Design, implement and support Essex County Council’s employee website: LocalGov Drupal platform

Description

Summary of the work Essex County Council (ECC) need help to design, build and implement a website to better help employees access information about their job and organisation. Expected Contract Length Two (2) Years Latest start date Monday 13 June 2022 Budget Range This opportunity is formed of three elements: 1. The initial build of a beta service, delivering an MVP website for staff, with a budget of £150k over 6 months. 2. Hosting and maintenance of the beta service, with a budget of £30k over 18 months after the initial build period. 3. Additional phases of work over the following 18 months, to be agreed as separate statements of work, with a total budget of up to £120k. Please note that this is not guaranteed work, and each statement of work may be subject to additional internal governance and approval processes. Why the Work is Being Done The current Essex County Council (ECC) intranet is made up of different legacy sites focused on employees who work in the office. Whilst a valuable resource for staff, they experience barriers accessing job related information because: • some do not have the necessary ECC device and/or an ECC log-in, • they cannot find resources quickly and spend time looking through lots of pages, making multiple searches or asking colleagues for help, • content is out-of-date, uses unclear language, and pages can be text-heavy. Staff do not always trust information and resort to word-of-mouth which may be inaccurate. It is hard for staff to perform the tasks they need to or get the information they need for their job and it’s difficult for people to feel connected to the organisation and people in it. This reduces their productivity, satisfaction, and motivation. It also increases the demand on support services who provide this information when staff aren’t able to find it on the intranet. In addition, the intranets are hosted in SharePoint 2016 on-premise servers and migrating the intranets ‘as-is’ to cloud hosting is not a viable option. A new hosting solution for the intranet is needed by November 2022. Problem to Be Solved We want to work with a partner to build a website (an open intranet) for staff, using LocalGov Drupal, by November 2022. We want the intranet to: • be the place for staff working at ECC and partner organisations to find the information they need to do their job • be accessible to all staff, regardless of the device they’re using or the job they do, without a login • signpost people to other systems • provide content that’s relevant for all, rather than just for one service or function. Where we can’t redesign content in PDFs, you will migrate them as-is to the new intranet, or we will store them on Sharepoint Online. This will let us: • replace the existing intranet and switch off SharePoint 2016 • create a backlog of PDF content that needs to be redesigned as HTML You’ll need to document standards and best practices for the intranet, including content governance and design patterns, so that ECC can manage and iterate the intranet after your involvement has finished. We don’t think the intranet will need login functionality. Confidential information will be stored elsewhere. The solution needs to comply with ECC’s standard non-functional requirements (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sKchfhmAB1hJo1Jc1WGaA_DTzYi5BEyR/). Who Are the Users As an ECC employee, I need to know where to find information about my work, my role and ECC so that I can get what I need quickly and in a way that suits me. As a line manager, I need quick and easy access to information that will support me in this role so that I don’t have to waste time looking for it As an ECC employee, I need to access news and updates from ECC so that I feel connected to the organisation and more informed As an ECC employee, I need the information on the intranet to be consistent and written in a way that I can easily understand As a content editor, I want a consistent process for writing and editing content to defined content standards so that I can be sure that we have the most current information for our employees As an ECC employee working in a partner organisation, I need to be able to easily access policies from a non-ECC device so I can do my job effectively As an ECC employee with a disability, I need content to be accessible and usable so that I can find the information I need Work Already Done We built a prototype intranet (https://ecc-localgov-intranet-static.herokuapp.com/) using a small section of annual leave content. By making the Intranet open, all staff, including those in our Highways partner organisation, were able to access content. Staff were able to find content easily and most said they trusted the information. We saw an increase in the average System Usability Score of 67 for the existing intranet to 73 for the prototype. We evaluated Content Management System options and chose LocalGov Drupal. You can find more detail in the Alpha Final Show & Tell slides (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1O0GNFprquhRO0i9ysAij0D-ovweGF8Ts?usp=sharing) and our week notes.(https://servicetransformation.blog.essex.gov.uk/2022/01/05/intranet-alpha/). Existing Team Head of Design Operations (Sponsor) Delivery Manager Product Manager Senior User Researcher Senior Content Designer (0.4) Content Designer Interaction Designer (0.4) Digital Performance Analyst, (ad hoc) Senior Internal Comms Adviser (ad hoc) Senior Content Advisor (ad hoc) Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Provide an agile multi-disciplinary team including development (Drupal), content design and interaction design capabilities • Have extensive experience delivering Drupal-based websites (at least 3 websites) • Experience of delivering a product using agile product/service delivery • Knowledge and expertise in inclusive design • Experience developing digital services that are accessible for everyone Nice to Haves • Provide evidence of having passed a government, local government or NHS digital service assessment • Experience in delivering a solution to provide staff with job related information based on user research and user-centred design • Experience developing sites based on LocalGov Drupal Work Location We anticipate the team will be primarily remote. The County Council Offices are in Chelmsford, Essex. Working Arrangments The team will work remotely and communicate via Microsoft Teams or Slack. We use other collaboration tools such as Miro. All project ceremonies like standups, sprint planning and show and tells will be held by video conferencing on Microsoft Teams. