Policy Group - 20 July 2016 Item 15 Dorsetforyou.com website rebuild 1. Purpose of report To seek support to submit a report to Council for approval of the dorsetforyou.com website rebuild unapproved capital project. 2. Key issues 2.1 The Dorsetforyou.com website is a partnership of the six district and borough councils and the County Council and is hosted by West Dorset District Council. 2.2 The contracts for the content management system and the hosting arrangement underpinning dorsetforyou.com were due to expire in June 2016 but have been extended for one year. 2.3 The Dorsetforyou.com Partnership Board commissioned FutureGov to undertake a review to help determine the requirements for a new site. 2.4 Based on this work the technology, design and hosting service required to deliver a new website and digital platform has been agreed and all of the partners are taking reports through their councils to secure the required funding. Appendix 1 contains the detailed report prepared on behalf of the Board for this purpose. 2.5 The overall project cost is based on FutureGov estimates at 355,000, which is to be partly funded by the Dorsetforyou.com development fund and partly funded by partner contributions. Including a contingency, this Council s share is estimated to be less than 20,000. 2.6 A customer focused effective website is key to helping the Council deliver efficient, effective and economic services. Policy Group is therefore asked to support the submission of a report to Council requesting approval of the unapproved capital bid for this project at an estimated cost of 20,000. 3. Recommendation That a report be submitted to Council recommending approval of the dorsetforyou.com website rebuild capital project at an estimated cost to this Council of 20,000. 4. Policy issues 4.1 How will this affect the environment, social issues and the local economy? An effective dorsetforyou.com website is essential if the Council is to continue to promote digital by default and self-service for customers both of which make the Council more cost effective and improve the customer service and experience. PG-2016-07-20-dorsetforyou.com-website-rebuild.docx 1
Item 15 4.2 Implications 4.2.1 Resources (1) An unapproved capital bid for this Council s share of the cost to re-build Dorsetforyou.com was agreed as part of the budget report in February this year. (2) Likely supplier costs are still estimated at 250,000, as quoted in the unapproved capital programme bid. This figure excluded additional staffing costs of 105,000 as these were to be funded from the dorsetforyou.com development fund. The overall project total is therefore 355,000. Table 1 - One-off costs to procure and implement the new digital platform Likely supplier costs based on the FutureGov 250,000 work (platform and consultancy) Total additional staffing cost for the 18 month 105,000 implementation phase Total project costs 355,000 (3) These costs will be met from a combination of the existing Dorsetforyou.com development fund and additional contributions from partners as follows: Table 2 - Funding the project costs Dorsetforyou.com development fund 155,000 Additional partner funding 200,000 Total project costs 355,000 Use of the development fund to this extent will leave a balance of 100,000 to provide future development capacity. (4) The partner funding is apportioned as follows in line with the current percentage share of the website s costs: Table 3 - Required partner council contributions to meet the anticipated balance: Partners % Dorset County Council 34.0 68,000 West Dorset District Council 16.2 32,400 East Dorset District Council 15.1 30,200 North Dorset District Council 10.2 20,400 Weymouth & Portland Borough Council 8.9 17,800 Christchurch Borough Council 8.0 16,000 Purbeck District Council 7.6 15,200 Total contribution to the project 200,000 (5) It is anticipated that revenue costs for the software and hosting services will be contained within the existing partner contributions, which for this Council is currently 26,250. PG-2016-07-20-dorsetforyou.com-website-rebuild.docx 2
Item 15 (6) The Council s current web editors, key service officers and communications officer will need to be involved in the review of their web pages to delete unnecessary content and feed into the design of new and replacement pages. 4.2.2 Equalities The new site design will meet appropriate equality standards. 5. Further information Background 5.1 Dorsetforyou.com is a brand for the seven partner councils; the six boroughs and districts and the County Council. Recently, there has been publicity around the change of the URL of the website from.com to.gov.uk. Following advice from the partners communication officers the.com brand continues to be promoted and is used consistently throughout this report. 5.2 This Council s annual contribution to the running of the web site is 26,250, which is significantly less than the cost of the Council running its own website. 5.3 The current Goss contracts for hosting the site and for the content management system were due to expire in June 2016. Due to the complexities around delivering a replacement website that has a technically sound developable platform, with content that is user focused but also affordable and supportable into the future, it was necessary to secure a new contract through the G-Cloud framework to continue the existing arrangements for Dorsetforyou.com for a further year. 5.4 In 2015, the Dorsetforyou.com Partnership Board commissioned FutureGov 1 to undertake a review of our future requirements. Further information about the review and its outcome is set out in Appendix 1. 5.5 Following the review FutureGov proposed a custom build solution built around the user experience. Whilst the Partnership Board s officers were very happy with the proposed concept they were concerned about the risks with a custom build approach, with the main fear being escalating costs, particularly at a time when local government was needing to reduce costs. Partners felt they would rather use off-the-shelf solutions for standard functionality such as web page publishing and focus any development efforts on things that cannot be bought, like an improved customer experience for online transactions or apps for specific purposes. 5.6 Alongside ensuring the right technical platform, the Board is clear that the new site and whole online presence must be designed around the needs of the customer and provide an excellent user experience using the design principles put forward by FutureGov. 5.7 It is proposed that a partner is secured who will bring user-centred design and digital development expertise to help select the right technology to base the new site and wider digital developments upon and to design and build the new site. 1 FutureGov are a digital service design company specialising in the public sector PG-2016-07-20-dorsetforyou.com-website-rebuild.docx 3
