Right to Buy Website Hosting and Maintenance

Transcription

1 CROWN COMMERCIAL SERVICE RtB WEBSITE HOSTING AND MAINTENANCE Pulsion Response to 23/06/2015 Department for Communities and Local Government Right to Buy Website Hosting and Maintenance 1 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

2 Contents 1 Background Information Support Provision Hosting Provision Potential Additional Requirements Price Schedule of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

3 1 Background Information Background Information Company Name Address of Registered Office Name of Contact for this Tender Position Tel No. Fax No. address Pulsion Technology Ltd. 5 Eagle Street, Craighall Business Park, Glasgow, G4 9XA Date 23/06/2015 Company Registration Number SC VAT Registration Number of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

4 2 Support Provision Pulsion will offer 13 days of support effort per year (which equates to just over 8 hours per month) in order to effectively support the existing Right to Buy (RtB) website. Our support plan will ensure that: The existing WordPress website is maintained, hosted and supported by highly skilled technical staff. An overview of the staff who will be involved in the support provision for the RtB website is provided on the next page. We are happy to provide full staff CV s to evidence our ability and experience if required. We employ over 30 technical staff and over half of that number have experience of the technologies required (WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, XHTML, MySQL and CSS). We can and will provide the ability to upscale resource as and when needed. We will ensure we are prepared for any short notice requirement changes which may arise in the run up to and throughout campaign periods. We will maintain the backend data capture through Campaign Monitor and will also manage the credit balance to ensure a continuous service during both campaign and noncampaign periods, as well as for one-off mail-outs. In order to ensure that we can meet this requirement we have already allocated resource to review and evaluate Campaign monitor to ensure that we can effectively maintain and support the product. We have costed for topping up of credits based on the information provided by DCLG we have also evaluated Campaign Monitors pricing model to determine if a monthly package would be more suitable but this does not appear to be the case given the current figure provided but something that we would continue to evaluative throughout the project. We work collaboratively with our customer in order to build long standing relationships based on partnership. Our support offering is flexible will be provided on an annual basis in order to cater for fluctuations in demand throughout different months of the year or last minute urgent changes. The support time will be available for use throughout the year and will not expire at the end of any month. We are happy to provide references to verify our flexibility and our ability to respond to urgent changes. 4 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

5 Based on our analysis of the support requirements the following individuals will be involved in the support of the RtB website: 5 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

6 6 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

7 Pulsion s core support offering is outlined below. Specific terms can be tailored to meet the individual requirements of each client by agreement. The key elements of our support capability are: Direct phone line Dedicated address Web access to issue tracking system for on-going development Web access to Pulsion Helpdesk Skilled and experienced support staff Monitoring of agreed Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Provision of a dedicated test system hosted on Pulsion s internal server Package Summary Service Areas Online Helpdesk Telephone Support Process Application Support Application Development / Technical Support Description Web based customer support via a Helpdesk and Telephone based customer support. Respond to and investigate user issues. Any code defects will be fixed. Work to define, implement, test and release changes to the application. Standard Business Hours The standard application support period covers Pulsion s core business hours which are 08:00 17:00 Monday to Friday, excluding English bank holidays. Scheduled maintenance will take place outside normal office working hours and extended hours can be accommodated if required. Support Process On identifying a support incident the business user is encouraged to provide as much relevant information as possible such as:- Incident severity Exception details Additional information (screenshots etc.) In situations where there are incidents that are deemed to be outside the scope of this agreement, the support team will endeavour to assist the client where possible. Such assistance will be billable under the standard pricing mechanism. 7 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

8 Support Services Pulsion Helpdesk Pulsion has a dedicated Helpdesk which allows users to report issues with live projects. The helpdesk will ensure SLA s are being met and the customer will be updated with the progress at each stage. Where application issues are raised users are encouraged to log and upload any relevant information including but not limited to: Incident severity Application and functional area Business process impacted Exception details Additional information (screenshots etc.) The online support URL is and the address is helpdesk@pulsion.co.uk Telephone Support The telephone support function provides the client with an immediate contact with Pulsion s Helpdesk Pulsion s shared support telephone number is Outside of standard business hours a voic service will be in operation. Voic s are forwarded via to the Helpdesk. 8 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

