Making our ambitions for The National Archives’ website a reality.

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done We built and tested, in public, prototypes for a new www.nationalarchives.gov.uk website, in an Alpha phase. We are now looking for a partner to work with us, ultimately to deliver a Beta service during 2021, as we take forward our vision for The National Archives on the web. This project will lay the foundations for eventually replacing our existing website with a new experience that will transform how our users engage with the archive. The careful consideration and adoption of the most appropriate technologies, methodologies and ways of working will be essential to realising our ambitions. Problem to Be Solved Our current website is difficult to use. We have explored and tested alternatives. Building on discovery/alpha and https://alpha.nationalarchives.gov.uk our goals are to: • make it easy for people to find evidence about the past when asking questions on the web; • develop a solution for presenting archival information, so it is understandable for all regardless of a user’s familiarity with archives, alongside machine-readable data for re-use; • develop a generous interface that allows users to explore our catalogue and details of records held by other UK archives, alongside curated content, by topic and theme. All work will undertake a Service Standard Assessment. Who Are the Users We imagine people encountering us on the web when they have questions about the past. Our recent work has focused on two key user groups – potential users and first-time users. This remains our priority, as we seek to grow and diversify our audience. We are also widening the scope to include our existing users, e.g. family historians, academic historians and other professionals engaged in personal or historical research. Our hypothesis is that through generous interfaces users will feel empowered to explore the collection. We look forward to validating this with further research and by refining our prototypes. Early Market Engagement We have completed an Alpha phase, which allowed us to trial technologies, such as ElasticSearch, which proved far more flexible and capable than we previously imagined. We engaged with users iteratively throughout the design process (prototypes available to view at https://alpha.nationalarchives.gov.uk). We published a series of articles covering process and analysis on our Medium blog https://medium.com/the-national-archives-digital. We now imagine creating a knowledge graph of our collection, to express relationships between entities and to expose those relationships as structured data on the web (including through Schema.org and its archival extension). In previous projects we have used RDF (HTML5+RDFa and JSON-LD) for our metadata. All resources (for both the API and front end) should adhere to the URL scheme we have devised for accessing our collections. We continue to evaluate the IIIF standard and tools, which has potential for presenting our digitised content. This will be explored further in this work. We are looking for a partner with experience of developing and maintaining knowledge graphs, implementing solutions using ElasticSearch as well as experience of a variety of modern development frameworks. The in-house team has skills and experience in AWS technologies/hosting but we remain open to other cloud platforms. Work Already Done The main outcomes of the Alpha phase were: • 10 prototypes, illustrating potential solutions to complex user needs - https://alpha.nationalarchives.gov.uk • A proposed URI scheme to replace our existing model • Conducted user research to gain a better understanding of non-users and first-time users • Agreed technical recommendations* to be implemented in Beta • Agreed the need for an organisation-wide content strategy. * More information about the technical recommendations for Beta is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/15MSSFW5gg45lFNmYvzxpMQa68CKg4D7Ai9Xp3dO_GdU/edit#heading=h.oadj953cetdn Existing Team UX workstream - led by our UX team. Front-end/back-end/infrastructure workstreams - led by in-house experts, supported by x4 Designer/Developers specialising in UI design/front-end development. Metrics/Analytics - led by our x2 specialists. Content design - led by our x2 designers. We have some data analyst capability. The supplier will jointly lead back-end development, complementing our existing skillset on the technical side of the project. We also have access to in-house subject matter experts, who have in-depth knowledge of our collection and the catalogue. We anticipate need for expertise in content writing, information architecture, data architecture, business analysis, API development, a ScrumMaster. Current Phase Alpha Work Location The Digital Services team is based at The National Archives, Bessant Drive, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU. Working Arrangments Given the situation with COVID-19, remote working will be the main arrangement for this project. Some work may be conducted at The National Archives, Bessant Drive, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU, but only when it is appropriate and safe to do so. Security Clearance Baseline check (blue) security clearance will be required for access to The National Archives. Additional T&Cs Skills & Experience Have expertise in delivering production code in line with the GDS Service Standard and Technology Code of Practice Have expertise in assessing current and emerging technologies for ongoing maintenance, scalability and optimisation. Have expertise in writing APIs and Web Services Have expertise in the design and development of large-scale resource-based architectures Have expertise in evaluating and benchmarking cloud based technologies 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 Have expertise in delivering digital transformation projects Nice to Haves Have an 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 Have experience implementing and working with cloud-based and/or headless CMS Have experience of developing and using progressive web applications (PWAs) Have experience of using Jira to manage agile projects No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria Examples of undertaking a technical and build approach that is in line with the Government Service Standard and Technology Code of Practice Examples of assessing current and emerging technologies for ongoing maintenance, scalability and optimisation Examples of successfully delivered enterprise level production code using MVC frameworks Examples of APIs and Web Services used at scale in production Examples of the design and development of large scale resource-based architectures Examples of evaluating and benchmarking cloud based technologies 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 Examples of utilising CMS for managing and delivering engaging content Examples of successfully delivered digital transformation projects Cultural Fit Criteria Collaborative and flexible working approach, e.g. working with in-house technical and other digital specialists Approach to supporting teams to adopt new technologies Experience of challenging the way things are done and exploring new ideas and approaches Project management and experience of successfully using agile project methodologies Examples of delivering transition, knowledge transfer and handover of code. An appreciation for the importance of technical documentation as a means of ensuring ongoing maintainability of systems. Demonstrable commitment to a diverse working environment, with a team comprised of experts from a wide variety of backgrounds Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 50% Cultural fit 20% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers No questions have been answered yet Budget range up to £425,000