Project background
The current Medway internet website (www.medway.gov.uk) was launched in 2003. It has received approximately 1.5million visits in the last year representing a 21 per cent increase year-on-year. There are an average of 4,200 unique visits per day to the website and in the past year the number of visitors accessing the site more than once increased by 25 per cent. There are approximately 3,000 pages and more than 100 interactive services available on the existing website.
However against the backdrop of significant online change where users’ expectations of websites and online service provision generally have risen significantly since 2003, the existing website at www.medway.gov.uk presents a relatively poor image of the council through dated design and a poor search engine. The current IT system used to manage the website, called a content management system (CMS), was implemented in 2003 and is no longer supported by its supplier.
In Spring 2009 a business case was presented to the council’s management team for the relaunch of the council website. The scope of this proposal included:
- Redesigning and relaunching the www.medway.gov.uk website
- Rewriting all content on the council website
- Procuring and implementing a new CMS to manage the council’s website
- Retraining more than 80 members of staff who use the current CMS to publish content onto the council’s website
The project was allocated funding of £250,000 from the council’s capital programme at full council in June 2009.
Budget breakdown
The £250,000 capital budget is being allocated to various tasks to deliver the project:
- User consultation, engagement and testing for the new site – £28,500
- User experience development and interface design – £15,000
- Additional staffing to develop the full website specifications, rewrite and migrate all content to the new CMS before launch – £57,500
- Additional ICT staff to undertake technical development of the new website – £48,000
- Training including technical team and content publishers – £25,000
- Server and associated hardware for the new CMS – £28,500
- CMS purchase costs – £47,500
Project plan
The key milestone dates in the project plan are currently:
- 24 May 2010 – all initial consultation, design development and specifications completed
- 27 July 2010 – initial technical build completed
- August/September 2010 – user training, content migration and accessibility/user testing. Technical refinements
- October 2010 – user acceptance testing and pre-live checks
- November 2010 – website launches
The project is being managed using the council’s standard PRINCE2 project management methodology. It is currently on track to deliver the new website on time.
