Website Agency Needed for Waterloo, Iowa

Services needed includes:

Design

1. Market and showcase the City of Waterloo.
2. Make it easier for audiences to interact with the City of Waterloo.
3. Reduce City of Waterloo staff time to handle routine inquiries.
4. Build upon proven and accepted website development standards while maintaining the flexibility to easily grow and add new functionality for audiences and administrators over time and with minimal cost.
5. Design must be responsive with the ability to access all or selected portions of the site from mobile devices and tablets.
6. Be able to link to existing document management system (Laserfiche) which is housed internally.

Content

1. Provide accurate, current, comprehensive information to City of Waterloo audiences, in a visually appealing, user-friendly way.
2. Offer a variety of communication methods to keep audiences up-to-date on City of Waterloo news as well as accept input from citizens through the use of forms, email, text alerts or other appropriate interaction.
3. Provide an employee section (intranet) which is password protected to communicate with staff on different subjects including but not limited to: policies, training (including videos), news and events, calendars.
4. Integration of social media elements like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. into the site.
5. Ability to upload and share multimedia (video, images, etc).
6. Functionality table (Section 6) contains needs of the City. This table should be completed by vendor completing proposal.

Management

1. Simplify website administration through a Content Management System (CMS), allowing users of all skill levels the opportunity and means to update assigned sections of the website.
2. Expandable to add additional functions as needed.

Hosting/Maintenance

1. Vendor should have the capability of hosting the site.
2. While website content updates are managed by the City of Waterloo through the CMS system, the vendor should commit to regular maintenance and updating of the CMS system and associated applications for the purpose of keeping the existing software up-to-date as well as introducing new functionality and applications.

Audience

Primary audiences served by the City of Waterloo website include:

1. Community residents
2. Residents looking to move to the area and/or gain employment in the area
3. Local and regional businesses
4. Vendors doing business or seeking business with the community
5. City Council and City staff
6. Internal and external municipal committees
7. Local/regional press and media
8. Decision Process

RFPs will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

1. Ability to meet developmental/technical requirements of the project.
2. Qualifications and experience
3. Past performance (references required)
4. Similar projects completed
5. Ability to work with the City of Waterloo website team and budget
6. A maximum of 3 finalists will be selected after initial evaluation of proposals. Those finalists will be asked to present on their proposal (30 minutes) with a 15 minute question and answer period to follow.
7. Recommendation of selected vendor will be sent to council for approval on or about July 18th, 2016.

Proposal due on June 24th, 2016 to:

City of Waterloo Attn: Chris Youngblut, IT Director 715 Mulberry St Waterloo, IA 50703 [email protected]