Website RFP Issued By Albany, NY

The City is seeking the services of an experienced website design firm to re-design, develop, implement, and possibly host a website for the City. The City recognizes the importance of having a website that provides effective citizen engagement and communication and functions as a single source site of information for our constituencies. The overall goal is to redesign the website to improve citizen engagement, to increase communication, and to provide transparency of government, to incorporate current website technologies, all with simple navigation. The City expects the vendor to re-engineer the site to better reflect the City’s emphasis on improving citizen engagement, communication and using the latest technology.

The City requires this website to be modern, functional, highly attractive and responsive. From the administrative perspective the site must be easy to update by users of varied technical expertise from individual departments.

The City of Albany provides essential services to the community. Enjoy clean parks and playgrounds, fresh drinking water, efficient trash and snow removal, educational opportunities, entertainment programs and professional emergency response services that are offered on a daily basis from one of the many City Departments and Offices. The New York State Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) was created in 2012 to transform IT services in an effort to make New York State government work smarter for its citizens and enable the state to be accessible for businesses through the use of technology.

ITS provides statewide IT strategic direction, directs IT policy and delivers centralized IT products and services that support the mission of the State.

Scope of Work:

The City of Albany desires a website that provides electronic access to services and information with clean, obvious, and intuitive one- or two-click access to desired resources. Priority information includes forms and applications, processes and procedures, meeting information including agendas and minutes, policies, reservations, calendars, and other activities.

The design of the website should be welcoming and attractive, while meeting the needs of our community. The final version of the design should be a collaborative effort between the City of Albany’s team and the vendor, incorporating elements that effectively represent the City of Albany’s brand and image through a data-driven and consultative development process.

Design:

• Accessibility-Website design and associated elements should comply with best practice and current ADA standards.
• Consistent Website Design – Website design must remain functionally consistent throughout all pages to maximize usability. Exceptions where differentiating between departments or sections of the website may be requested by the City.
• Easy Updating – Design elements should include background images, photographs, logos and buttons that are easily updated or swapped out by our staff at any time and without incurring any additional implementation or update charges.
• Website Design & Content Ownership – Ownership of the website design and all content should be transferred to the City of Albany upon completion of the project.
• Design Overview – Website design must be visually appealing, incorporating the City’s colors and logo where appropriate.
• Design Process – The vendor shall develop an original design for the City of Albany and over a period of time during the development of the website, consult with the City’s website redesign committee to make revisions and alterations to the vendor’s original design submission.
• Inventory – The vendor shall do an inventory of the City of Albany’s current website and map out the current hierarchy and assist the City of Albany to make determinations on what stays, what goes, and what new prices are needed

Website Development & Go-Live:

• The vendor should define their process for preparing content, development of the actual website and preparing for the go-live date. It should be clear what will occur in each phase and identify both vendor and client deliverables.

Responsive Website:

• The solution should be able to preview the mobile view across different devices and the ability to design and customize a better user experience for mobile users by allowing us to move, hide and reorder content to create an optimized mobile view of our website. Responsive site creation that includes, but not limited to:
• Creation of responsive templates
• Creation of fluid grids
• Navigation redesign
• Taxonomy and site map
• Image adjustments
• Mobile page preview for smartphones, tablets and other devices
• Ability to adjust or modify responsive views on individual pages or templates

Content Management System (CMS):

• The vendor’s content management system (CMS) should be a web-based application that provides the core of the entire development process, being both the platform for development and the tool by which system administrators and contributors can update the new website. The CMS may feature plug-in applications or modules that enhance the functionality of the website, though core features should center around ease-of-use, flexibility and, for ongoing stability. The preferred CMS will allow non-technical content contributors the following abilities:
• Administrative Dashboard – The administrative portion of the CMS shall be accessible for all content contributors and feature a customizable interface that displays critical shortcuts, on-site items that require attention, recent activity logs, etc.
• Automatic Sitemap – The CMS should automatically create and update a sitemap and on-page breadcrumbs when content is added, edited or removed from the site.
• Content Expiration – Notification of expiration of site content shall be received by content owners through notifications available via the CMS, including a dashboard administrative display and e-mail notifications. The dashboard should also detail the dates for when specific content was last updated and allow for notifications when certain time periods are reached.
• Content Management – A way to add, edit and move content directly on an assigned webpage without the need to utilize or be trained on a back-end administrative system.
• Content Preview – Content publishers must have the ability to preview changes prior to publishing on the site.
• Content Scheduling – Content added to the site, whether as part of page content or additions to plug-in applications or modular elements shall feature delayed posting and automatic expiration abilities.
• Hyperlinking – Users who wish to add simple links – either internal or external – should be provided with an option to do so through an automatic hyperlinking option.
• Menu Updates – Content publishers should be able to add and update menu items if assigned the appropriate permission level.
• Online Help and Training Videos – Access to support materials including, but not limited to: online training manuals, support FAQs, customer support, forums, etc. forums, instructional videos,
• Page Templates – Content publishers must have the option to use pre-created page templates to assist in the formatting and development of new content.
• Widget Support – Content publishers should have the ability to place widgets or content blocks on page mtemplates that serve specific purposes and streamline the template building process. Widgets can represent any key function such as calendars, directory, e-notification, FAQs, search, etc.
• Template Sharing – Content publishers must have the option to share templates with and use templates from a wider community pool which shares consistent page development.
• PDF Conversion – Ability to convert documents to PDFs via an included PDF conversion tool.
• Spell Check – Editor should include spell-check functionality.
• WYSIWYG Editor – The CMS must have an advanced WYSIWYG rich text editor for content additions and updates that, while allowing flexibility for higher-end content contributors, is simple and straightforward, giving basic content contributors a basic set of fewer options to alter established site styles.
• Support Access – Trained content creators of the CMS shall have access to live support via e-mail or phone during vendor’s normal business hours.

Due Date:

April 8^th, 2019.

Address:

Angelica Kang, Esq.

Assistant Corporation Counsel

City Hall – Room 106

24 Eagle Street

Albany, New York 12207

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