Item 15 5.8 The partner will also help build the in-house digital capability so that after the project the inhouse team can continue to develop the site and digital solutions. 5.9 The proposed solution would seek to have a new website in place for June 2017, with a number of priority services having been re-designed from a customer perspective to improve customer journeys. The proposed services are: District and Borough services Revenues and benefits (includes council tax, housing benefits etc.) Planning Housing Parking Leisure Centres Dorset County Council services Adult social care incl. mylifemycare.com Children social care Dorset Waste Partnership Registrars 5.10 The current content which partners are required to publish but which is not accessed to any extent will, where possible, be posted to data.gov.uk and sign-posted from dorsetforyou.com. Data from partner sites such as visit-dorset.com will not be replicated but again sign-posted. Other areas of the current website will, where possible, be reviewed with service leads and web editors and where required completely overhauled. 5.11 Remaining content would be migrated as is and re-developed over time. 5.12 The site will have the functionality to allow future development of services such as customer accounts, contact/customer management and web chat. Next steps, procurement and costs 5.13 A specification is being developed and the intention is for West Dorset, as host authority for the website, to lead a procurement for a digital design partner and technical platform through the Government s Digital Marketplace Digital Outcomes and Specialists Framework. 5.14 A partner to provide the hosting services for the site will also need to be procured and this can readily be done through the Digital Marketplace. 5.15 The project team, bringing together leads from across the partnership will now be established, and will bring together a communications plan and materials to begin raising the profile of this project. 5.16 The overall project is estimated to cost 355,000. The existing development fund will meet 155,000 and the balance of 200,000 will be met by the partners. This Council s share of the project costs will be less than 20,000. At this stage it is not anticipated that the project will increase the on-going revenue cost of supporting the website, which is currently PG-2016-07-20-dorsetforyou.com-website-rebuild.docx 4
26,250. Further financial information is set out in the paragraph 4.2.1 Resource implications. Item 15 5.17 All seven partners are taking reports through their councils to secure the funds required for the project so that West Dorset can commence a procurement process on behalf of the Partnership for technology, design and hosting service to deliver a new web site and digital platform. The standard report prepared on behalf of the Partnership is attached as Appendix 1. This report seeks Policy Group support to submit the unapproved capital project to Council for approval to secure this Council s contribution of less than 20,000. Appendices: 1 - Dorsetforyou.com review Background papers: There are none. For further information contact:- Sue Joyce, General Manager Resources PG-2016-07-20-dorsetforyou.com-website-rebuild.docx 5
Dorsetforyou.com review 1. Background 1.1 Dorsetforyou.com is the website for the six district and borough councils in Dorset and the County Council. It is the only example of a single web site in a two-tier area in the country and consistently scores highly in the annual Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) Better Connected review. 1.2 A central team hosted by West Dorset District Council supports the site along with resources in local partner councils, including a substantial network of web editors. 1.3 The information content on the web site is managed through a content management system from Goss Interactive and is hosted externally, also by Goss. Both contracts are through the Dorset Public Sector Network (DPSN) framework contract with Kcom. 1.4 This Council s annual contribution to the running of the web site is 26,250, which is considerably less than the cost of maintaining the Council s own website. 1.5 In 2015, the Dorsetforyou.com Partnership Board commissioned FutureGov 1 to undertake a review of future requirements given that the Goss contracts expire in June 2016. 1.6 A new contract has been placed through the G-Cloud framework to secure the existing arrangements for both Dorsetforyou.com for a further year. 1.7 All seven partners are taking reports through their governance process to secure the funds required for the project so that West Dorset can commence a procurement process on behalf of the Partnership for technology, design and hosting service to deliver a new web site and digital platform. 2. Dorsetforyou.com review 2.1 In anticipation of the expiration of the content management system (CMS) and hosting contracts, a small project group was formed by the Dorsetforyou.com Partnership Board to explore options. 2.2 The group met with a small number of suppliers and subsequently decided to commission a review to determine requirements for the councils future digital presence and whether the software the Government Digital Service (GDS) has developed for GOV.UK could be used to underpin the site and generally by the local government sector. Funding of 25,000 was obtained from the Local Government Association (LGA) for this aspect. FutureGov was 1 FutureGov are a digital service design company specialising in the public sector 1
