TERMS OF REFERENCE

Development of the website of the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI)

1. Background

The European Union Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI) is the comprehensive EU anti-corruption program in Ukraine financed by the EU and Denmark and implemented by the Foreign Ministry of Denmark.     

EU Anti-Corruption Initiative is the biggest EU support programme in the area of anti-corruption in Ukraine so far. The EUACI began in 2017 and has since established itself as a flagship program. A new 4-year phase was launched in May 2020 with a 22.4 million EURO budget.

The overall objective of the EU and Danish funding for anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine is to improve implementation of anti-corruption policy in Ukraine, thereby ultimately contributing to a reduction in corruption. The EU Anti-Corruption Initiative is aimed to strengthen the capacity of the newly created anti-corruption institutions and to enhance external oversight over the reform process by the Verkhovna Rada, civil society and the media.

The work of the EUACI is streamlined through its 3 components: (i) strengthening the operational and policy-making capacities of state institutions dealing with the prevention and fight against corruption; (ii) enhancing the capacity of local self-government, civil society, media, and business to contribute to the fight against corruption; and (iii) increasing culture of integrity issues in Ukraine through engagement of the business sector, the civil society and the media. 

Within Component 1 the EUACI is working with the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP), Assets Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), State Financial Monitoring Service (SFMS), High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine (HACC), Parliament’s Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy (CAP). Within Component 2 the EUACI is working with five Integrity Cities: Chernivtsi, Chervonohrad, Mariupol, Nikopol and Zhytomyr. Within Component 3 the EUACI is working with four institutional CSO partners and five CSO projects (program funding) supported through 2020 call for CSO proposals.     

 

2. Objective

The project objective is to design, develop and launch a new user-friendly website for the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative in accordance with the latest web design trends. The website is aimed at building online visibility and will serve as a communication platform by providing information on the EUACI activities on the Internet.

2.1. Purpose

The purpose of creating the website is to increase transparency of the EUACI activities by providing via the web-page:

  • information on the EUACI activities (publications, photos, videos, etc.);
  • calendar of the events;
  • tender announcements with an opportunity to download/upload documents.

2.2. Target audience

  • Mass media;
  • Civil society organizations;
  • Anti-corruption institutions;
  • International experts and organizations;
  • Local authorities;
  • General public.

 

3. Scope of Work

Website design

We expect the successful bidder to display a high-degree of creativity, UX and technical knowledge in offering us suitable website design options. The design must be aesthetic, user-friendly, have sound design and navigation logic and offer ease of use. Also there would be a request to develop simple and customised dashboards on two of the web-site’s pages (Annex 1).

The website shall include the following sections (to be clarified before prototyping):

  1. Home page
  2. News
    1. News
    2. Gallery
  3. Events
    1. Upcoming events
    2. Past events
  4. Who We Are
    1. Mission and Priorities
    2. Our partners
      1. Anti-Corruption Institutions (Dashboards)
      2. Integrity Cities (Dashboards)
      3. Civil society organisations
    3. Our team
  5. Work With Us
    1. Tenders
    2. Jobs
    3. Grants
  6. Contact us

For the development of the website, it is recommended to use indicative structure above, which can be changed by agreement with the Customer and going to be approved by the Customer. 

The final version of the website design is developed jointly by the Contractor and the Customer. The final version of the website design is going to be approved by the Customer by a separate document “Design of the website of the EUACI”.

Basic requirements to a website building platform

The EUACI is interested in (i) investing minimum time/effort resources; (ii) accelerated process of the website launch; (iii) easy-to-maintain solutions. In order to meet these requirements, we are looking for the opportunity to use one of the top website builder platforms (for instance, Wix, WordPress, etc.).

We are looking to have the contractor recommend a website building platform and explain its experience utilizing recommended platform taking into account the following considerations:

  • Easy to use, cost-effective, supports the features and functionality outlined below, and can be updated easily by the internal communication expert
  • Functionality for creating, approving and publishing content for all website's sections (news, announcements, reports etc.)
  • Changing website's appearance - functionality to create, hide and delete pages, menus, and update site's structure without involving developing company
  • Functionality to update information at any website's page - update text, upload images and files.
  • Built-in visual editor, functionality for visual content editing with use of the most popular web-browsers.

