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Web2001 Phase II Invitation to Tender
Design and Build of a new Web
presence for the British Council
Invitation to Tender
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in England as a charity.
Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Background
The British Council is redesigning its Web presence to achieve the same reputation for
world class quality, customer care and innovation which we have achieved over sixty
years with our face-to-face services. The current site (www.britishcouncil.org) will be
redesigned with a new authoring tool and a new content management system. It is to be
placed on a firm business footing to address individuals who want to get on in life, people
with aspirations, primarily learners and professional practitioners working in our
principal areas of interest.
The project we are inviting you to tender for represents Phase II of a development
programme entitled Web2001. Phase I of this programme established the strategic
framework within which we could progress with our online developments. This
framework defined our online proposition along with recommendations for the
management of our online brand and the technical infrastructure within which we
should operate. Phase I has been regarded as a success with its recommendations
enthusiastically endorsed by the senior management strategy team. It provides for a
short-term and long-term strategy, details of which are provided in Annex 1
‘Recommendations for a strategic framework for the new British Council Web presence’
and is essential reading for your tender. However, a summary of each strategy is
provided below:
Short-term strategy (by end 2002):
Providing access to learning opportunities and creative ideas from contemporary UK.
Focusing on education (including English language learning), the arts and
science, and society
An exclusively innovative and contemporary image of the UK
More dynamic, interactive, continuously updated and technologically innovative
Principal target audience: young professionals seeking educational
opportunities, capturing and enhancing their interest in contemporary UK and
offering them opportunities to conduct simple business transactions online.
Longer term strategy (by 2003):
A fully integrated, personalised service for building and managing valuable networks of
relationships tailored to individual interests and needs:
Highly personalised interactive capability, selecting and providing information
based on individual needs
Deployment of powerful, accessible and fully integrated customer data sources
Fully integrated one-to-one communication online, over the telephone and face-to-
face
Principal target audience: as above, plus current and future leaders, i.e. a
smaller number of highly valued customers in high intensity (potentially one-to-
one) relationships, interacting with an organisation that is offering a wholly
integrated online and offline experience.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Phase II has been commissioned to take the short-term strategy and project our online
proposition of ‘providing access to learning opportunities and creative ideas from
contemporary UK’ throughout our many countries and divisions. The legacy of this
contract must be a very flexible and easy to use authoring and publishing tool,
which will deliver an efficient and creative user experience which is
responsive to the highly differentiated marketing cultures in which we operate
world-wide, but which still delivers a clear sense of a unified British Council
Web presence. The successful bid will convince us that this is what we will get.
Guidance for the development of your tender
This section provides you with the basic information needed to submit a compliant
tender.
Deadline for receipt of tenders
The bid document must be delivered to Christopher Wade, Floor 6, The British
Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London, SW1A 2BN by 1700 on Monday 17 September.
The bid document must comprise of the following:
Six printed copies
One emailed PDF to Web2001Bids@britishcouncil.org
The tender packages should be delivered in plain packaging and marked only with the
name and address and 'Web 2001 Phase II Project Proposal'.
This ITT is not an offer and all costs incurred in the preparation of the bid are the
suppliers' responsibility. The contents of this ITT are confidential and are not to be
disclosed to any third party.
Note that requests for further information whilst writing the bid document should also
be addressed to Web2001Bids@britishcouncil.org. Replies will be summarised and
published to an extranet at http://www.britishcouncil.org/web2001 to ensure no unfair
advantage and a consistency of responses. Anonymity will be maintained when questions
are published.
Note also that this is a credentials pitch only. No bid team is required to produce
creative work or visuals or will benefit from doing so. However, in the initial response to
the bid we will be looking for clear evidence of an understanding of what we are trying to
achieve. We also reserve the right not to proceed with this project for whatever reason
we deem to be justifiable.
How we will select the winning tender
Following the opening of the bids the British Council will create a shortlist of a
maximum of six companies that will be invited to present to the project team on the 28
September. The companies being invited to interview will be informed of the time of
their interview on 24 September. Presentations on 28 September will follow the same
structure as the bid document. Our preferred bidder will be informed on the 1 October.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Contract completion will be conditional on our reaching an agreement with the preferred
bidder on terms and conditions, to the satisfaction of the British Council.
