SSC Intranet Site

High-level Proposal

KCT

Version: DRAFT for Discussion22 July 2009

1. Description of Request

The Shared Services Centre (SSC) is in now in the processes of reviewing their communication and information sharing needs of both SSC offices, and the FAO’s employees they are serving.

As described in their Web Strategy document (Annex I):

“The Shared Services Centre (SSC) is part of the Department of Human Financial and Physical Resources of FAO. It is responsible for providing a centralized support function to Headquarters divisions and decentralized offices and their employees, for routine administrative transactional processes including individual human resources servicing, consultant and non-staff recruitment, payroll and travel operations.

It also provides advice and user support across the Organization on the use of corporate administrative, financial and HR systems. The Shared Services Centre consolidates administrative functions to deliver them in a service-effective manner, promoting operational efficiencies and service improvements.

The SSC provides a range of administrative support services, advice and management information to employees in the areas of finance, budget, procurement-requisitioning, human resources and travel, in accordance with the established rules and regulations of the Organization.”

The web strategy is articulated in four main areas of intervention:“....1. attracting , informing and providing services to the right audience; 2. raising awareness of current priorities and achievements, or outreach; 3. leveraging its position to provide high quality content; 4. the promotion of inter-departmental collaboration;....”

Consequently, the development of a new Intranet presence is an initial step towards the achievement of the SSC strategy goals.

The request is for the identification of technological solution(s) on which to base the new SSC intranet presence together with the relative development and implementation implications.

2. Requirements

2.1. Objective(s) / Expected outcome

The objective is to have a mechanism that would provide the following expected outcomes:

(a) Simplified SSC new intranet site creation and content management;(b) Information sharing platform for SSC offices;(c) Consolidate information in a more comprehensive and service oriented manner;

and

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(d) Ultimately make the SSC site “become the natural choice for FAO employees looking for any service related information”.

2.2. Summary Requirements Description

This summary of requirements has been extracted from the Web Strategy and Information Architecture provided by the customer (see Annex I) as well as from subsequent discussions conducted between SSC and KCT on the expected behaviour, scope, functional and information requirement of their desired output.

2.2.1. Redesign and access.

In terms of access:

- the link to the SSC public main site should remain unchanged within the Departments section of the Intranet;

- another protected link should be provided to access the SSC internal web space.

For the re-design, functional mock-ups have been provided by SCC (Annex I.2) and the new site should adhere to the FAO intranet general design.

In summary, the content of the SSC public site will be managed and delivered through the following three main templates:

(a) Main Page

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SSC Logo

Site Search

Site Navigation

Standard Intranet Banner

Picture

Links

Feedback

Body content

Introductory text

News

(b) How to... pages

(c) Information pages

The different page layout components will contain items and content either maintained by the site administrator or automatically provided by the system, in particular:

(1) Standard Intranet Banner: will contain links to the rest of the FAO Intranet sections/sites. It will be automatically updated whenever a chance occurs to the overall FAO Intranet navigation

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SSC Logo

Site Search

Site Navigation

Standard Intranet Banner

Picture

Links

Feedback

Body content

Introduction Text

SSC Logo

Site Search

Site Navigation

Standard Intranet Banner

Picture

Links

Feedback

Body content

Rich text area

How to … steps

Role

Icon

Step description Screen

(2) Navigation block: this block will contain the SSC logo, the SSC site Search and will display the site pages collapsible tree with all the SSC main pages and sub-pages.

(3) Page content related links: this section of the pages will contain useful links, e.g. references, systems, forms, etc... entered by the site administrator. It may also contain a picture (or graphical element) and could eventually be expanded to contain feedback mechanisms information such as an e-mail account or simple poll.

(4) Body content: this block will contain the actual content of the pages either as a form or rich text, and in particular:

a. For the home page, it will contain a welcome text and a short list of latest news/announcements;

b. For the information page, it will contain a free rich text space, allowing for the formatting of several types of descriptive pages; and

c. For the how-to pages, it will contain a brief description of the procedure and roles, together with a tabular list of steps. It is envisioned that each step will be made of a role icon, a description, and the possibility to enter a screen-shot icon pointing to larger screen shots or other relevant images.

