NOTE: This is a draft proposal that has yet to be reviewed by the DLF. It may turn into a project, it may not. Comments welcome below. ...Eric

The Digital Library Federation has prepared functional requirements for a new website. It now needs to select a platform and vendor to build a new site that meets these requirements. This project would guide DLF through this selection process.

The DLF staff prepared the functional requirements with consulting assistance, but without much feedback from the membership. One goal of this project is to incorporate such feedback before moving too far along in the process of building a new web site. The membership of DLF may also have important advice about platforms and vendors DLF ought to consider as it moves ahead with the instantiation of a new web presence.

Identifying a vendor will require some sort of proposal process. This project envisions a "lite" RFP which will be largely based on the functional requirements (with member feedback). It will also incorporate some non-functional requirements to be discussed with the staff. The goal of this project is to keep this RFP process as simple as it can be while still helping DLF identify the strongest partner for moving ahead with development.

This project concludes with a review of the RFP responses and the selection of a vendor. A status update on this process will be presented to the membership at the Spring DLF Forum.

Gathering Feedback and Advice

The DLF staff will suggest the best way to gather feedback from membership. This might include a survey of the membership or simply a sounding out of the functional requirements with the executive committee of DLF's board. The staff will also solicit suggestions from the membership about platforms the DLF should consider for managing its site and vendors who can help design and build it.

I will review the feedback and advice, investigate the options suggested and, if needed, revising the functional requirements.

Developing and issuing the RFP

Though the RFP will be largely based on the functional requirements, it will also have to include non-functional elements such as budget requirements, timeline, and assessment guidelines. I will draft this document with input from DLF staff, then share it with DLF staff for review.

I will provide the revised RFP to DLF for distribution through regular DLF channels. I will also provide DLF with suggestions of particular vendors who should be sent the RFP based on earlier member advice and my own research.

I will also be available to respond to vendor questions in a conference call with interested DLF staff.

Reviewing RFP responses

Once we get responses from vendors we will need to review them together. I will assemble the responses into a presentation we can review together. We will make a decision that can then be vetted by whatever process DLF requires.

Communicating with Membership

In addition to preparing the review, I will be available to participate in a discussion session about the website and DLF plans for its renewal at the Spring DLF Forum. It would be best if this discussion also includes at least one member of the DLF staff to help answer process questions and carry the any feedback from the meeting to DLF.

Timeline

I know we want this to move along quickly and, again, the timeline below is ambitious. I try to use the constraint of reporting out at the Spring DLF Forum to drive us to perform quickly. However, this may be a bit aggressive. In particular, consider whether we might want to provide more time to vendors for their response.

• by Friday, 7 March 2008, contract for this phase signed
• week of 10-14 March, DLF staff gather feedback from membership
• Tuesday, 11 March, phone call with interested DLF staff to discuss non-functional requirements
• Wednesday, 19 March, first draft RFP shared with DLF staff
• Monday, 24 March, phone call to discuss first draft RFP with interested DLF staff
• Thursday, 27 March, final RFD shared with DLF staff
• Friday, 28 March, share member advice and own research of vendors with DLF staff
• Monday, 31 March, DLF staff issue RFP
• Wednesday, 9 April, conference call with vendors to answer any questions about RFP
• Thursday, 17 April, vendor responses due
• Tuesday, 22 April, present assembled responses to DLF staff in conference call for discussion and review
• Thursday, 24 April, preliminary decision made by DLF
• Monday-Wednesday, 28-30 April, Spring DLF Forum
• Wednesday, 30 April, vendors notified of final decision by DLF

Costs

My assessment of this project shows that it will require considerable research and writing time. The full cost of the project would be $6,600. As before, I am prepared to give the DLF a discount of my overhead costs which would bring the costs down to $5,100. I am expecting we could use DLF arrangements for the phone conferences, otherwise arranging these would be an additional expense.

Eric Celeste

Eric brings over 15 years of library and 25 years of technology experience to his consulting. At MIT Eric shepherded the creation of DSpace, open source digital repository management software developed with HP and now deployed at hundreds of institutions worldwide. At the University of Minnesota Libraries he encouraged the development of the UThink blog service, a wiki-based staff intranet, LibData, and the University Digital Conservancy. He works with non-profit institutions on appropriate uses of technology for informing, communicating, and collaborating with their constituencies.

Comments

Barrie Howard / 04 March 2008 / 15:00

Looks pretty good. Under "Gathering Feedback and Advice" in the second paragraph, I think you meant to type "investigate." Under "Communicating with Membership" please remove the "birds of a feather" reference and add the word "session" after "discussion." Peter requested we change BoFs to "discussion sessions" give his experience with BoFs in other contexts.

peter brantley / 05 March 2008 / 18:33

this is good. and actually, I am okay with BoFs. I understand why i said that early on (discussion session) but in retrospect it was one of the sillier things i have dictated.

one question - i wonder if between obtaining feedback and generating an rfp, we lay out in an internal document our thoughts about what we might have learned about our architecture desiderata or mandates, based on obtained feedback, and our experience and intuitions. i'm not seeking to do additional work, rather i do not want to overload the rfp construction process with too much pre-processing, and i do not want to slight the upfront work we are responsible for, where we should be considering some of the core aspects of a site, e.g. gross functionality, maintenance expectations, mutability, etc.

efc / 05 March 2008 / 19:22

Architectural desiderata or mandates would certainly be part of the agenda during the "non-functional requirements" conversation. We could build more time for this into the schedule or we could weave this conversation into the couple weeks of RFP development.

Maybe someone at DLF would want to write up some of the gross functionality expectations ASAP? This might be informative even before feedback is fully in.

Any thoughts on the feedback gathering itself? Can it happen on this timescale? If not, we might want to go with the slightly more relaxed timeline of Barrie's initial letter draft.

/wiki/dlf/platformselection