Requests for feedback on unsuccessful bids will not be answered until after 1 October
and should be addressed to Ian Barnes.
We anticipate signing the contract at the beginning of October and concluding the
scoping and orientation tasks by the end of October.
Key deadlines
By 6 January 2002, the British Council India site must be launched (this is an
unmoveable deadline)
By 31 January 2002, the British Council Japan site is launched
By 31 March 2002, the contract ends with all deliverables tested and delivered to
the satisfaction of the British Council.
How to structure your bid document and the evaluation criteria
The structure of your bid document must use the following eight chapters. We will be
evaluating each bid in line with these criteria:
Price and methodology itemised by task
Experience
Relevant expertise
Quality accreditation
Innovative design and creativity
Proven ability to manage large corporate Web design and Content
Management System integration projects
A track record in business strategies for the Web
Your details
The content of these chapters is now described in detail.
1.1.1 Price and methodology itemised by task
The British Council’s first consideration is to find a tender that is the most
economically advantageous to the project, taking into account all the other criteria.
The British Council is a registered charity and cost will be a critical but not
overriding factor. Note that this will be a fixed price contract and we are not
providing any price guidelines.
It is up to the consultants to devise a methodology for delivering this project and
this methodology should be clearly explained in this section of the bid document
with a Gantt chart that explains the schedule. We expect you to demonstrate that
you have understood this brief and have identified the critical issues to be resolved
for success. This chapter should be divided into six top-level tasks as follows:
Site design and content development
Development of a navigation tool
CMS configuration
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Support for 4 additional beacon sites
Documentation of guidelines and training resources
Communications strategy
For each task, the deliverables are as follows:
1.1.1.1 Site design and content development
You will design and build:
The corporate home page
10 pages 1 click away from the corporate home page representing
different areas of the business
10 pages 2 clicks away from the corporate home page representing
different areas of the business
2 entire country sites (Japan, India) which will be designed to show
how we can respond online to highly differentiated marketing needs in
different cultural contexts within a creative and navigational
framework which is consistent (and can be replicated globally)
Selected pages (Contact us, Visit the world, Search and Work with us)
Layout guidelines for badging strategic sub-brand sites which are
given design freedom (e.g. www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish)
1.1.1.2 Development of a navigation tool
You will build:
An adaptive navigation system based on the principles set out in
section 4.
1.1.1.3 CMS configuration
We will require you to participate in the familiarisation of:
The Obtree C3 system (5.3)
The proposed server architecture (5.4)
The British Council security standards (5.5)
We will require you to consult and advise on:
The specification of the content management procedures and
processes (5.6)
We will require you to configure and install the CMS according to specified
architectures (5.4), agreed security requirements and content management
specifications (5.6):
The staging server CMS and host computers
The live server CMS and host computers
Parsing routine to upload offline content
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
1.1.1.4 Support for 4 additional beacon sites
You will specify:
a methodology and a range of costed options supporting the creation of
four additional sites according to guidelines that are consistent with
the rest of the work supplied under this contract.
1.1.1.5 Documentation of guidelines and training resources
You will create an online resource detailing all the content management
procedures and design standards relating to the following four categories of
user:
System administrators
CMS administrators
Web authors
Web designers
A more detailed specification of documentation to be delivered is identified in
section 7
1.1.1.6 Communication strategy
Develop an extranet and feedback facilities to solicit comment for staff
and customers
1.1.2 Specification of tasks
We would expect the individual tasks to be broken down within these six categories
into a series of work packages containing the following elements:
Task name
Objective
Owner
Effort (person/days)
Duration (days)
Start/end dates (week beginning/ending)
Outputs
Dependencies
Milestones
For each of the six top-level tasks, summarise and justify your costs, including
VAT.
1.1.3 Experience
We require evidence of relevant experience in the field of Web design and CMS,
preferably for organisations analogous to our own. You should submit details of
three similar projects to demonstrate this capability with full contact details of one
referee for each project. At least two of these references will be taken up for all
companies invited to interview prior to the interview taking place.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
1.1.4 Relevant expertise
We require evidence of the relevant expertise in your organisation. Please list
the key personnel (from both principal and secondary contractors) who will work on
this job. We reserve the right to make it a contractual obligation that these
individuals will work on this project and to withdraw our offer to a preferred
supplier if this condition can not be fulfilled.