commissioned to undertake the work, including the development of a small scale prototype. 2.3 FutureGov has: Reviewed the site and undertaken a content audit; Engaged with internal stakeholders, including two large events in July 2015, and web editors; Interviewed customers and external partners such as the Citizens Advice Bureau; Evaluated the GDS software; Explored the technical options for a new site; Developed a prototype; Developed a draft set of design principles and a draft style guide. 2.4 FutureGov s key findings include: The site too much content, 8000 pages, split over several sites and it s not all focused on the needs of the customer; User feedback suggests that finding content is not easy, navigation can be difficult and contact details are hard to find (in part, a deliberate move to promote self-service); External agencies such as AgeUK and CAB do not promote the site because of the issues; Web editors are highly distributed, there is a high turnover and it s a small part of people s roles; There is no or little authority at the centre to overrule local partners/managers to achieve a better user experience; There are several back-end systems to support paying and reporting which leads to a confusing user experience and likely increased costs; There is a need to recognise the needs of traded services, who need to compete with the private sector and need more flexibility and independence in the design of digital services; There is also a need for the digital platform to enable an ecosystem to easily allow partnership sites such as the County Council s mylifemycare.com to live on the same platform, sharing key assets; The GDS publishing platform cannot be realistically reused to provide a complete content management system but elements can be. 2.5 The key recommendations from the report are themed as follows and are expanded upon in the following sections: Vision and principles User experience Technical Organisational 2
Vision and principles 2.6 FutureGov is strongly recommending that the partnership develops a clear vision for dorsetforyou.com that reflects the shared aspirations for digital services and supports the vision and objectives of the partners, going beyond the everyday service delivery responsibilities into fostering communities and giving people opportunities to enrich their lives, such as learning a musical instrument. 2.7 FutureGov ran a number of workshops with stakeholders with the overwhelming feedback suggesting the future digital presence move from a largely content driven site (communications tool) to a transactional driven site (customer service tool) that enables customers to access services digitally from a single place. 2.8 This vision also needs to reflect a greater desire for the personalisation and localisation of services. 2.9 This vision should be supported by a digital platform and set of design principles. 2.10 The platform would provide, not only the ability to publish information content, but the basis for excellent transactions designed around the needs of the customer. The platform should be based on the principles of user-centred design, adaptability, agility and open standards. 2.11 A set of design principles should be developed, agreed by partners and owned by the Partnership Board and central team. These principles should be applied when designing new sections of the site and when thinking about new content pages. They will also guide end to end digital transformation and customer services work. 2.12 FutureGov has proposed the principles set out below, based on best practice from the Government Digital Service and reflecting local government and user needs. These have been agreed by Dorsetforyou Board and adopted: 1. Start with needs - user needs not council needs 2. Do less 3. Let your content reflect our brand vision 4. Design with data and iterate 5. Do the hard work to make it simple 6. For everyone 7. Build digital services, not websites 8. Content for citizens, not customers There will be sites for traded services and other purposes that will sit on the same platform and follow certain visual guidelines but have flexibility in order to meet, say, commercial goals. 3
User experience 2.13 FutureGov is proposing guidelines to create the best user experience for users split into two categories; citizen journeys (paying council tax) and customers (joining a sport centre). Whilst the detail differs, the design must be: user-centred; understanding the user goals; and designing accordingly. 2.14 The recommendation is that the content of partner sites such as www.visitdorset.com is not replicated but links provided to the sites. Nor should open data, such as spend over 500, be published, instead this data could be published on data.gov.uk again with links pointing to the data.gov.uk site. Technical (digital platform and options for delivery) 2.15 Whilst the immediate need is a new content management system (web page authoring and publishing software) to underpin a new web site when the new contract expires in 2017, the Board is keen to deliver a technical platform that will go beyond the publishing of information content and provide the best foundation to deliver self-service transactions. 2.16 The scope of a digital platform could include: Content management system (must have requirement) E-form capability (must have requirement) Customer (citizen) account (optional requirement) Contact/customer management (optional requirement) Web chat (optional requirement) Digital development capability (process automation, back office system integration) 2.17 Determining the best way to deliver the platform has been the most challenging aspect of the review. 2.18 The current site is a mix of information content, mainly created and published using the Goss content management system (though some is published direct from other systems such as GIS), and self-service transactions delivered in a variety of ways; local custom developments (such as Highways fault reporting), functionality supplied by back office system suppliers (council tax payments) and commissioned developments. 2.19 The variety of technologies used and lack of strongly applied design principles has resulted in a mixed customer experience and some increase in cost and agility due to multiple software packages and development technologies used. 2.20 FutureGov has undertaken an options appraisal looking at commercial off-theshelf content management systems, open source (freely available systems 4