9 The high-level Service Agreement Levels are as follows: Severity Criteria Resolution Target Critical Impacting a production environment Causes a Severe impact on business operations (e.g. critical application functions are unavailable). Continuous or near continuous interruption of service No workaround available Critical incidents must be reported or followed up via telephone. The support team will continue to work on the problem until it is resolved or a workaround is provided. High Medium Low In production environment, causes a noncritical impact on business operations. Intermittent disruption of service No stable workaround available Impacting production In production environment, causes a minor impact on business operations. In production environment, causes little or no impact of application functions The support team will make reasonable efforts to provide a correction or workaround within 1 business days. The support team will make reasonable efforts to provide a correction or workaround within 2 business days. The support team will make reasonable efforts to resolve the problem or provide a workaround if such problem has not been resolved in the next maintenance release of software 9 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

10 CROWN COMMERCIAL SERVICE RtB WEBSITE HOSTING AND MAINTENANCE 3 Hosting Provision Requirement Pulsion Response UK based 24x7 web hosting 100% availability Pulsant has been providing high quality IT infrastructure services to the mid and enterprise markets since 1995 and have 10 data centres in 7 different locations across the UK. Pulsant are one of the country's largest providers of colocation, cloud, managed hosting, managed networks, and managed application services with customers ranging from SMEs through to large private and public sector organisations. All facilities are certified to ISO27001, ISO9001 and ISO14001 and their cloud platform design and deployments are CSA STAR certified. The hosting offering for the RtB website is an enterprise class platform (HP Proliant GEN8 servers, HP 3PAR storage and Cisco networking from edge to core) and has N+1 redundancy by design and has successfully delivered 100% availability to customers in both 2013 and The service is underpinned by Pulsant s financially backed SLA which supports their % availability. The service is monitored and supported 24/7/365 by Pulsant s dedicated on-site support teams and hosted within a Tier3 aligned datacentre. The specification of the hosting infrastructure is based on the specification of the existing server, which DCLG have indicated is performing well and has been outlined below: Virtual Edge Gateway Enterprise Cloud - Virtual Datacentre Enterprise Cloud - Virtual Datacentre - 2 x CPU Enterprise Cloud - Virtual Datacentre - 4 GB RAM 10 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

11 Cloud Storage - Enterprise Block - Core v2 60 GB Debian 7 Linux (x64 Latest) Managed OS Support Managed Standard Backup 60 GB By using Pulsant for the hosting of the RtB website means we will fully meet this requirement, offering a seamless hosting service within the allocated budget. Full information on the Pulsant Government Virtual Datacentre is available at: Scheduled maintenance to take place outside normal office working hours Ability to scale up or down according to demand Daily site and code backups held for at least a month and ability to restore site from backup Pulsion s development team will oversee all scheduled maintenance and this will take place outside normal office working hours as standard. This will ensure that all maintenance within these hours will be appropriately monitored and implemented without risk. This is a practice which has proved to be extremely successful on similar projects with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Scottish Social Services Council, and Self Directed Support Scotland, and will offer quality assurance for DCLG on all scheduled maintenance throughout the duration of the contract. We will agree all scheduled maintenance ahead of time with DCLG to ensure that is it beneficial for both parties. As we are dealing with a virtualised server, we can easily scale up or down according to demand. The virtualised server ensures that more RAM and CPU can be immediately added (or removed), if and when required. The hosting offering includes cloud storage and managed backups. 11 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

12 Firewall protection and 24 hour monitoring against threats Pulsion will provide firewall protection and 24 hour monitoring against threats via our hosting partner, Pulsant. Working knowledge of developing and deploying websites in an open source environment. Immediate deployment of software updates and patches Specific working knowledge of developing sites using WordPress, PhP, JavaScript, XHTML, MySQL and CSS Ability to develop enhancements and code The immediate deployment of software updates and patches will be handled by our hosting partner. Pulsant has overseen the immediate deployment of software updates and patches on previous projects where they have fulfilled this role and we have full confidence in adhering to this requirement for the RtB website. Pulsant will be assisted by Pulsion development and/or technical service staff as and when required. Our IT Services team has experience in all of the major open source content management systems (including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Umbraco). We have an acute working knowledge of developing and deploying websites in an open source environment and have previously done so for other notable government websites (e.g. and We will apply our expertise to all maintenance and development required for the RtB website, ensuring a quality service with minimised risk, as we have done so successfully for our government clients over the years. Pulsion s Technical Services team have extensive experience of deploying websites in an open source environment and will fully manage the deployment of the RtB website. We have developed a range of sites using WordPress over the years, including our own website ( We are currently in the process of designing and developing new WordPress sites for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and We also have extensive experience using PHP, JavaScript, XHTML, MySQL and CSS, having used them while developing websites for the Scottish Social Services Council ( Self-Directed Support Scotland ( Forestry Commission Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. We also have specific working knowledge of these technologies from developing a complex web application which is used throughout Europe for EurotaxGlass. We take an agile approach to all development, which will allow us to be both flexible and responsive to any enhancements which are required and specified by DCLG. Our agile approach will also ensure that the necessary resources will be available 12 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

