and career levels, policymakers in government, businesses and the third sector, the general public and the media. 10. What is the role of Research England? How will this differ from UKRI and what will be its relationship to the existing research councils? The role of Research England will be to take forward the England-only responsibilities of HEFCE in relation to research and knowledge exchange. Research England will differ from UKRI by engaging at an individual level with HEIs and their own strategies and so complement the higher level of national strategic direction provided by UK Research and Innovation. The relationship to the Research Councils will be similar as it is today as Councils provide support to specific discipline areas. Find out more about Research England here, http://re.ukri.org/ 11. Hi, can you please provide a little more detail around what you're looking for in terms of future technology requirements? Many thanks At this stage we are not pre-supposing a specific solution. We require a strategic overview of the available tools and systems, checking any risks or constraints associated with them and which will enable UKRI to build a sustainable system which can be easily managed and allows for ongoing improvements. 12. What existing user research has been conducted? Can you share it? The user research varies across each council, all research, from when the councils moved over to the CMS Mura, to the present will be shared with the shortlisted suppliers. 13. Can you share any of the existing web metrics? Analytics reports from each of the Councils' websites will be shared with the shortlisted suppliers. 14. Can you share details of the BEIS Travel and Subsistence Policy? BEIS Travel and Subsistence Policy will be shared with the shortlisted suppliers. 15. Will you be able to help source relevant specialist participants for user interviews (e.g. funders, researchers, policymakers, media)? We would be able to advise the supplier in recruitment to ensure a representative sample of users from across disciplines and segments are represented. 16. What size of email database do you have access to and approximately what proportion of each user type/segment? Each Council holds their own email databases and they vary both in size and segmentation. Conservatively, in total we have access to 60k. The largest segment represented across all councils are researchers with businesses being Innovate UK's largest segment. 17. Will you be able to distribute a user survey through your own channels (websites, social, email)? Yes 18. Do you currently have access to a survey tool? Yes 19. What are the current (known) technology needs of the UKRI website? All of the Council sites currently use the CMS Mura which is based on ColdFusion. Server side we use Microsoft IIS with Tomcat as the application layer and Lucee as the CF interpreter. Innovate UK is on .gov.uk platform. 20. Do you envisage that each of the councils maintain separate websites after April 2018? It is envisaged that the councils will become sub-domains of the main UKRI website (this is currently the case with the Research England site). 21. Our understanding and expectation from the brief is that we would need to engage with stakeholders and website users for each of the nine Councils to produce a comprehensive, validated, and balanced Discovery. Is that assumption correct? If so, this appears to be a larger scale Discovery than the £20-30k budget indicates, even allowing for overlapping users on several Council sites. Note: we say this based on our experience of running comparable Discovery phases. Therefore is £30k the maximum possible budget for this Discovery? As per the advertised oppurtunity the winning supplier will be expected do discover the needs of all users across UKRI and the councils, which will define the role of the UKRI corporate website and the council’s websites, through analysing existing user research and web metrics and carrying out new user research. To adhere to BEIS spend controls, the maximum budget for this stage is £30k. 22. When do you anticipate the presentations will be? We expect the presentations will be on Thursday 30 November and Friday 1 December 2017 23. It is anticipated that the Discovery will run from January to March next year. You mentioned a launch in April 2018. However if you plan to run GDS aligned development project (inc Alpha, Beta and Live), a launch would not be realistic for April 2018. What is driving the April launch and is it flexible? The April launch relates to the official creation of the organisation UK research and Innovation and not the launch of the permanent UKRI website. We currently have an interim UKRI website that will stay in place as we go through the GDS development stages. 24. Is there anything on the Research Council sites behind a login? The only council with content behind a login is the EPSRC website, this is used for their peer review community and includes reviewer documentation 25. There is a log-in on the UKRI site - what is that for? The login on the UKRI site is for staff. It is where they can find the latest news, updates, briefings and information on the Council's journey towards UK Research and Innovation. 26. Have you already identified what platforms and technologies the current sites are on? If so, what are they? All of the Council sites currently use the CMS Mura which is based on ColdFusion. Server side we use Microsoft IIS with Tomcat as the application layer and Lucee as the CF interpreter. Innovate UK is on .gov.uk platform. 27. Just to clarify, is this Discovery to focus ONLY at the public facing websites? Or are other digital services within scope. If so, what are they? It is only focusing on the public facing websites. 28. Roughly how many pages are there on each of the Councils’ websites at present? Council websites range in size from 2000-4000 pages. The interim UKRI site and Research England site have substantially fewer due to being only recently launched. 29. Do you have access to the users of each of the councils? Are you engaged with users to help the chosen supplier recruit participants to participate in face-to-face user research and online user research? We do have access to users from each Council and would be able to advise the successful supplier in recruitment to ensure a representative sample from across disciplines and segments. 30. What 'existing research and metrics' do you have? User research was carried out by the counicils when they moved to a unified CMS and Innovate UK carried user research on their move to .gov.uk. Ad-hoc research has been carried out since that time, but research that takes account of UKRI has not. All councils use Google Analytics for live evaluation of their sites.