Developing A New Content Management Website

Background

Transport Scotland is the national transport agency for Scotland.  Its purpose is to deliver the Scottish Government's vision for transport, making a real difference for people and businesses using the national rail and road networks. It is an executive agency directly accountable to Scottish Ministers and is part of the Scottish Government's Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department.

Transport Scotland is responsible for:

• Trunk Roads – construction maintenance and management
• Scotland's Rail – overseeing service delivery and planning/delivery of infrastructure improvements
• Supporting nationally significant public transport projects
• Transport services that improve public transport and road travel
• National concessionary travel schemes.

Transport Scotland engaged Sopra Group to design and build a new website with flexible content that had to be up and running in time for the launch of the agency at the beginning of 2006.

Transport Scotland's Project Manager, Gerry Scullion said "We used Sopra Group to develop the Transport Scotland website.  The task was tough with a tight timetable to work to.  Sopra Group helped us to do this, working closely with myself and others who were assisting with the task.  They provided a clear project plan to work to, setup regular meetings to review progress, displayed enthusiasm for the task and were adaptable when we needed to change things.  All positive points when there's pressure to deliver an important project on time."

Challenges

Transport Scotland required the site to be designed, developed, tested and delivered within two months.  They also required the site to match the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Standards level 'AA', to conform to e-GIF and to contain at least the mandatory elements of e-GMS.  They needed the supplier to provide a selection of designs from which they would choose the final one and they expressed an interest in future use of a Content Management System.

Solution

The technical platform comprised a Website running on a Windows 2003 Server with a SQL Server database providing back-end functionality.  The content management capability was provided by our own product WebManager2.  Use of the CMS at an earlier stage than initially requested by the client enabled us to exploit the tool's strengths in structuring the site.

The site was originally hosted by an external supplier, providing RAS (reliability, availability and security) as well as regular back-ups; strict Service Level Agreements were in place.

Benefits

• The Website was implemented on time and on budget and exceeded the client's expectations in terms of content management.
• Transport Scotland has complete ownership of content as well as a degree of flexibility in the way that it is presented.
• The site is securely hosted, meets e-GIF and e-GMS requirements and is easy to use and navigate.

After only one month of operation, Gerry Scullion said "Early feedback on the site is positive and usage statistics for the site are encouraging. We are continuing to work with Sopra Group to optimise the site so that we are ranked highly by search engines and receive more exposure."

The Website URL is http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk

Future Developments

Sopra Group provided Transport Scotland with an additional 3 years of general post 'go live' application support.  In 2008 Sopra Group also migrated the website to an open-source CMS and as part of a competitive tender in 2009 won an additional three-year general support contract that includes hosting and development.