1.1.5 Quality accreditation
We require evidence of accreditation, awards etc. that you have achieved.
1.1.6 Innovative design and creativity
The British Council is an organisation working with partners in the creative
industries to project the UK as a dynamic and modern country. We represent UK
culture at its best by promoting contemporary images of the UK that complement
and sometimes challenge the traditional images that are still recognised world-
wide. We require evidence of first class design and technical innovation that
can project such a view of contemporary UK.
1.1.7 Proven ability to manage large corporate Web design and CMS integration
projects
The management of our Web services will be complex given the large author base
and geographical distribution of our offices. We are also suggesting a CMS solution,
which we anticipate you have little experience with. We require evidence of
achievement in managing large corporate web design and CMS integration
projects and your views of how this experience will relate to this project.
1.1.8 A track record in business strategies for the Web
The British Council is an immensely complex organisation. The individual sectors
and businesses should be understood and treated as businesses with a need to
maximise customer satisfaction. We require evidence that you have worked with
complex organisations and provided them with appropriate and manageable
strategies and solutions for their Web services.
1.1.9 Your details
The tender should clearly indicate the following:
Full address details (including email) of the principal contractor for the
purposes of all communication during this process
Full address details of all other subcontractors where the bid team is a
consortium
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
1.1.10 Essential resources
To help you, we strongly recommend that you study the Executive Summary of
Phase I, and the three annex documents relating to the market study, the design
study and the technical study. These are available on our extranet site at
http://www.britishcouncil.org/web2001. The recommendations in these documents
must not to be considered as part of this invitation. They must only be seen as
contextual information that may assist you formulating your bid.
The British Council team
The British Council’s E-Services Committee is the decision-making authority for this
project. However, on a day to day basis, the technical part of the project will be managed
by Ian Barnes (Internet Business Development Manager), the design and branding part
of the project by Christopher Wade (Director of Communications) and the overseas
component through Terry Toney (Director British Council Japan).
The consultants will work with a steering group comprising representatives of:
Web teams from Japan, India, Russia, Australia, English Language Teaching Group,
Education and Training Group and Arts Group.
Site design and content development
Background
The online proposition for this site is to provide access to learning opportunities and
creative ideas from contemporary UK. This has been defined in full consultation with
customers and British Council staff in Phase I and will not be revisited during this phase
of work. It is also important to note that a contract to identify the British Council online
identity is underway as a separate consultancy and will be delivered by 31 October 2001.
By then we will have in place the following:
Guidelines on the brand architecture for the Web which envisage a corporate
brand (British Council) and three distinct sub-brands: a country (e.g. British
Council Singapore), an activity (e.g. British Council seminars), and a strategic
sub-brand with a distinct style which is badged either with the British Council
brand or with a range of partner brands (e.g. www.montageplus.com)
A new British Council logo (the name is envisaged to change from The British
Council to British Council)
New standards for corporate typefaces
New colour palettes
New guidelines on the use of language and imagery
A new strapline
This identity system will be taken offline in Spring 2002 but it will be launched initially
in our new online presence in January 2002. The contractor will work within the new
identity guidelines and a full briefing on progress with these guidelines will be provided
on appointment.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Orientation and scoping
The design team will be introduced to the organisation’s operational sections both in the
UK.
Deliverables
The site currently has in excess of 60,000 pages of handcrafted HTML. We are not
proposing that this consultancy develop an entirely new site for us. We have 200 content
providers to offer content on a regular basis. We need to make sure they are providing
new content that is business focused and respecting the values of the organisation
through the application of correct design and tone of voice. To help us achieve a complete
reworking of the site we would like to work with you to develop parts of the site that can
be used as pilots for our others to follow. To be specific we are looking for the following:
The corporate home page
10 pages 1 click away from the corporate home page representing different
areas of the business
10 pages 2 clicks away from the corporate home page representing different
areas of the business
2 entire country sites (Japan, India) which will be designed to show how we
can respond online to highly differentiated marketing needs in different
cultural contexts within a creative and navigational framework which is
consistent (and can be replicated globally)
Selected pages (Contact us, Visit the world, Search and Work with us)
Layout guidelines for badging strategic sub-brand sites which are given
design freedom (e.g. www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish)
Note that the amount of work involved in these site builds should be estimated from the
existing sites. You will need to accommodate a dual language requirement in line with
the existing sites. However, you will be expected to have overall responsibility for the
content of the country sites for Japan and India as they will be attributable to you from
within our network of authors. You will be provided with content in the form of a series
of customer journeys and the raw data that accompanies them. You will be responsible
for formulating a new set of pages with the appropriate tone of voice and presentation.