In relation to the site for internal SSC use, and while the home page, information, and how-to page layout components will be available and remain unchanged, two additional content types may be made available, and in particular:

(d) Discussion... pages

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SSC Logo

Site Search

Site Navigation

Standard Intranet Banner

Picture

Links

Feedback

Body content

Introduction Text , possible announcement

Discussion, fora, etc…

(e) Information sharing pages

The differences in these type of pages are in the offering of references and interactive spaces, and in particular:

(5) Discussion, forum: will contain a module allowing for the posting of forum type entries as, for example, contributions to a particular discussion; and

(6) Reference lists: this block will list of relevant information and or linked material for SSC staff ease of reference.

2.2.2. Management system for SSC Staff.

An SSC web-site management system accessible by manually entering the relevant URL, should allow the authorized SSC staff to administer the both the public and internal Intranet sites in order to create, update and maintain its content as appropriate. The management system should have the following functionality features:

o Access granted to the SSC authorized staff only (for instance “administrators” / internal “editor” and/or “viewers” users). “Viewers” in this case would refer to selected FAO staff having privileges to access the SSC internal web-site to review and/or participate in, for example, discussions/polls.

o Mechanisms to add and update user accounts as above. (The administrator / internal user roles and relevant levels of grants and responsibilities will need be defined in detail as appropriate).

o Management of SSC web-sites page content, including: site structure, i.e. the ability to add/edit/delete information pages excluding those served by the system automatically; site content for the news/announcements, how-

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SSC Logo

Site Search

Site Navigation

Standard Intranet Banner

Picture

Links

Feedback

Body content

Reference Lists

Text

tos, information, information sharing and discussions; reference documents, relevant links and resources.

o As for the integration with other relevant systems (e.g. procedures in the Oracle HRMS) no direct integration is foreseen at this stage, and the links are intended to be external to the web-site management system.

2.3. Client Constraints

2.3.1. Timing

With an overall objective to release the SSC Intranet site on 2 January 2010, and have a version for internal quality assurance by October 2009, the solution to populate and manage the site must be provided by mid-September 2009

2.3.2. Budget

No particular budget constraints were mentioned by the client.

2.3.3. Other

The customer expressed concern in the ease of use of the current CMS (i.e. DWS) suggesting the use of a different technology which is perceived to be more user friendly.

2.4. Analysis and Investigation

2.4.1. Technological Aspects/Considerations

The proposed solution(s) should take into consideration the overall current Intranet architecture and its possible technological future directions. This is to allow integration with current corporate intranet features and ease of future possible migration.

2.4.2. Support and maintenance aspects (if applicable)

The proposed solution(s) should consider and account for adequate levels of support and maintenance once delivered to the client. After the post-implementation period an SLA between the client and KCT will be negotiated to cover KCT operational support to the SSC site(s).

2.4.3. Infrastructural aspects

Possible sizing and storage considerations should be taken into account should the volumetric of information be of significant magnitude.

2.4.4. Data ownership and inter-relation with existing Intranet structure

Considering that SSC uses information from various sources, often owned by different Divisions (manual section, oracle ERP procedures etc...), different

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data owners ought to be informed, and/or involved as applicable, of changes to their information access points or cross-references.In addition, and while the new SSC site will be residing in a single Intranet location, access to its various information resources ought to be part of (and not necessarily replace), and exploit the multiple access path provided by the current Intranet structure (e.g. How To ... , Staff Services.... etc...) to maximise ease of access from different target audiences.

2.5. Options/Solutions

2.5.1. Option 1: Standard Intranet site and ad-hoc custom instance

Description: This solution will be divided in two phases. The first phase will make use of a well established and known framework in its latest evolution and also of new tools available that offer additional functionality as required for the SSC Internal site. The functionality offered by the first framework fits very well into the client’s requirements and its diffuse knowledge among KCT developers will permit an immediate allocation of resources to meet the users’ deadlines in the implementation of the external site.

The second phase will address the development of the SSC internal site using a different framework allowing for the implementation of interactive functions (WEB 2.0 framework) as requested by the user.