Analytics

  • Gather e-mail, areas of interest and demographic information from visitors
  • Info on web traffic analysis, Path analysis, Visitor trends, Page views, Entry pages, Top pages, Exit pages, Page – length of stay, browsers and platforms
  • Access statistics and site usage for a communication expert 

Social Media Integration

  • Easy embedding of audio, video, media and social-networking applications
  • The website shall support integration with Facebook and Twitter

Website Promotion

  • Website search engine optimization (SEO) during the technical support period (6 months)

Other key requirements and considerations

  • Able to provide multi-language support - English and Ukrainian languages;
  • Adapt for people with disabilities, mechanisms for information sharing should be provided based on modern technologies that are currently in use;
  • Adapt for viewing (use) on mobile (portable) devices;
  • The website must be safe and secure using HTTPS;
  • The website shall support desktop versions of Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Edge, Mozilla Firefox as well as mobile versions of the browsers;
  • Page Load Time – the website should ensure that pages load on an average of 1.5 seconds of less;
  • The website should display the date of publication of the page;
  • The website should have a context-based search information system located in the website database. Search system results are displayed as a list of web page names (with hypertext conversion to each of them) that match the query criteria;
  • The website should provide an opportunity to upload and download documents.

4. Deliverables

The following deliverables shall be provided by a Contractor:

  1. Development of Terms of Reference (TOR) of the website, work specifications, sitemap, site structure, technical requirements. 
  2. Design and realisation of all pages of the website. 
  3. Deployment of the website software on the beneficiary's technical site, its initial setup, and SEO during the technical support period.
  4. Transfer to website hosting, configuration and testing.
  5. Transfer all existing content from the previous the EUACI website to the new one, providing up to 15 articles with SEO.
  6. The website operation and maintenance training to the EUACI dedicated staff. 

Documentation

The Contractor agrees and, according to the work results, provides documents on the following list:

  • ToR;
  • Specification;
    • Website Testing Program and Techniques;
  • Administrator(s) Guide(s);
  • User(s) Guide(s);

The list of documents can be specified at the stage of development, combining several documents into separate sections is allowed.

All technical documentation must be prepared in paper and electronic forms in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF format.

Hosting and domain

  • The URL https://www.euaci.eu will be used.
  • The contractor shall provide test hosting environment during the development phase, as well as recommendations on the website EU-based hosting providers for the production environment.

Staff training

  • The contractor shall provide the website O&M training to the EUACI dedicated staff.

Ownership

  • Submit the website’s SOURCECODE and transfer ownership to the EUACI. The EUACI must have ownership of the source code at the end of the contract. The EUACI will be the sole owner of the website and maintain the right to edit, maintain and erase without obligation to the contractor. However, the maintenance of the website will continue for 6 months including bugs fixing and layout edits after the transfer of ownership.

5. Project Timeline

The intended commencement date of the website launching is 31 May 2022. The estimated time for the development is up to 5 months starting from signing the contract.

The following phases are foreseen:

I. Consultation and inception: In this first phase, the EUACI is expected to liaise with the contractor, clarify the remaining questions and provide expert recommendations on the structure design of the webpage.

II. Design and development of the website: On basis of the consultation, the website is going to be established. The contractor is expected to present the design of the webpage to the EUACI and to incorporate the feedback in the course of this development phase. 

III. Transfer of information from the old website to the new one.

IV. Testing phase: The website will be tested for a certain period and errors will be reported.

V. Finalization and launching of the website. This will include fixing of any bugs, errors or unexpected behavior reported in document “Test report” by the EUACI, deployment to the production environment.

VI. Technical support. The technical assistance and bug fixes shall be provided by the Contractor not less than 6 months after completion of the website development.

6. Bidding details

The bidder must submit the following information to be considered:

  1. A brief profile (maximum two pages) of the company
  2. Provide the total number of bidder’s employees and the number of employees in user experience and web design.
  3. The CVs (no more than three pages for each person) of the key team members who will be involved in the project. List the names, project titles, key duties on this assignment and amount of time dedicated to this project.
  4. A list of assignments, similar to this project, executed in the last five years (must include website addresses).
  5. Provide a detailed description of the methodology, scope of work and timeline of the project as well as key assumptions.
  6. Provide a budget for the services in EUR, inclusive of all taxes or other such charges.

Deadline for proposals submission is January 14, 2022 18:00 Kyiv time.

How to apply

The proposals shall be submitted within the above deadlines to the e-mail: anadem@um.dk, cc: serkon@um.dk, indicating the subject line “EUACI website”.

Bidding language: English.

Clarification questions

Questions for the Request for Bid should be addressed to Anastasiia Demianchuk (anadem@um.dk), cc: serkon@um.dkno later than January 6, 2022 18:00 Kyiv time.

 

7. Evaluationcriteria

Bids will be evaluated in accordance with criteria provided below:

#

Criteria

Weight

1

Portfolio of projects successfully completed on websites’ design and development, quality and relevance of past work

40%

2

Key delivery team members - relevant experience, skills and competencies

15%

3

Proposed methodology and detailed timelines

15%

4

Proposed budged

30%