BIS shared web service

BIS.gov.uk is a shared website platform which provides participating organisations with a flexible, features-rich enterprise Content Management System (CMS) and robust, resilient hosting and support at a fraction of the setup costs of going it alone, and zero costs for ongoing hosting.

If you are interested in joining the BIS shared web service please contact Susan D'Arcy. Susan will arrange a meeting with you to go through the joining process and start the ball rolling.

Background

In March 2009 the procurement process started to replace the www.berr.co.uk web platform. The hosting contract for this site ended in March 2010 which meant a solution must be in place by then.

In June 2009 the Department for for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Innovation, University and Skills merged to become the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. This introduced additional challenges to the procurement as there were now two websites that also needed to merge together.

The requirements grew to merge these sites as part of the process and accommodate a wide range of content on a single www.bis.gov.uk website. We needed...

• More attractive, engaging and dynamic site
• Greater flexibility and functionality
• More control within the team
• Scaleability – channel strategy, partners onboard (web rationalisation)
• Ease of use for devolved publishers
• Lower cost than previous solution

The solution

In March 2010 the new BIS shared web platform was launched.

The BIS service runs on Sitecore 6, a world leading Microsoft .NET based enterprise content management system. It’ll look familiar - if you can use Windows, you can use Sitecore

Our platform was built and is hosted by Bath based Eduserv, a not for profit organisation with 20 years experience of public sector IT projects.

It uses their virtualised Government Ready Platform data centre.

Google Mini provides search tools for BIS.gov.uk and partners. Google Analytics provides COI compliant stats for every site

It is available to:

All BIS partner organisations. Our Executive Agencies and NDPBs. There are two kinds of customer in this group:

• Convergence Partner – A partner who must move to the platform as part of the website rationalisation and convergence project.
• Shared Service Partner – A partner who chooses to move to the platform to take advantage of its benefits and cost savings.

Selected other Departments. A small number of other government departments who were named in the contract.

When a partner decides to join the platform we help you through the process from start to finish.

Key Features..

• Embeddable media: Ability to embed YouTube, Flickr, Scribd, Slideshare, Google Maps and other third party media into all pages.
• Content review tools: Email alerts for content owners when pages are due for review. Monthly automated reports of expired content and on-demand reporting of all site content.
• Immediate and scheduled publishing: Ability to publish pages within seconds of pressing the button or at a scheduled future time.
• Flexible workflow: Share the BIS workflow or design your own. Sitecore's powerful workflow engine includes versioning, controlled approvals, incremental publishing, notifications and reminders.
• Cascade metadata: Replicate metadata or sidebar content across entire sections at a time, or apply them per page.
  

Hosting and support

• Fully managed service: Full management of the supplier service levels by BIS on your behalf. Access via BIS to support with 10 second answering for 95% of calls and email service, 8am - 6.30pm, Mon - Fri.
• Resilient hosting: Robust, infinitely scalable virtualised infrastructure including full disaster recovery, automatic synchronisation and fail-over, 99.5% availability 24x7.
• Secure data storage: ISO-2001 data security. Secure connection to the system (using SSL and VPN). Penetration tests annually.

Design and usability

• User tested designs: A user interface developed in conjunction with research into users’ needs, and tested by independent usability and accessibility experts.
• Flexible templates: Over 15 ready-made page templates with variable column layouts. A wide range of side panels that can be added and removed on individual pages or whole sections at a time. Option to buy development of as many additional templates and panels as you need.
• Support for co-branding: Ready made partner sub-site templates allowing for use of own logo and colours.
• Flexible information architecture: Ability to structure content based on hierarchy (e.g. bis.gov.uk/about) and metadata (e.g. bis.gov.uk/policies)
• Language support: Sitecore is able to manage content in any language.

Other benefits

Standards compliance

• COI standards compliant: The platform has been developed to meet all of the standards and guidelines published by the Central Office of Information (COI) including AA level WCAG 2.0 accessibility, cross-browser compatibility and more.
• Automated archival: All site content is copied to The National Archives web archive three times a year, and requests for pages which no longer exist are automatically redirected to the most recent archived copy.
• Performance reporting: The BIS digital team will report usage figures, satisfaction survey results and web management costs on your behalf to meet COI requirements. Usage figures verified twice yearly by independent auditors ABCe.
• Validation tools: The site includes built-in validation to prevent the use of invalid and inaccessible XHTML.

Audience and reach

• High visitor figures: BIS.gov.uk attracts over 350,000 unique visitors and 480,000 visits per month, with over 15K people subscribed to email alerts and 8K followers on Twitter. This audience will grow as more sites join the service with mutual benefits for cross-promotion, reach, and value for money.
• High search ranking: BIS.gov.uk has a Google PageRank of 8/10 and has natural search engine optimisation best practice built in (mandatory metadata, friendly URLs, an XML sitemap exposing pages to search engines)
• Friendly URLs and redirects: All page URLs readable by humans. Ability to create unlimited short marketing URLs in form bis.gov.uk/campaignname redirecting to deeper pages.
• Syndication tools: Ability to provide visitors with RSS feeds and/or email alerts for any new or changed content. Ability to create and send email newsletters and manage subscriber mailing lists. Ability to show sharing and printing options on every page. 

Costs

For information on the costs of the BIS shared web service please contact th BIS digital team.

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