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Request for Proposals – OGP Website Refresh/Extension – September 2018

OGP Support Unit|

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is seeking a creative and strategic partner to help advance its global mission.  This partner will provide high-level support for a refresh/redesign of opengovpartnership.org with special attention to developing strong user paths and creating data visualizations to relay key information from OGP’s new State of Open Government report (2019 release).  Additionally, we may need support in retooling/refining our databases and creating a mobile or offline application.

This Request for Proposal (RFP) is for four tasks.  

  1. Website redesign and refresh, including ongoing development and design support.

     

  2. State of Open Government “microsite” and data visualizations
  3. Database creation or refinement
  4. OPTIONAL:  New ideas on content, design or display we should thinking about during this process or larger ideas on overall digital strategy.  Specifically, we are looking for ideas for 2019 when new funding will become available.

This RFP is an invitation to bid, not an offer of contract.  Bidders must submit a response that complies with minimum requirements contained herein. All submitted information will be considered for content and application and acted upon at the discretion of OGP.

ABOUT OGP BACKGROUND

OGP brings together government reformers and civil society leaders to create action plans that make governments more inclusive, responsive and accountable.  To date, 79 OGP participating countries and 20 local governments have made over 3,000 commitments. All commitments are reviewed and assessed by the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) housed at OGP.  

In 2019, OGP will be investing in a communications strategy focused on demonstrating impact.  This new strategy will require website adjustments, including:

  • Storytelling:  Building on the video and  storytelling seen on ogpstories.org , including greater integration with other areas of the main website.
  • Campaigns:  Creating dedicated time-bound campaigns on key issues.  The first campaign will support OGP’s Feminist Open Gov initiative and needs a “home” on website.  
  • Open Gov Week:  Expand Open Gov Week to include more partners and participants.  
  • IRM Reporting:  Leverage the IRM reports to create outreach opportunities and share progress and hold governments accountable.  Example IRM report can be found here
  • Earned Media:  Reach out to media outlets to earn coverage on a national and regional bases. Website should provide clear, accessible information with links to speeches, fact sheets and key reports.
  • Thought Leadership:  Build thought leadership platforms for OGP staff and ambassadors and envoys.
  • Branding and Messaging Enforcement:  Create new web brand standards based on current guidelines on visual design and messaging.
  • Data, analysis, and research: A hub for OGP’s data, analysis, and research outputs as well as from its partners.

Additionally, In 2019, OGP will also launch its first State of Open Government report (working title), which will do the following:

  • Visibility: Build global awareness of OGP values and the partnership’s role, as well as country performance, especially to high-level actors and politicians;
  • Close the gaps: Create compelling incentives to close the ambition and implementation gaps at the national level;
  • Comparability: Provide a means by which countries may compare themselves with one another and compare action plans over time and by which OGP may begin to benchmark its impact in key policy areas;
  • Collective action: Cultivate a sense of shared ownership and accountability for cross-cutting reforms in priority areas for all OGP countries;
  • Context and achievement: Demonstrate and highlight many of the most ambitious and high-impact commitments, as well as “champion” and “laggard” members.
  • Practical tools. Products will function as direct tools to inform and frame discussion for OGP Support Unit teams and partners working at the global, thematic, and country levels.

AUDIENCES AND USE CASES:

OGP’s audience is interested in how to improve the working relationship between citizens and government.  OGP’s audience may be government officials, civil society groups, journalists, funders, donors, or individual actors. They are broadly split between participants and observers. Understanding of OGP may range from minimal to expert.   

OGP participants may visit site to:

  • Check their own progress as a member and compare that progress to others’
  • Discover new ideas or directions or best practices on thematics
  • Offer experience to encourage or instruct others
  • Find an archive of  reports and evaluations that are part of the OGP process
  • Download data for research or review efforts
  • Find ideas, stories, and inspiration on ambitious open government reforms to tackle

OGP observer users may visit site to:

  • Check progress of a country and compare to others’
  • Find an archive of  reports and evaluations from the OGP process as well as general OGP research
  • Learn more about OGP at various levels
  • Seek inspiration for why OGP matters
  • Learn about thematic campaigns and initiatives

TASK ONE:  WEBSITE/DIGITAL REFRESH

Objectives

  • Improve user experience
  • Showcase new branding and messaging
  • Promote campaigns, storytelling and thought-leadership
  • Repair degraded design and intent of last redesign
  • Improve search function
  • Determine best CMS in line with organization values and current site. Note: We would prefer to use Drupal or another open source CMS such as WordPress with due consideration paid to any necessary restructuring, reflow, and migration.