Pros: The proposed solution focuses on the main user requirements.Speed of implementation, immediate availability of resources, consistency with the overall Intranet framework, re-use of existing components.

Cons: limited expandability of interactive functions, migration to new corporate environment when established.

Approximate Cost: a high level estimate of the costs to develop this solution, excluding future maintenance (that will be agreed through an appropriate SLA once the application will be delivered), and to be confirmed upon completion of a more thorough requirements analysis, is in the range of 3 - 6 person/months and 12,000-24,000 USD for both phases.

Approximate Timeframe: Should this option be selected, resources could be allocated for this project during the month of July 2009. In any case, and should the project be finished by the end of the year, a confirmation must be received by end of July 2009. In relation to the estimated delivery times, phase 1 can be delivered by mid-September, phase 2 can be completed by the end of the year.

2.5.2. Option 2: Ad-hoc Intranet site development

Description: this option foresees the use of new emerging technologies to develop the whole SSC site within the same framework. Of course only the

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internal SSC site will benefit of the features concerning collaborative and interactive functions.

Pros: This would provide a single framework for the entire SSC site. This new and more flexible technology is open to future extensions especially in the area of interactive user experience (web 2.0)

Cons: The allocation of resources can only start in September. Furthermore the integration of the new environment within the FAO standard security framework is not yet effective and can cause the implementation of temporary solutions and/or work-around. It is expected that the management of the contents will be more comprehensive but more complex.

Approximate Cost: a high level estimate of the costs to develop this solution, excluding future maintenance (that will be agreed through an appropriate SLA once the application will be delivered), and to be confirmed upon completion of a more thorough requirements analysis, is in the range of 5 - 8 person/month and 20,000-32,000 USD.

Approximate Timeframe: Should this option be selected, resources could be allocated for this project not before September 2009. This will impact on the requested mid-of-September and October intermediate delivery dates as well as on the timeframe of the overall project.

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Annex I - Material provided by Client

1. Initial Request

From: Heinrich, MariaMagdalena (AFDS) Sent: 15 June 2009 09:56To: Furlani, Livia (AFDS); Perrotta, Luigi (KCTP); Vietri, Andrea (KCTP); Cowan, SharonLee (KCIR); Rubery, Nicholas (KCIR)Subject: For SSC Web site Project meeting on Friday

Dear All, In preparation of our meeting on Friday, please find below some background information. We are developing a new Intranet Web site for the Shared Services Centre of FAO. We think there could be some synergies in cooperating with AFSP as they are also developing their web site or in at least making sure that we have a common look & feel of the Web sites because the Shared Services Centre and AFSP are both part of the same Department (AF).

Our target date for the launch of the new Web site is October 2009.

Our scope: The SSC Web site should become the natural choice for FAO employees looking for any service related information.

The Shared Services Centre Web site has the need to be service oriented and we were thinking of  differentiating by target clients within each service.

Please find attached the document outlining the Proposal for the Web strategy and Web site of the Shared Services Centre that should give a clearer picture of the needs and requirements.

Thanking you in advance for taking the time to meet and hoping in a fruitful cooperation.

Kind regards

Marilena

 

Maria Magdalena Heinrich

SSC Web site Project Manager

2. Draft Information Architecture (Site navigation and sample screens)

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From: Heinrich, MariaMagdalena (AFDS) Sent: 02 July 2009 18:53To: Vietri, Andrea (KCTP); Katz, Stephen (KCEW); Rubery, Nicholas (KCIR); Furlani, Livia (AFDS)Subject: Information architecture doc

 Dear All,in preparation of tomorrow's meeting, please find attached a DRAFT version of the Information architecture document that outlines the skeleton of the SSC Intranet site.Please do not consider formatting, colors and the workflows, only the structure.I have put different types of workflows so as to be able to choose among them or to look for others.The contents are taken from the current SSC site and from the Client Services Support Portal and need to be completed according to Subject Matter Experts' suggestions.We would be grateful to receive your feedback on it.Thank you and kind regardsMarilena

3. Draft SSC Intranet Overview

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