13 Working knowledge of GDS design principles, in particular best practice on usability and accessibility. changes when required and specified by DCLG to develop any enhancements and code changes upon request. As well as being agile, we will adopt a partnership approach when working with DCLG and their other suppliers, ensuring that we establish a sound understanding of the websites existing functionality and your specific requirements. This has proved to be successful in similar projects and will position us to act quicker on any enhancements and code changes which DCLG may require/specify. For instance, as part of our partnership approach, we will give DCLG access to our change tracking system so that they have visibility over all requested enhancements and code changes. Pulsion has a strong working knowledge of GDS design principles and can demonstrated this knowledge based on our design and development experience of delivering other government websites ( and Usability and accessibility is an area which we approach specifically for each client. All of the websites which we design are tailored to offer the optimal user experience to its audience. We have designed websites which are more likely to attract users with usability and accessibility needs (e.g. and and supported them by adding extra accessibility options, such as high contract/low contrast settings. We have also implemented added functionality for the Crown Office site by adding BrowseAloud, which provides an audio alternative to on-screen text. We adhere to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines and ensure that all pages are accessible to WAI WCAG AA or better, complying with priority 1 and 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is a feature which we offer for all websites we design and develop. 13 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

14 4 Potential Additional Requirements Pulsion adopts a partnership approach which encourages long-term partnerships with all of our clients. 82% of our business comes from existing clients, which can be partly explained by our ability to work in collaboration with other suppliers and key stakeholders. In this project we will liaise closely with DCLG s other suppliers, such as the direct marketing agency and media buying agency. We have similar experience of this type of collaboration from working with numerous government agencies including the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC). While working with SSSC we worked very closely with their Communications team meeting frequently with them to advise on best practice throughout the project. We also worked with their existing search supplier (Funnelback) to optimise the implementation of the search functionality on the new website. We have also previously worked with the Social Care Institute for Excellence on the Find Me Good Care website which involved us working with their existing design agency. Title: G-Cloud 4 Requirement - Specialist Cloud Services Improvements to the RTB1 online application form Pulsion Response The RTB1 online application has been created with Gravity Forms, which is a commercial WordPress plugin. The functionality offered by this plugin is well-documented and can be easily modified and improved upon by Pulsion as required. In order to ensure that any improvements to the RTB1 online application form are implemented as clearly and effectively as possible we would propose to schedule an on-line workshop with the relevant DCLG stakeholders so that we can work together to review the existing RTB1 online application form and identify improvements together. As part of our support offering we will provide a dedicated test system for the RtB website which will be hosted on one of Pulsion s internal test servers. We would make any improvements to the RTB1 online application form available on this server for review by the DCLG stakeholders and work together to review these improvements and make any further necessary adjustments. If possible we would recommend that DCLG create and involve a user group to effectively identify and evaluate improvements to the RTB1 online application form with live users. Pulsion would be happy to participate in this user group. 14 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

15 Pulsion s development staff are very experienced and have relevant recent experience of developing online applications forms. We recently implemented an online applications form for student bursaries for the Scottish Social Services Council. This was developed using most of the same key technologies identified by DCLG (PHP, JavaScript, XHTML, MySQL and CSS) and is now live at Improvements to existing tools such as the RtB discount calculator and eligibility quiz primarily as a result of scheme changes Pulsion will make improvements to the existing interactive tools as required (e.g. in the event of scheme changes). Our experienced PHP developers have worked with all manner of PHP projects, from simple bespoke scripts to framework-driven applications. As such, we will ensure that all improvements are handled by highly experienced individuals, minimising risk and assuring quality. Again we would propose to schedule an on-line workshop, with the relevant DCLG stakeholders, so that we can work together to review the existing tools to identify possible improvements. We will ensure that our system test and design staff fully review the existing tools and identify any amendments that will enhance the User Experience or potential improvements to the functionality. Pulsion s development staff are very experienced and have relevant recent experience of improving existing tools and systems. We have recently worked with Citizens Advice Scotland, and their other suppliers which included PwC, to deliver the system which supports their new Pension Wise offering. This required us to extend the functionality of an existing system and adding new tools, which included an eligibility calculator. 15 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

