Website RFP Q and A as of 11.2.23.docx

NWSDS Website Redesign RFP Issued October 19, 2023 Questions and Answers as of 11/2/2023

Reminder: All Questions Due by 11/9/2023 All Proposals Due by 11/17/2023

We have been receiving many similar questions, so please see below for answers to questions you may have had as well as other questions others have asked.

1. How do we submit our proposal? Can we submit via email?

a. Submission of proposals is via email to kim.hunt@nwsds.org

2. What is the estimated budget for this project?

a. All reasonable proposals will be reviewed with current market rates in mind as well as other proposals submitted

3. What is your annual maintenance budget?

a. All reasonable proposals will be reviewed with current market rates for additional plugins that might be utilized. We prefer to keep those to a minimum.

b. Please note that we intend to maintain the website internally and will negotiate an hourly rate for emergency-only maintenance or assistance that may be outside the ability or time of our internal staff.

4. Is NorthWest Senior and Disability Services good with offshore resources providing support or applying for this project? Will local or in-state agencies be given preference?

a. Under the public contracting law, ORS 279.120 requires the contracting agency to give preference to goods and services produced in the State of Oregon. While nothing prohibits a non-resident bidder from responding to the RFP, the agency is required to give preference to resident bidders, if price, fitness, availability and quality are otherwise equal.

5. Is it mandatory for potential bidders to possess prior experience working with American state, county, or city governments to qualify for bidding?

a. While this is not mandatory, we are specifically seeking a vendor who has knowledge and experience in partnering with government agencies to enhance online capabilities. Therefore, vendors with experience in this area are likely to receive a higher score in the evaluation process noted in Section D.4.

6. If selected for an interview, do you see this requiring an in-person meeting or will online formats (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Zoom) be sufficient?

a. Online formats for interviews will be sufficient

7. Do you see any part of this project requiring in-person meetings or will online formats (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Zoom) be sufficient?

a. Online formats will be sufficient, but there is room for in-person meetings

8. In regards to stakeholder outreach, will online meetings be sufficient, or do you require in-person stakeholder interviews? Are you requesting any kind of user testing or focus groups? If yes, would you require these to be in-person, or would online tools be sufficient?

a. We will be working with staff groups and likely a consumer test group. Online meetings should be sufficient, but there is room for in-person meetings

9. Who is responsible for creating the website's content?

a. NWSDS Staff and Team members

10. How many pages will you be migrating from the current site to the new site?

a. We are open to condensing and reorganizing pages, but the current number of pages we have are:

i. 55 active pages on the NWSDS.org site

ii. 93 active pages on the agency Intranet.

11. Do you have an estimated amount of expected website traffic?

a. Here is a table of our current unfiltered monthly traffic – we don’t currently anticipate a significant change

12. Do you have a preference for a specific Content Management System (CMS)?

a. We are open to using a new CMS as long as it is easily maintainable by NWSDS staff internally with very minimal coding

13. Is there a specific timeline for the project's execution?

a. Completion by June 30, 2024

14. How many subdomains do you require on the website?

a. We currently maintain 4 but could see expansion.

15. Do you have an existing gateway for donations? Are you open to changing this?

a. Currently, we use Paypal for all donations. We are open to changing this.

16. Do you have design preferences or any existing branding guidelines in mind?

a. Our design preference is clean, accessible to those with disabilities, and clear/easily navigable

b. We have existing branding colors and font requirements. A one-page branding kit can be sent out upon request.

17. Do you have any competitors in the market?

a. We are a government agency, so we do not have any competitors in the market

18. Do you want to have any additional features in the website? OR any list of specifications you have?

a. Please see Section B of the RFP for minimum requirements we are looking for

19. Are there specific pain points or areas of improvement you've identified in the website?

a. Our current website and intranet are both complex and not easily navigable. We would like that improved as well as improved language translation services

b. We also want an update to the images we use. The stock images are very stale and some are incredibly awkward

20. What are the primary business drivers for issuing this RFP?

a. NWSDS.org website: Our consumers – the people we serve. We want a user-friendly experience and easy navigability for older adults and adults with disabilities.

b. Intranet: Our staff – easy navigability and user experience in locating needed information quickly

21. Can we please have details regarding the IT/System landscape at the NorthWest Senior and Disability Services, that would be relevant to this project?

a. NWSDS Utilizes Type 1 hypervisor to provide virtual hardware for intranet hosting. Webhosting for NWSDS.org is currently provided on a shared webhost, however the agency is amicable to migrating to a VPS Solution

22. Can you please share the current support team structure for IT support at NorthWest Senior and Disability Services?

a. NWSDS IT Team consists of 3 Cross trained IT Network Operations Specialists and an I.T. Program Manager, all of whom can provide support to an established web CMS

23. Can NorthWest Senior and Disability Services provide the availability of the resources from their team that will be allocated for this project?

a. NWSDS will have staff to support this project, but each will have other responsibilities and work they will be required to attend to and complete outside of this project.