You will work closely with the Web authors in these countries to define a mutually
acceptable site.
Notes for tender
The tender should provide a methodology for consultation and development for the India
and Japan sites. We plan to engage you in dialogue with our staff in India. Any costs of
travel and expenses to India will be met by the British Council and should not budgeted
for in your tender. We will be inviting members of the Japanese team to the UK for
consultation with you.
An adaptive navigation system
Overview
Many of the complaints levelled at the current site centre around the labyrinthine
nature of its navigation. This is because it tries to say everything to all possible
customers. The new initiative to tailor content into much more discrete customer facing
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
journeys should reduce the content considerably. It will be organised into what the
customer wants to see as opposed to what we want to offer. However, it still will rely
upon a rapid navigation facility to make sure customers are guided through the
multiplicity of offerings as efficiently as possible.
Orientation and scoping
You will need to become familiar with the range of education and artistic services we
offer online. This can take place during the orientation and scoping period set for the site
design tasks. It will introduce you to the preparatory work done in Phase I, which is
touched upon below. We will also have done some further internal consultation on the
wording used in the navigation.
Corporate, divisional and country home pages will share a common high-level menu
structure. That menu structure would be two tiered. The first tier would offer generic
information about the British Council consisting of:
Work with us
Visit the world
Get in touch
Search
The second tier will capture all the education and creative services (arts and science) we
offer in a dedicated navigation tool that will provide rapid access across a wide range of
services. The categories currently under consideration are:
Let us help you to:
Learn and develop or
Be creative or
Register to
We are aiming for a corporate standard of getting anywhere on the site within two clicks.
Our intention is to hand over an agreed navigation structure to you when the project
begins, but we anticipate having to work on this further during the course of this project.
We will also expect you to integrate a search tool into the navigation system. By default
we will be using Microsoft Index Server, though we will look at alternatives you may
suggest.
Deliverables
You will develop an adaptive navigation facility using some form of dynamic HTML. We
are not ruling out using any language though we will require it to have common browser
compatibility and allow for the navigation options to be modified within the CMS and as
a stand-alone piece of code for sites that can’t migrate into the CMS just yet.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
CMS configuration
Overview
We currently manage a corporate Web presence from over 60 ISPs world-wide with
content delivered from 200 authors across 230 offices in 110 countries. With a few
exceptions there is no CMS to speak of. In general the site looks the same, but any
migration of new design and content requires a major change management process. The
organisation must move towards a more centralised facility for authoring and publishing
content. It is reasonable to consider a corporate CMS that will be configured for use by
all country offices and departments. However, many of the offices will find it difficult
initially to communicate online with a central facility for a number of legitimate reasons.
In the following 18 months we anticipate countries adopting one of three solutions:
Work entirely within a corporate CMS
Work to new templates and design standards outside any CMS (as they do at
present)
Work to new templates and design standards within their own CMS
(currently no more than three countries and three departments)
The solution you provide will focus on the development of a corporate CMS. The precise
deliverables are presented in section. However, many of our 200 authors will still need to
present content that has been authored offline. You will need to develop the capacity to
parse content created offline into the CMS. You may suggest creative solutions for this
but we would anticipate a need for templates to be developed in FrontPage 2000 and
Dreamweaver (the two standards for offline authoring in the British Council). This offers
a solution that serves those people that still need to publish to their local ISP and those
that wish to author offline in a structured way for the corporate CMS.