16 Implementing any further changes to imagery and layout The implementation of further changes to such design elements will be an ongoing component of our support offering. We have extensive experience of web design, from template creation to the selection and positioning of imagery. Our expertise in this area has been enhanced through various government and public sector web design contracts. We employ a number of web design staff and will make senior member of this team available to DCLG as part of this project. Our web design staff will discuss potential changes with the relevant DCLG stakeholders and, if required, suggest options and provide mock-ups of these potential options for DCLG stakeholders to review and approve. Refining data capture for existing subscriber database to distinguish between different types of tenants Pulsion delivered a new website for the Forestry Commission Scotland just over a year ago. We have recently been working with them to implement further changes to imagery, layout and functionality. This site can be seen at Pulsion will assist in the segmentation of subscribers during data capture by modifying HTML forms and associated PHP functionality, either as part of Gravity Forms or bespoke data capture PHP scripts. This process will significantly help distinguish between different types of tenants. As part of the protect kick-off we would propose an introductory meeting with the key DCLG stakeholders so that we can gain a full understanding of the RtB scheme, processes and terminology. Pulsion s development staff are very experienced and have relevant recent experience of refining the data capture methodology for an existing process. We have recently worked with several of our clients to refine their data capture processes. This work included helping refine the claim capture process for Slater and Gordon solicitors and improving the User Experience of the order processing service for OneSearch Direct. When working with Slater and Gordon we also worked with Pro DBA, who supply their Database Administration services, in order to ensure optimal system performance. 16 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

17 Implementation of improvements to the site navigation and mobile rendering as a result of on-going user-testing and implementation of scheme changes. Our experienced design and development team will work with the DCLG stakeholders to implement improvements to the site navigation and mobile rendering. We typically provide mobile rendering as standard in sites we deliver and have done so for various open source content management systems (e.g. our own website with WordPress and the SSSC website with Joomla!). We will ensure that any improvements required to the site navigation, as a result of on-going user testing and implementation of scheme changes, are implemented quickly and to a high standard. For instance, we will effectively oversee any restructuring of the home page if RtB is extended to Housing Association tenants. Our system test and design staff will fully review and test the existing site to identify any issue with navigation or mobile rendering. They will also, if desirable to DCLG, potential improvements to the functionality and improvements to the User Experience. In order to best determine this we would look for access to the site analytics. If Google Analytics is not configured for the RtB website we will do so. Pulsion have current relevant experience of working with an organisation to improve the navigation and mobile rendering of an existing site. We were recently selected by the Legal Information Network for Scotland to take over development and support of their existing site, while working with their existing hosting provider. We have already rectify a number of long term technical issues and are in the processes of implementing a new responsive design. 17 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.

18 Department for Communities and Local Government Right to Buy Website Hosting and Maintenance 5 Price Schedule Activity Unit price (net) Qty Total (net) Total (incl VAT) Set up & migration (one off) 1 Code review (one off) 1 Hourly rate 0 Hosting (per month) 12 Support (per month) 12 Development (year one) Day rate support Title: G-Cloud 4 Day - Specialist rate development Cloud Services credits Per day Per day Per 50,000 s Pulsion have allocated 10 days for the development effort in year one based on the information provided for the potential additional requirements and also allowing some additional time for any new requirements that may arise during the year. This development time can be used by DCLG for the additional requirements already identified and any remaining time can be used for any other changes as required by DCLG. Pulsion have allocated 13 days for the support effort per year (which equates to just over 8 hours per month). This time will be provided on an annual (not monthly) basis in order to cater for fluctuations in demand throughout different months of the year or last minute urgent changes. Pulsion s total price is 18,096 which allows sufficient capacity for the topping up of credits within DCLG s total budget. 18 of 18 Pulsion Technology Ltd 5 Eagle Street Craighall Business Park Glasgow G4 9XA.