Specific Requirements

  • Significant update to home page and navigation inline with branding guidelines
  • Refresh of “thematic pages” organization and content
  • Refresh of all “country pages” with focus on how information can be easily obtained and used and how reports on commitments should be structured and integrated.
  • Refresh “Stories” to focus on thought-leadership and quality over quantity
  • Re-envision resource and tailor to each audience (i.e a resource page for media)
  • Incorporate photos and video (see ogpstories.org for examples of content)
  • Showcase key research reports (TRUST publication, Skeptics Guide To Open Government
  • Create a home for upcoming campaigns starting with Feminist Open Government
  • Reduction of the top-level use of PDFs
  • Translation module which offers default on-the-fly machine translation as well as the ability to override with custom translations
  • Repair search function
  • Review usefulness of map
  • Preservation of current workable items – may include map, country “visualizations”, various content buckets and cross filtering.

Website “Wish List”

  • Some sort of data view which effectively shows both quantifiable and narrative aspects of country progress and experience
  • Invite/manage user requests (and a way to archive questions asked and answered?)
  • Section-by-section commenting (ala civicomment or medium)
  • Direct delivery of IRM report, self-evaluations and action plans from participants through a secure and templated form
  • We are building around sites such as Open Gov Week and OGP stories to find functionality and design we need.

Current Website Challenges

  • Users are unable to find the information they need easily and quickly.  Most staff use Google to locate documents
  • Website is a dumping ground without good protocols or systems for identifying and promoting current content vs. outdated archival material
  • Maintenance and update systems are broken or missing, wide gap between creation of content and display on website
  • Site teems with pernicious redundancy
  • Translation is non-functional (current Transifex)
  • Mobile/low bandwidth experience needs attention
  • We are not using photography, video or multimedia content
  • Improve sign-ups to newsletter
  • Lack of scalability (limited ability to add new features based on changing needs of the organization)

TASK TWO: STATE OF OPEN GOVERNMENT REPORT

Objectives

  • Create visually interesting “home” that can deliver a strong narrative through text photos and visualizations.
  • Link report findings throughout site

Specific Requirements

  • Microsite or other home that showcases report
  • Showcase specific thematic and country work

Wish List

  • Build mobile/low bandwidth resource (app?)  that will allow people to quickly access information

TASK THREE: DATABASE REFINEMENT

Objectives

  • Review/Re-Envision OGP explorer tool and back-end data base with a view to integration with the main site
  • Creation of a way (ways?) in to our essential databases with simple and advanced filters
  • Produce “custom” “reports” (possibly including app (or condensed (offline?) tool)

OPTIONAL TASK

Please provide any recommendations on navigation, structure or content that we should be thinking about in order to incorporate best industry standards.  Also, please include any experience or recommendations on developing an overall digital strategy.

COMPETENCIES AND QUALIFICATIONS

The selected partner will:

  • Be a strategic partner to OGP success
  • Deliver innovative approaches that focus on new ways of using digital communications.
  • Have a strong track record of branding websites, with the goal of raising awareness and engagement  
  • Maintain open and honest ongoing communications with OGP project team
  • Assign a team that is culturally sensitive to the various political and social differences found in OGP’s work
  • Ensure that dedicated staff is able to attend regular meetings and build a strong relationship with the team
  • Be consistent with and committed to OGP’s core values and mission  

TIMELINE OF ACTIVITIES

  • Contract signed – October 24 (approximately)
  • Scope/Discovery – October – November 2018
  • Development/QA – December 2018 – April 2019
  • Launch (part 1) – May 2019
  • Launch (part 2) – Q3 2019

CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION

OGP will evaluate the vendor responses in an objective, comprehensive manner.  Responses to this RFP will be evaluated by a cross divisional committee representing functional areas of OGP.

The evaluation criteria will be applied uniformly and equally, ensuring partners each have an opportunity to be fairly considered. The evaluation process will be conducted based on the following criteria:

  • The agency’s ability to successfully meet the objectives, deliverables and outputs set forth in the RFP
  • Proposed in-house team
  • Pricing competitiveness of the proposal
  • Commitment to quality and innovation
  • Client References/Past Experience

PROJECT COST ESTIMATE

Provide detailed breakdown of projected costs for Task one to three.  Budgets should not exceed a total of $250,000. Budgets should include all details that are required for this project, including but limited to staff and consulting time, travel expenses, and projected other expenses such as research or testing.

