The City of Waterloo, Iowa has initiated a Request for Proposal (RFP) process to identify a vendor to plan, execute and deliver the redesign of the city’s website. The City of Waterloo requires a vendor who has demonstrated experience in managing website projects and expertise with best practices regarding successful website design, development and deployment.
The City of Waterloo, Iowa is a thriving community, rich in agricultural development, manufacturing, and cultural diversity located on the banks of the Cedar River. Waterloo offers advantages of big city living as it cherishes its farming roots as a small Midwestern town.Waterloo is Iowa’s sixth largest city with a population of 68,406; it is also the county seat of Black Hawk County.
The existing design is outdated and lacks a true content management system (CMS). With the widespread growth of mobile devices, the inability of the current design to present itself on these devices is a hindrance to providing information to our citizens in an efficient manner. Navigation to items such as city services, codes and regulations can be difficult and the desire is there to improve the overall ease of this process.
There are a number of primary objectives to be accomplished by the development of a new website, both focused externally on website visitors and internally on website administrators.
Services needed includes:
Design
- Market and showcase the City of Waterloo.
- Make it easier for audiences to interact with the City of Waterloo.
- Reduce City of Waterloo staff time to handle routine inquiries.
- 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.
- Design must be responsive with the ability to access all or selected portions of the site from mobile devices and tablets.
- Be able to link to existing document management system (Laserfiche) which is housed internally.
Content
- Provide accurate, current, comprehensive information to City of Waterloo audiences, in a visually appealing, user-friendly way.
- 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.
- 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.
- Integration of social media elements like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. into the site.
- Ability to upload and share multimedia (video, images, etc).
- Functionality table (Section 6) contains needs of the City. This table should be completed by vendor completing proposal.
Management
- 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.
- Expandable to add additional functions as needed.
Hosting/Maintenance
- Vendor should have the capability of hosting the site.
- 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:
- Community residents
- Residents looking to move to the area and/or gain employment in the area
- Local and regional businesses
- Vendors doing business or seeking business with the community
- City Council and City staff
- Internal and external municipal committees
- Local/regional press and media
- Decision Process
RFPs will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
- Ability to meet developmental/technical requirements of the project.
- Qualifications and experience
- Past performance (references required)
- Similar projects completed
- Ability to work with the City of Waterloo website team and budget
- 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.
- 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
chris.youngblut@waterloo-ia.org