where the software can be amended and extended by anyone), re-use of the GDS system and custom build. 2.21 In short a detailed report is available FutureGov recommended a custom build. Commercial systems are viewed as expensive (short and long term) and inflexible, the leading open source solutions are either not designed for the scale of the dorsetforyou.com site or community-led developments have led to complexity making support and development difficult and the GDS software cannot be used in its entirety as it has evolved for GOV.UK use, rather than as a general platform, and documentation is poor making it difficult to understand and so support/develop. Elements of the GDS solution can be used however. 2.22 A custom build was proposed as it provides the opportunity to create a digital platform that is focused on the partners needs, and those of local government, is flexible in order to adapt to future needs, is streamlined (without unnecessary features thus aiding performance and ease of use), provides greater potential for a rich, seamless user experience (passing address information from one transaction to another for example) and doesn t lock the partners in to a supplier for future developments. 2.23 However, the Partnership Board was uncomfortable with this recommendation. Whilst the advantages are clear, there are risks with custom development and partners felt they would rather use off the shelf solutions for standard functionality such as web page publishing and focus any development efforts on things that could not be bought, like an improved customer experience for online transactions or apps for specific purposes. 2.24 Whilst the initial focus would be on a publishing platform to enable the creation of a new website for 2017, the platform would be extendable to integrate new transactional capability. Organisational 2.25 The report includes the recommendation that a stronger central team is developed, which would have a wider set of skills than the current team and is able to better coordinate the publication of content and support digital development across partners. 2.26 The Board felt it is not the right time to make a decision about the team until there is a better understand of how to deliver and support the digital platform. This includes resolving the position with respect to the current highly-devolved model of web editors. There are also increased revenue implications of the proposals that partners would need to work through. However, at this point in time the Board is clear that the intention is to manage the future organisational revenue costs within the existing budgets. 2.27 A project implementation team will be needed to work alongside the platform development and migrate and rewrite content. 5
3. Design 3.1 Alongside ensuring the right technical platform, the Board is clear that the new site and the whole online presence must be designed around the needs of the customer and provide an excellent user experience using the design principles put forward by FutureGov. 3.2 It is proposed that a partner is secured who will bring the user-centred design and digital development expertise and help the Board select the right technology to base the new site and the wider digital developments upon and to design and build the new site. 3.3 The partner will also help build an in-house digital capability so that the inhouse team can continue to develop the site and digital solutions beyond the end of the project. 4. Implementation 4.1 The initial proposals for the implementation project focuses on an initial phase for June 2017: Setup initial content management system / publishing platform Redesign primary transactional and information journeys Migration plan for secondary content and cut-off definition for un-used content and redirects on new system Traded services setup 4.2 Priority services would be delivered with an initial suggestion being: District and Borough services Revenues and benefits (includes council tax, housing benefits etc.) Planning Housing Parking Leisure Centres Dorset County Council services Adult social care incl. mylifemycare.com Children social care Dorset Waste Partnership Registrars 4.3 The content, and where possible, transactions, would be reviewed with service leads and web editors and where required it will be completely overhauled. This builds on the work of ICT Business Partners and the Customer Services Unit to complete a digital maturity assessment for the most visited areas/transactions across the site. 6
4.4 Remaining content would be migrated as is and re-developed over time. 4.5 Elements such as the implementation of a customer account and contact management are currently out of scope. 4.6 This is a key opportunity for the partners to fundamentally review their digital presence from the customer perspective and it will be important to couple subject matter experts with design expertise and strong governance to ensure an excellent and coherent customer experience is delivered and not the, arguably, fragmented current experience. 5. Next steps, procurement and costs 5.1 A definition of requirements is being developed and the intention is for West Dorset, as host authority for the website, to lead a procurement for a digital design partner and technical platform through the Government s Digital Marketplace Digital Outcomes and Specialists Framework. 5.2 A partner to provide the hosting services for the site will also need to be procured and this can readily be done through the Digital Marketplace. 5.3 The project team, bringing together leads from across the partnership will now be established, and will bring together a communications plan and materials to begin raising the profile of this project. 5.4 The overall project is estimated to cost 355,000. The existing development fund will meet 155,000 and the balance of 200,000 will be met by the partners. It is not anticipated that the project will increase the on-going revenue cost of supporting the website. 7