Scoping and orientation
It is important to understand from the outset that the C3 system of Obtree Technologies
has been selected as the candidate system. This was part of the Phase I recommendation
and the decision will not be revisited. We have also identified the server architecture
during this phase, which is unlikely to be modified, unless you put a strong case
otherwise.
Even with these decisions in place there is still a great deal to define before establishing
an operational CMS. We will expect you to participate, along with British Council staff,
in a programme of familiarisation with Obtree C3. In addition we would expect to brief
you on aspects of security and our thoughts on content management. We have provided
contextual information below (sections 5.3, 5.4, 5.5) relating to these issues, which
should help you develop your tender.
Familiarisation with Obtree C3
1.1.11 Why Obtree C3?
This has already been done. Phase I of the project identified C3 from Obtree
Technologies (http://www.obtree.com) as the preferred system). This is a relatively
new product that is rapidly gaining international recognition and support, and is
currently used by companies such as Hewlett Packard, Compaq, Deutsche Bank,
UBS Warburg, Citibank, General Motors and Lufthansa. The Patents Office in the
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
UK has also recently adopted C3, and Obtree are currently partnering with IBM to
release a CMS platform bundle based on IBM technologies.
The object-oriented approach provides a number of strong features such as
instances of content objects allowing, for example, multiple language versions of a
piece of content supported over multiple revisions. Also highly relevant to the
British Council is the ability to define templates within templates, providing a high
degree of flexibility for managing different interpretations of design style across
the organisation. Support for workflow process management is also tightly
integrated within the product, as would be expected.
C3 is compatible with many operating systems, Web servers and database
platforms, but was originally developed on a Microsoft platform and integrates
tightly with IIS and SQL Server across a number of versions. It already supports
the SOAP standard for remote access to applications over HTTP utilising XML as a
carrier structure, and provides full support for XML document and data structures.
In its implementation, C3 has a very small footprint and low performance demands
on the Web server, allowing it to be deployed successfully in a single-server
environment, and provides a high level of content and SQL caching to reduce
performance overheads at the database level.
From the cost perspective, C3 is licensed on a per server basis with additional
licenses required in multiple processor environments. The staging server licence
costs £38,000 dropping to £25,000 per server for the live system. This means that
the total CMS investment would be relatively inexpensive, both for the centrally
hosted system, and for office and regional deployments. The British Council will
procure these licences themselves.
1.1.12 Familiarisation with the software
Obtree offers week-long training courses for the core product and will provide
extended support whilst the site is being implemented. The British Council will
fund separately five days training for two members of the consultant’s team and up
to ten days of additional support from Obtree. This will be met with the proviso
that key members of the British Council IT and Web team staff will also
participate on the course.
1.1.13 Familiarisation with the server architecture
We are adopting an architecture for the online presence in line with the existing
corporate strategy of utilising a Microsoft product set. Not only does this improve
purchasing power and allow existing licenses across the organisation to be fully
exploited, but it reduces the overheads of maintaining multiple operating systems
and application environments. Further benefits are also shown later in terms of
tighter integration with back office systems.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Operating system and Web server
We would strongly recommend the following product set for the deployment of the Web
architecture for the Web2001 project:
Operating system Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Web server Internet Information Server 5
Database SQL Server 2000
Application ASP, VBScript, COM
Development .net, C#
This approach brings the added benefit of aligning the application development platform
with the existing skill set and strategic direction of the Application Development Unit,
the programming unit within Corporate IT.
1.1.14 Live server specification
The CMS will be hosted on a central server (location to be defined) for content
authoring and publishing. The operational service will be delivered from a live
server with load balancing and real-time backup offered by a backup server. The
authoring process will utilise a staging server though the location of this host has
not been identified.
The British Council will purchase all hardware and software specified. The server
and licencing specifications are recommended as follows:
1.1.14.1 Web server requirements
2 x Intel Pentium single processor server with RAID subsystem
running Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating system
Web services will be provided by Internet Information Server 5
1.1.14.2 Database server requirements
2 x Intel Pentium single processor server with RAID subsystem
running Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating system and SQL
Server 2000 database server with Internet connector licensing
1.1.14.3 Server load-balancing and availability
This will be provided across the Web servers and database servers
using the clustering features of Windows 2000 Advanced Server.