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 6 Proposal Criteria • Clarity of the approach and methodology • How the approach can meet user needs, the Government Service Standard, and the Technology Code of Practice • Understanding of risks to successful delivery and how you propose to mitigate them in collaboration with us • The team you will provide and the skills they will bring • How you will blend and form an open and collaborative team with us • How you will create understanding and alignment with senior leaders and stakeholders • How you will maintain the live website and provide ongoing support to ECC Cultural Fit Criteria • Sharing your knowledge and experience with ECC team members • Be comfortable in advocating for agile practices, open source and cloud-based technologies • Committed to inclusivity in how you work Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. "Hi there – please could you advise how this requirement differs from “CO0164 SEND Local Offer on LocalGov Drupal” which was awarded to Invotra Consulting LimitedStart date: Monday 14 March 2022Value: £82,390”" The CO0164 SEND Local Offer opportunity was for the development of a website to replace http://www.essexlocaloffer.org.uk/. This opportunity is to design and build a website to replace https://www.essex.gov.uk/. 2. Please Ignore the Above question and answer Please Ignore the Above question and answer 3. What are the job roles of the evaluation panel? "Head of Design Operations (Service Transformation)Lead Content Designer (Service Transformation)Senior Product Manager (Service Transformation)Senior Content Advisor (Communications and Marketing)" 4. Is there an incumbent and are they bidding? There is no incumbent. 5. Who or which company performed the technical discovery as per the any work that’s already been done section?– Was it FutureGov? Yes, TPXImpact (formerly FutureGov). 6. What is your procurement process for the shortlisted firms? – Timelines/Activities/Etc. We aim to shortlist candidates on the 28th of April, after which we will invite the shortlist to book a presentation slot and submit a written proposal. The clarification deadline will be the 6th of May, and the deadline to submit written proposal will be the 13th of May. The presentations will take place from the 16th to the 18th of May. Notification of selected candidate will be the 25th of May. Please note that these dates are subject to change due to scheduling commitments. 7. How much content will be added to the new employee site, what content types and how much of each? This has not been decided and will need to be worked out in Beta. The current intranet has approximately 700 pages, but some pages may be deleted/combined or there may be user needs that aren’t being met at present that require new pages. 8. Is the employee site going to be strictly guidance and information for job roles, or will there be social elements like news/blog items, commenting, liking and favouriting etc? The employee site plays an important role in helping people feel connected with the organisation. There is definitely a need for news, as stated in the requirement. Other elements can be considered but keep in mind that this is an open site. 9. Is this project a short term fix for a permanent future intranet that combines social and job-related content effectively and efficiently? As stated in the requirement there is an initial build phase of 6 months and the potential for future additional work to be agreed as separate statements of work. The initial build of the site does need to be a viable website that meets user needs in the long term, and not merely a short term fix. 10. Will redirects be needed from the existing on-premise Sharepoint intranets to the new LGD Employee Website? Redirects will be needed from existing page URLs to ensure that saved links continue to work. We’d expect a supplier to implement these redirects in LGD or their own choice of technology rather than implementing these on the Sharepoint infrastructure, as this will be shut down. 11. Would you be willing to explore options to provide a combination of targeted and shared content for staff by asking them to select their role/team before they enter the website? This would tackle the challenge of irrelevant content and struggles finding content. We’re willing to consider any options for meeting user needs and tackling pain points for accessing content – as long as these are user tested and there is good evidence that they are actually making it easier for our users to find the content they need. 12. Is there an overarching UX/Intranet strategy defined already or would you like our help with that? We have some general guidelines in our Digital Manual - https://essexcountycouncil.github.io/essex-county-council-digital-manual/ and there’s the outline of an intranet vision and strategy which you can see in the Show and Tell 4 slide deck linked in the requirement. We’d expect this to continue to be refined in the Beta stage as we get into more detail. 13. Do you plan to show user data such as forenames, phone numbers etc on the employee website? No. 14. Would it be useful to have a mobile application for this Employee Website, even if that were a PWA app? No. 15. Do you have an existing taxonomy that has worked for you in the past, or will you want the supplier to develop a content taxonomy for you? Employees find it difficult to find the information they need on the intranet. This suggests that the taxonomy/information architecture/navigation is not meeting user needs. We have started to work on developing a new information architecture, but we’d expect to continue to work on this in collaboration with the supplier in the Beta phase. 16. How did you measure the ‘System Usability Score’? We carried out a 10 question survey using these questions https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/system-usability-scale.html. We had 15 responses to the survey asking about the old intranet and 63 responses to the survey about the intranet prototype. 17. Will all staff accessing the Employee Website also have access to the environment where confidential information is being hosted? No. 18. Has much user testing been completed with users of assistive technologies, and are you happy for the supplier to carry out additional research? "In each round of testing, we included users with accessibility needs, and we’d expect to continue a similar approach in Beta. Note that we will still have a user researcher working on the product during the Beta phase, but we’d expect a supplier to work with us on this, ensuring that the development work meets accessibility requirements. For Alpha we focused on those with cognitive disabilities. The assistive technology included one user who used a screen reader. In total for moderated testing we tested with 1 user with ADHD and 2 with dyslexia." 19. Will the content be owned by a centralised comms team or will you need the ability to have distributed publishing controls (i.e. HR manage HR content, Finance manage Finance content etc) We have not determined the content operating model yet and we’ll want to develop that alongside the development of the beta product. It might be that we start off with a more centralised approach and transition to a more distributed approach over time. We need to have some flexibility with this. 20. Is there a need to be able to share content between other platforms/LGD websites to remove duplicated creation processes? No. Our general approach is to keep content in one place and link to the content rather than syndicating or sharing content across multiple locations.