All vendors are required to quote costs in USD as the contract will be paid in USD. Payments will be issued as stated in the final contract and OGP will not be responsible for any fluctuation in exchange rates.

OGP will not reimburse for pre-award costs, such as travel related to the RFP process.  This is considered the cost of doing business and will be the responsibility of each prospective vendor.

INTENTION TO BID AND RFP RESPONSE

All vendors must provide written notification via email of their intention to bid, by September 17,  2018.  Proposals are due by COB on September 28.  The intention to bid and final proposals should be submitted electronically to stephanie.bluma@opengovpartnership.org.

RFP responses can be submitted in the Agency’s preferred style.  There are no formal page limits, but we do believe in “less, but better.”   Responses should include:

  • Information on Agency structure and personal.  Please include full bios of core team.
  • Overall strategic approach to assignment
  • Outline of proposed process with schedule
  • Any additional new creative ideas (OPTIONAL TASK)
  • Three case studies demonstrating similar experience
  • Creativity in identify visualizations
  • Proven process of documentation and “certification” of discovery takeaways and goals to check against in future
  • Active and responsible project management

Bidders will be allowed 30 minutes briefing calls prior to the submission due date to ask questions or clarify the requirements of the RFP. Please contact Stephanie Bluma at Stephanie.Bluma@opengovpartnership.org

Bidders will bill be informed by October 3, 2018 if they are selected to the final round. Agency staff must be prepared to travel to OGP’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. during the week of October 15, 2018 to present to the final review committee.   

GENERAL CONDITIONS

This  document is not an offer to contract, but a solicitation of a vendor’s proposed intent.  Acceptance of a proposal in no way commits OGP to award a contract for any or all products and services to any vendor.  

OGP reserves the right to make the following decisions and actions based on its business interests and for reasons known only to OGP:

  • To determine whether the information provided does or does not substantially comply with the requirements of the RFP.
  • To contact any bidder after proposal submittal for clarification of any information provided.
  • To accept or reject a proposal in whole or part without justification to the bidder
  • To not accept the lowest price bid.
  • To negotiate with one or more bidders in respect to any aspect of submitted proposal.
  • To award a type of contract other than that described herein, or to award no contract;
  • To enter into a contract for purchase with parties not responding to this RFP
  • To request, at its sole discretion, selected bidders to provide a more detailed presentation of the proposal
  • To not share the results of the bids with other bidders and to award contracts based on whatever is in the best interest of OGP.

Any material statements made orally or in writing in response to this RFP or in response to requests for additional information will be considered offers to contract and should be included by vendor in any final contract.

CONFIDENTIALITY/NON-DISCLOSURE

All information gained by any bidder concerning OGP work practices is not to be disclosed to anyone outside those responsible for the preparation of this proposal.

Reciprocally, OGP commits that information received in response to this RFP will be held in strict confidence and not disclosed to any party, other than those persons directly responsible for the evaluation of the responses, without the express consent of the responding vendor.  

Finally, the information contained within this RFP is confidential and is not to be disclosed or used for any other purpose by the vendor.

Publicity

Any publicity referring to this RFP whether in the form of press releases, brochures, or photographic coverage will not be permitted without prior written approval from OGP.

Liability

The selected vendor(s) will be required to show proof of adequate insurance at such time as OGP is prepared to procure the services. The participating vendor will also be required to indemnify and hold harmless OGP for, among other things, any third party claims arising from the selected vendor’s acts or omissions, and will be liable for any damage caused by its employees, agents or subcontractors.  

Errors and Omissions

OGP expects the vendor will provide all labor, coordination, support, and resources required based on the vendor’s proposal and corresponding final SOW.  No additional compensation will be available to the vendor for any error or omission from the proposal made to OGP.  The only exclusions are add-ons, deletions, and/or optional services for which the vendor has received written authorization from OGP.

Ownership of Work

All work created under the awarded contract  must be original work, and no third party should hold any rights in or to the work.  All rights, title and interest in the work shall be vested in OGP.

ADDENDUM

Supporting Materials

Open Government Partnership