Database servers will be paired as a primary and secondary with
database replication for synchronisation
1.1.14.4 Content management system
2 x Obtree C3 license (installed on each Web server)
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
1.1.14.5 Backups and disaster recovery
This service should be provided by the host provider for the operating
systems and applications, however data will backed up through
replication by the British Council
1.1.14.6 Security and remote access
The entire installation will be secured with a high-availability firewall
solution. We are developing supporting VPN connections for access
from specified British Council systems. To be completed mid 2002
Remote management will be achieved using the Terminal Services
component of Windows 2000 Advanced Server
All servers will be hardened to a specification defined within the
security framework
1.1.14.7 Security audit
We recommend an independent audit of the security by a third party
before the system is deployed ‘live’
1.1.14.8 Maintenance and support
This will be provided by the host provider to an agreed SLA
Web and database servers will be supported at a hardware level
Firewalls will be supported at both hardware and configuration levels
1.1.15 Staging server specification
This installation will provide a mirroring and development environment within the
local network. The British Council would purchase all hardware listed below.
1.1.15.1 Web server requirements
1 x Intel Pentium single processor server running Windows 2000
Advanced Server operating system
Web services will be provided by Internet Information Server 5
1.1.15.2 Database server requirements
1 x Intel Pentium single processor server running Windows 2000
Advanced Server operating system and SQL Server 2000 database
server with Internet connector licensing
1.1.15.3 Content management system
1 x Obtree C3 license (installed on each web server)
1.1.15.4 Backups and disaster recovery
This service should be provided as per standard corporate practice
Additionally the database will be regularly synchronised with the live
version of the site to provide an off-line backup of content.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Familiarisation with the British Council’s security framework
The British Council works to ensure there is strict compliance with the EU data
protection standards. It also endeavours to secure its online services against the variety
of known attacks. It is currently developing policies based on ‘risk assessment’ which will
lead to updated procedures for securing personal data, certification, firewall
configuration, hardening of servers, fault tolerance etc. By October there will be
guidelines for use by the contractor to assist in the implementation of CMS in respect to
access control and certification. You must specify some time with the IBD Team and
Corporate IT to discuss the security policy so far and the implications it will have on the
CMS and underlying server configuration. This will require a brief visit to our
headquarters in London.
Definition of content management
The content management in this context relates to all the authoring processes and CMS
maintenance tasks. They are relatively standard but with one notable exception. This
exception relates to the need for an offline authoring facility to overcome online
accessibility problems that many of our offices face across the world.
We will expect you to meet with the Internet Business Development Team at the
beginning of the project to define the content management procedures and processes in
detail. These will need to have been discussed and agreed before proceeding to the CMS
configuration stage (5.7). We have provided our recommendations relating to content
management in order to help you develop your tender. They cover:
Management of the presentation layer in the CMS
Online and offline authoring
Automatic integrity testing of links
Content staging, approval, and deployment
1.1.16 Management of the presentation layer in the CMS
The presentation layer will be a library of common presentation and functional
objects that can be arranged according to the diverse needs of our many online
services. The system should allow a certain presentation objects to be copied and
modified by authorised users via a browser. The presentation layer must adopt
XML and other appropriate presentation formats. The contractor will not be
expected to develop XML schemas but will be expected to use them where
available.
1.1.17 Authoring
1.1.17.1 Offline
Not all content will come into the CMS through online authoring. The project
requires authors to be able to develop content offline for publication, at least
for the coming year, onto their existing local site, for which we have 60 ISP
accounts.
The current specification identifies Dreamweaver and FrontPage 2000 as the
preferred offline authoring tools. Approximately half of our 200 authors use
these tools though many still use simple text editors. The training of our
authors is a task for The British Council.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
The contracted team will need to develop a set of templates or appropriate
procedures to enable authors to write content that will be automatically
accepted by our CMS. This will require a programme or process to separate
content from presentation before parsing into the CMS. This project must
also ensure that authors writing offline will be able to publish to either the
CMS or to their own ISP for which we have around 60 world-wide. Our
ambition in the longer term is to draw all of our authors into a central CMS
but we anticipate this will take until 2003.
