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CONTRACT K-1819-121: A CONTRACT BY AND BETWEEN THE CITY OF NORMAN, OKLAHOMA, AND INTERPERSONAL FREQUENCY IN THE AMOUNT OF $243,750 TO PROVIDE WEBSITE EVALUATION, CONTENT MANAGEMENT, AND REDESIGN OF THE CITY OF NORMAN WEBSITE.
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BACKGROUND: The FYE 2018 Capital Budget funded a project titled City Website Redesign which funded $138,000 in FYE 2018 and $137,000 in FYE 2019. In May 2018, RFP 1718-69 was released requesting qualified proposals for an evaluation of the present site and its content, content management, and a redesign of the City of Norman website. Proposals were due on July 13, 2018.
The RFP solicited qualified organizations for a proposal to redesign, rethink, and replace our municipal website. The proposal solicited for a detailed response from firms including functional and technical requirements, implementation services, pricing, and demonstrations of any proposed solutions from finalists.
The present site has more than 1,000 pages, nearly 5,000 documents, graphics, and pictures. The site includes two (2) subdomains (normanpd.normanok.gov and normanfire.normanok.gov) each with individual designs. The site receives an average of 83,000 individual visits and 186,000 pages views each month.
DISCUSSION: The City’s Information Technology Department maintains and supports the present site with only one (1) person. The content within the Department pages has been distributed to the various Departments to maintain data. Changes or additions to content are submitted for review of Information Technology to ensure those are formatted correctly prior to being posted to the site. Over time, we have found that some pages are very dated, graphics can be lacking, and there is need to “re-fresh” the site design. Initially the site was designed in-house by two IT staff (Judson LeRoi and Stacey Baker) and deployed over 10 years ago. It has become a full time job for the one person to keep up with the postings and minor adjustments. That coupled with the work load of other projects and limited staff; we are not able to do a complete re-design without additional professional services. This project will provide professional services to redesign the site after a thorough evaluation of the present site, a citizen engagement process to seek input, analysis of statistics gathered from site visits to determine content that is used versus not accessed. These metrics and staff input combined will help the consultants develop a solid site for the City with a modern look and feel for visitors using the site.
A group was formulated to review the RFP responses and complete phone interviews for a more thorough analysis of their proposals. The team had 7 members; Tim Powers, Director of Information Technology; Kari Madden, IT Manager - Business Systems and Development; Robert Gruver, IT Manager - Networking and Infrastructure; Judson LeRoi, Systems Administrator; Stacey Baker, Business Systems Analyst; Annahlyse Meyer, Chief Communications Officer; and Terry Floyd, Development Coordinator.
A total of 16 responses were received on July 13, 2018.
Melity $520,000
Appnovation, $315,00
Canic Interactive, $197,850
Interpersonal Frequency, $135,500
Promet Source, $132,918
ReineM, $123,575
Drupal Partners, $121,840
Drupal Jedi, $114,335
Opensense Labs, $100,950
Old Hat, $100,000
Paramount Software, $92,800
Net Tango, $88,000
Jesse James Creative, $72,000
CMS Website Services, $50,000
Planeteria, $29,700
MicroSan, 25,000
Of those, five (5) proposals were identified to be complete and within budget for further consideration.
• Interpersonal Frequency, $135,500 - most complete and detailed plan and processes, citizen engagement included and on-site analysis, solid references of government site work of similar size and scope, all work completed within the U.S.
• Promet Source, $132,918 - Use of subcontractors, training was out-of-scope and additional cost.
• Drupal Partners, $121,840 - Public sector experience but lack of references for Cities similar size and scope, no citizen engagement included.
• Paramount Software, $92,800 - No municipal sites listed, some work is through “preferred partners”.
• Net Tango, $88,000 - small team, no citizen engagement included
After interviews with the each of the companies and questions to organizations they had each worked with, staff agreed unanimously with the approach and great detail that Interpersonal Frequency (IF) showed. IF went further to include an hourly rate for types of work beyond the scope of work if they should come up. Those rates might be used as we progress with the project if departments want to leverage their professional services for graphics, further content review, or additional development of modules. Those rates are $175/hour for staff work and $350/hour for development of additional modules.
IF had $135,500 for the cost to redesign the website and the migration if it were hosted on City servers. This is how we have managed the website. They also proposed an optional cost which is hosting on their servers. The option to host with IF was researched further as this would ensure all critical security updates are maintained as well as Drupal updates and upgrades. While we maintain security updates well, the Drupal updates have been a challenge to maintain. We asked for an updated proposal once we entered contract negotiations with them to include off-premise hosting, additional support time for the first year to address expected support time requests. Because we are looking at hosting off-site, we included 2 years hosting cost so we can request a base budget adjustment in FYE 21 for the recurring maintenance if this continues. The proposal has enhanced support for the first year (up to 40 hours per month for upgrades, minor design changes, visual design, graphics, or content needs) and up to 5 tickets or 10 hours per month for the same services in year two. We expect significant more changes in the first year of going live. With these adjustments for hosting and support on top of the redesign and migration, the cost came to $243,750.
Funding of $275,000 is available in Capital Project BG0063, City Website Redesign, 050-9556-419.61-01.
RECOMMENDATION: Staff recommends awarding the contract to Interpersonal Frequency and approval of Contract K-1819-121 in the amount of $243,750.