24. Please share details regarding customizations and interfaces

a. There should be no customizations and the projected interfaces should be modern web browser-based solutions providing a range of dynamic resolution options ranging from 4k ultra down to the smallest of mobile interfaces

25. Are systems currently hosted on-premise or on Cloud?

a. NWSDS.ORG is Hosted Offsite

b. The agency intranet is hosted On-premise

26. Is this a new RFP or are there any incumbents?

a. This is a new RFP

27. Do you need a complete resume or a summary only?

a. Please see sections B & C in the RFP for requirements.

28. Any major projects planned in coming years that vendors should be aware of?

a. Not currently

29. Are you looking for any 3rd party software or tool apart from those mentioned in the RFP in the future? If yes, please provide a list of tools/softwares for the same.

a. We are open to using additional software or tools, but would prefer not to have significant monthly or yearly costs to utilize them. These initial and continual costs need to be outlined in the proposal.

30. Are you looking for multi-language support?

a. Only in the sense we want the website to have a plugin (not google translate) that accurately translates the page and information from English to other languages common in our area – specifically Spanish and Russian, but that could expand in future years.

31. Do you require more than 2 Calendars (with the one master calendar counting as one)?

a. We will require a calendar on the intranet and one for the nwsds.org website. Ideally, they would have options to show event subgroups individually or to at least be color-coded for different programs. These could be one master calendar, if we can control what populates on each calendar (e.g. we wouldn’t want staff trainings showing up on the website calendar) and they both work on the intranet and nwsds.org website.

32. Do you require eCommerce and Registration as Calendar features?

a. This is not a requirement, but we are open to options that may streamline the process

33. Do you require more than 50 Forms? More than 200?

a. We do not require more than 50 forms

34. Do you require eCommerce as a Forms feature?

a. This is not a requirement, but we are open to options that may streamline the process

35. Do you have any third-party integrations that you have identified as part of this project, or are there any third-party services that would require integration via APIs/web services?

a. On both the intranet and nwsds.org website we host vimeo videos

b. On the Intranet we use a CSV To Html plug in to convert CSV files to tables simply and an easy video plugin for locally hosted video streams

36. Are you open to our advice as to how to sequence the two projects?

a. Yes.

37. We understand the maintenance and support requirements for the public-facing site, which will live on an external server. We would like to know, who will maintain the intranet that lives on a NWSDS on-premises server?

a. We will maintain both the external site and the intranet

38. If your website vendor surrenders admin access to the website (per p. 4), what workflow would exist for the vendor to perform the maintenance activities described on p. 8?

a. A contract and hourly rate would be negotiated for emergency-only maintenance or assistance that may be outside the ability or time of our internal staff.

39. Regarding the translation plugin requirements (p. 6), 1. please elaborate on why GTranslate is unsuitable for your customers’ needs, for example can you describe use cases where GTranslate has failed? 2. Please describe use cases where you will need translation of slang terms on the website.

a. For example: For the term “Home” as in “Home Page” on a website – Google translate translates that to “Hogar” in Spanish when it should be translated as “pagina principal” – Google translate is very literal in its translation and doesn’t always take into consideration the context of the rest of the page which can cause significant confusion. This is just one very obvious and simple example.

40. Regarding the WYSIWYG Live Editing requirement (p. 7), we understand you are currently using Divi. Would you please describe some of the administration frustrations/problems you would like to solve?

a. Divi is great in many aspects, but oftentimes makes something that should be simple very complicated. Things like adding a scrolling banner of images that link to different pages on the website is multiple steps and does not translate well from desktop to tablet/phone, adding even more steps and complications.

41. Approximately how many user accounts would the new intranet have?

a. We currently have about 350 staff that would have accounts or access to the intranet.

42. We understand NWSDS is an inter-governmental agency. What are the departments that will use the intranet?

a. All staff and departments will use the intranet. Currently, it has 13 main tab headings for departments and organizational purposes. We are open to discussing how to reorganize the intranet and will want staff input on this.

43. Regarding the Document Repository, is that for the live site or the intranet? Or both?

a. The intranet for sure. The external site hosts pdf documents and flyers that are downloadable

44. What scale will the Document Repository ultimately be? Dozens of documents? Hundreds? Thousands?

a. The intranet currently houses over 1000 documents and 1,229 links