1.1.17.2 Online
Authors interacting with the CMS online will be offered a simple interface
leading them towards the appropriate template. It would be a significant
advantage if the authoring of content itself was driven by either one of the
two authoring tools identified or through the supply of some formatting
functions embedded within the system.
1.1.18 Automatic integrity testing of links
The current site has in excess of 500,000 links on the site. We would be looking to
utilise the C3 links management module to be seamlessly used to activate and
deactivate links supplied by authors.
1.1.19 Staging, approval and deployment of content
We are looking to establish an approach to content management across the entire
content life-cycle. This will involve defining, along with the Internet Business
Development Team issues relating to the staging areas for content, the time-scales
for approval and the allocation of rights for approval and the method of uploading
to the live server.
Configuring the CMS
The configuration of the CMS will be your responsibility, though the British Council will
provide the development hardware (if hosted on the British Council infrastructure) and
the CMS C3 Staging Server licence. We will also procure the live server hardware and
the C3 Live server licences. However we will expect you to configure the host computers
and CMS for both the live and staging servers according to server architectures
identified in 5.4.2, 5.4.3.
The development of the CMS can take place either on your own premises or preferably
on a designated server in the British Council. It will be configured in accordance with
the agreed content management framework identified in 5.6. Full administration access
will be provided using Windows 2000 terminal server. Whichever location is chosen, the
development environment must be compatible with recommended configuration for the
staging server outlined in 5.4.3.
Web site hosting
The British Council is currently developing a separate invitation to tender to host all of
our online services. This will deliver its findings in December 2001 when a host will be
selected. We will endeavour to establish the live servers at this location in time for the
launch. The provision of a hosting location will be the responsibility of The British
Council.
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
Deliverables
We will require you to participate in the familiarisation of:
The Obtree C3 system (5.3)
The proposed server architecture (5.4)
The British Council security standards (5.5)
We will require you to consult and advise on:
The specification of the content management procedures and processes (5.6)
We will require you to configure and install the CMS according to specified architectures
(5.4), agreed security requirements and content management specifications (5.6):
The staging server CMS and host computers
The live server CMS and host computers
Parsing routine to upload offline content
Support for four beacon sites
You will also offer assistance to a further four beacon sites where content will be
developed by our authors in those countries. This will require you to (i) evaluate the
content being developed by them and (ii) provide consultations, on request via email,
phone or video conference in support of their efforts. These sites are given as follows:
Education and training group
Russia
Australia
Arts Group
Deliverables
You will specify a methodology and a range of costed options supporting the creation of
four additional sites according to guidelines that are consistent with the rest of the work
supplied under this contract.
Documentation of guidelines and training resources
Deliverables
We will need documentation for the following four groups of people:
System administrators
CMS administrators
Web authors
Web designers
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Design and Build of a new Web presence for the British Council
1.1.20 Documentation for system administrators
We will need to have documentation relating to the following:
Definition of the system architecture
Configuration settings
Management procedures
We would expect this documentation to be sufficient for a Windows2000 system
administrator to understand and use in the management and maintenance of the
servers.
1.1.21 Documentation for CMS administrators
We will need to have documentation relating to the following:
User account management
Creation of presentation and content objects within the CMS
Management and modification of workflow processes
Publishing procedures
Parsing procedures for offline content
1.1.22 Documentation for Web authors
We will need to have documentation relating to the following:
Uploading procedures to the CMS
Explanation of Dreamweaver and FrontPage templates. Prior knowledge of
the use of these two systems is assumed
1.1.23 Documentation for Web designers
We will need to have documentation relating to the following:
The design guidelines and standards
Communications strategy
Phase I of Web2001 was regarded as a success principally because it solicited customer
and staff opinion before it made strategic recommendations. The spirit of consultation
must persist with Phase II. We recommend that the project team establish an extranet
and regularly post updates and materials to the site. The Internet Business
Development Team can offer a feedback mechanism to report on opinions from staff and
preferably also from customers. We will work with you to develop such feedback
mechanisms. However, you should consider in your development cycle that opinion on
designs, navigation etc. will be solicited and, with the agreement of The British Council
project management team, modifications will be made.
You will be given full access to The British Council Corporate Communications team for
guidance and support in this communications exercise.
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