The National Archives website, Discovery and Alpha that reimagines our whole offer.

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done What would we create if we started completely anew with The National Archives website, to realise the vision in our new strategy, Archives for Everyone? Inspired by alpha.gov.uk, we are aiming to build and test, in public, a prototype for a new www.nationalarchives.gov.uk website, shaped by user needs, following service standard principles and using modern technologies. This is not intended to be an instant replacement for our existing website. In Alpha, we’re looking to trial new approaches and tools, simplify key transactions, help people learn how to use our collection, as well as attract new people to The National Archives. Problem to Be Solved Our website is vast, confusing, inconsistent, hard to change and expensive to maintain. People looking to access our collection can search our catalogue and records held by other archives (22m entries), or use a transactional service (to obtain a copy or image of a record, register as a reader etc.). Most users arrive from a Google search to somewhere in the catalogue. They are baffled, lacking the mental model they need to use a large archival catalogue for research. To “help” we have 450(!) research guides and other content. Interpretive content, designed to attract new audiences, is disconnected and scattered. Who Are the Users We have a large body of audience and user needs research, including the challenges users face working with the archive and their appetite for pay-for services. • As a researcher I need to find out whether the archive holds records relevant to my enquiry, learn what they are, and access them, so that I have evidence to support my claim. • As a regular archive user I need to frame sophisticated queries using my knowledge of the collection and its catalogue, to order records so that, when I arrive at Kew, I’m able to quickly get on with my research. Early Market Engagement We have done some initial analysis of the market and of the applicability of the technologies available, particularly on AWS. It’s clear there are lots of people who know much more than we do about how to take best advantage of cloud capabilities, so we are looking for experienced help. From our research we believe modern technologies offer the potential to fundamentally rethink how we deliver our website, for example using static content management, search services such as Elasticsearch, and modern development frameworks. We have investigated no-sql and graph databases. We are interested in the potential of knowledge graphs. We are generally open minded about linked data. We have looked at schema.org and we are a strong supporter of the archival extensions to that vocabulary. We are more sceptical about the Records in Context initiative but open to persuasion. In previous projects we have used RDF (HTML5+RDFa and JSON-LD) for our metadata. We are passionate about having good URLs. We have investigated the IIIF standard and tools, which we think are a good fit for our digitised content. We recently started running an IIIF content server. Work Already Done We have started pre-discovery work to prepare for this project. We have been looking at evidence and analysis, stakeholder engagement, and technical. The technical investigation has tasked an in-house team to explore: opportunities for our data that encompasses both the evidence and interpretative content we hold about the public record; rethinking our URLs, moving to a resource-based scheme that fully reflects our catalogue and catalogue references; capabilities of commodity cloud architecture to achieve as light and pliable a tech stack as we can manage, using HTML5 documents with embedded semantic information; investigation of Elasticsearch advanced capabilities, including with graph data Existing Team A small team is already working on the project, alongside other commitments. We have most in-house strength in terms of user research. We have: x3 user researchers and will allocate at least one researcher full time to this project; a strong lead front end developer who will be technical product lead; some data analyst capability; many experts about our collection and catalogue. We anticipate needing: a technical architect; developer/s; designer/s; content designer/s; web-ops engineer/s; analysts; help with delivery management. Our in-house design and technical expertise will support, co-create and supplement this work, the partner will lead on reimagining our approach. Current Phase Discovery Work Location The Digital Services team is based at The National Archives, Bessant Drive, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU Working Arrangments We prefer to have a partner who co-locates with the Digital Services team at The National Archives in Kew. Security Clearance Baseline check (blue) security clearance will be required to co-locate at The National Archives. Additional T&Cs Skills & Experience Have expertise in the Government Service Standard and using the Service Manual Have expertise of challenging the way things are done and exploring new ideas Have expertise in building prototypes and testing different ideas Have expertise in the design and development of large scale resource-based architectures Have expertise in selecting and using cloud based technologies to deliver an outcome Have expertise in HTML5 and the application of CSS and JavaScript via progressive enhancement Have expertise in developing pliable front ends that allow for continuous evolution through A/B testing etc. Have expertise in usage and user information (analytics) for personalisation and metrics Nice to Haves Have understanding of archives and archival practice Have expertise in smart approaches to manage static content at scale in the cloud Have expertise in graph data Have expertise in Elasticsearch and its application to a graph-oriented approach No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria Examples of undertaking a technical and build approach that is in line with the Government Service Standard Examples of challenging the way things are done and exploring new ideas Examples of building prototypes and testing different ideas Examples of the design and development of large scale resource-based architectures Examples of selecting and using cloud based technologies to deliver an outcome Examples of using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript for progressive enhancement Examples of developing pliable front ends that allow for continuous evolution through A/B testing etc. Examples of analysing usage and user information (analytics) for personalisation and metrics Cultural Fit Criteria Have a collaborative working approach, e.g. working with in-house technical and other digital specialists Have an approach to facilitation and supporting teams to explore and learn new technologies Have project management and experience of successfully using agile project methodologies Have examples of delivering transition, knowledge transfer and handover of code Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Written proposal Case study Work history Reference Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 50% Cultural fit 20% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers Budget range £500,000