30.4.

2010

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE

1 CONTRACTING AUTHORITY

Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, is an independent public funding body

which, under the supervision of the Finnish parliament, promotes the welfare of
Finnish society. Sitra´s aim is to help Finland prosper as global pioneer in sys-
temic changes that generate well-being. A systemic change is a broad, far-
reaching change of the kind that simultaneously affects the structures and prac-
tices fo society and the everyday life of its citizens. Sitra is an enabler of such
change. We have always operated with a strong belief in the future and in the
ability of innovation to benefit society.

2 BACKGROUND AND SITRA’S GOALS IN THIS PROJECT

Sitra’s website development project aims to create the best possible organisa-
tion website at this development state of the web. It also aims to share the pro-
ject outcomes and lessons learned with the rest of the world and, during the
project, flexibly use complementary expertise and contributions on solving its
challenges.

The preliminary analysis material for the project (website vision, project de-
scription, expected outcome, user persona descriptions) can be found at
http://opencorporatesite.posterous.com/, where the project results have also
been planned to be shared.

The main goals of the project are:

1. To create a website that presents Sitra’s work in a clear way, is linked

with its background systems (e.g. Microsoft CRM 3.0 and Sharepoint,
PrettyLib4 library system), and aggregates the idea flow taking place in
online communities.

2. To use the project as an open learning case to share and create informa-
tion and best practices of organisation website development projects.
This includes enabling other organisations to utilise the project’s re-
sults in their respective online projects.

3. To show users what is going on online, where an increasing amount of

Sitra and its co-operators’ work takes place. The website should gather
together Sitra’s activity on existing online forums such as Facebook or
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Twitter or Finnish microblogging environment Qaiku and place the in-

formation currents in their context.

4. To present expert information for users in a visualized, clarified way,

and to comprehensively distinguish hard facts from experimental buzz
and idea flow. Sitra aims to clearly exceed Finnish public administra-
tion quality criteria (http://www.suomi.fi/suomifi/qualitytotheweb/
quality_criteria/index.html) and international W3C usability and acces-
sibility recommendations.

5. To build a genuinely usable publishing platform on already existing

modules and widely tested basis. The maintenance tool should espe-
cially be friendly for occasional updaters, Sitra’s experts who want to
share information as a part of their everyday work, and enable easy
adding for pictures, videos and other illustrations.

6. To create a fast and reliable web service which works well with both
general search engines and an internal search function and enables the
creation of new separate websites and adding new features.

The Sitra website is not primarily made for Sitra's internal needs, but the needs
of the people using the website. Sitra has conducted a survey to find out what
kind of people are typical users of the online service, and the gathered informa-
tion will be used as a basis for the development project.

3 CONTENT OF PROCUREMENT

The web service renewal project will include the following main components:

1. User-driven design, conceptualisation and visual and technical implementa-

tion of the renewed Sitra.fi website, its publishing platform and integration
with internal and external systems as further specified throughout the pro-
ject.

2. Maintenance (hosting not included), support and further development func-

tions for the new website and its publishing platform. This can be also pro-
vided by another consortium member than the development team.

The project is anticipated to be completed by February 28th 2011. The project

scope will not be tied to a requirement analysis, but to the strategic goals of the
project and to the description of expected outcomes. The tenderers can propose
a website concept and a project plan by which they think they could respond to
the goals.

The contract term for the maintenance contract shall be three years with an op-
tion to continue the contract for a two-year period.

4 PROCEDURAL ISSUES

4.1 General

The procurement is carried out in accordance with the Finnish Public Procure-
ment Act. Due to the strict requirements set forth in the act, we advise all inter-
ested parties to comply with the requests of the procurement documentation.

Sitra has published a tender notice in Finnish at www.hankintailmoitukset.fi.

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The procurement is carried out as a negotiated procedure.

4.2 Initial timetable

The initial timetable of the tender procedure is as follows:

Phase Initial time-table

Invitation to participate launched 3 May 2010

Request to participate received 3 June 2010

3-10 most suitable candidates selected 7 June 2010

Invitation to tender 8 June 2010

Tenders submitted 25 June 2010

After having received the requests to participate Sitra will select three to ten
candidates for negotiations based on the criteria set forth in Section 6 below.
The selected candidates are asked to submit tenders.

The selection criteria for the contract award will be “the most economically ad-
vantageous tender” the content of which shall be defined in more detail in the
invitation to tender.

The aim is to commence work during August–September 2010.

5 SUBMISSION OF REQUESTS TO PARTICIPATE

5.1 Time-limit for requests and language

Interested parties are asked to a provide request to participate by 3 June 2010 at

16:00 Finnish time (i.e. 15:00 CET). The requests should be sent by email to
karoliina.luoto@sitra.fi. Please mark “Request to participate/Web service re-
newal project/[company name]” in the email’s subject field.

The requests shall be delivered and all other communication with Sitra in this
project shall take place in English or Finnish language.

5.2 Information required in request to participate

The candidates are asked to provide the following information:

1. A short presentation (preferably not more than a few pages) of the com-
pany or consortium including information on the domicile, the ownership,
the number of employees and other information of general nature.

2. Information on previous experience in similar projects or other relevant

documented experience. For more information, please see Section 6 below.

3. Information on personnel and knowledge. For more information, please see

Section 6 below.

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4. A stated affirmation (Appendix 1A) that the company has paid all applica-
ble taxes and social security payments as required by the local legislation
and rules, and has not engaged in any criminal activity as specified in the
appendix.

5.3 Terms

A separate agreement is signed with the winning tenderer. However, candidates

are required to confirm the following issues in their request to participate:

- Consent to using open source licensing so that the project’s results can be
further developed and utilised by any user without additional compensa-
tion.

- Willingness to publicly share their experiences on the project in the web.

- Consent to granting Sitra comprehensive rights of use as the project pro-

gresses.

- Commitment to open co-operation with Sitra and other organisations and

documenting the project results transparently so that whenever there is mu-
tually agreed need for complementary expertise or contribution, it can be
fluently associated with the project.

6 SELECTION OF TENDERERS

Sitra requires that all candidates selected for the negotiations shall have demon-
strated experience from similar projects, sufficient knowledge of the English
language as well as sufficient resources for the project.

The tenderers (organizations or consortiums) can demonstrate their experience

by giving short description of the organization or organizations and the specific
personnel offered for this project, and by describing 1-5 reference projects from
last three years done by the tenderer. Sitra uses previous experience shown by
the reference cases (links or screenshots from existing websites) or other
documented experience in the selection of the tenderers as follows:

A. Mandatory requirements

1. Experience in website conceptualisation and information architec-

ture design

2. Experience in user-driven project management and usability design

3. Experience in learning (e.g. agile) project management methods

4. Experience in modern online technologies and procedures and in

programming

5. Experience in maintaining, supporting and further developing web-

sites and publishing platforms

B. Assessable requirements

1. Experience in visual communication and graphic design

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