Scope of Work

Background

Since 1957, Pathfinder International has maintained an unwavering belief in the right of women and families to have access to contraception and quality reproductive health care. A key strength of the organization, Pathfinder has successfully collaborated with governmental departments and ministries to support them in fulfilling their commitments, while also ensuring a right-based, a gender perspective is incorporated within these plans, for maximum impact and reach.

Project Purpose and Objective of this Activity:

Pathfinder International is interested in setting up a learning lab to apply a human-centered design approach towards climate change and sexual and reproductive health for solution development by young people working in alignment with design, public health, and innovation. The audience intended for the learning lab is primarily students, Pathfinder envisions this platform as a multipurpose knowledge management tool that could be utilized and adopted by practitioners, educators, and other professionals interested in understanding this interdisciplinary issue. The goal of this lab is to create a sustainable platform for pedagogical innovation, knowledge transfer, and knowledge management. Pathfinder will be building a space for learners, practitioners, and thinkers to build their capacity on interdisciplinary subjects, for effective and impactful, multisectoral solutions and products. While the pilot would focus on Habib University students and faculty, the learning lab could be used for further university and student engagements, connecting, and building leaders of today and tomorrow.

Scope of Work:

The vendor will be responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the website. This will include information architecture, UI & UX design, and execution.

Design / General Requirements:

• The website design needs to be modern, minimalistic and in-line with the new trends, also needs to have a consistent look and feel across all pages on the website, in-line with Pathfinder’s branding guidelines. It should improve user experiences when interacting with the website through design, navigation etc. The vendor should improve the information architecture to provide easier navigation and search capabilities.
• Design should be such that pages are not cluttered. In intuitive design, visitors need not work hard to find where they need to go. It should have a drop-down on the home page to enable the visitors to directly navigate the page they choose. It should be attractive, and responsive. It should be simple to make researching the site a pleasant user experience.
• Design and incorporate blog as part of the website ecosystem which helps in boosting SEO results will be in the scope the vendor.
• Design and incorporate Discussion Forms as part of the website ecosystem. Users should be able to comment, interact and follow any ongoing discussions
• The vendor should incorporate the content provided by Pathfinder in a way that it is easy to understand, simple and attractive and according to SEO requirements.
• All menus/submenus/headings etc. should have an icon and same should be without any copyright issues.
• Website layout is to be browser independent. Website elements should display well on all devices.  
• The website needs to be developed as user-friendly, responsive, adaptive for all devices, making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to the visitors irrespective the device they are using.
• Design shall be proposed by the bidder and approved by Pathfinder.
• The website should have scalability and provision to add languages in future.
• The website should have the ability to generate a landing page for specific short-term requirements.
• Website to be Search Engine Optimized for better search engine results and search engine friendly. It should have the ability to integrate any kind of SEO attributes, and sharing of pages from website in social platforms should be available to the visitors.
• Pathfinder’s social pages should be accessible through the website easily.
• Website should be fast loading to provide the standard speed of all pages.
• Website should be compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at least supporting Alternative Text for Images, Keyboard access and visual focus, and Text Resize. The accessibility feature could be adjusted based on our request.
• Visitors should be able to log in/Register to save and post resources, including select resources for offline access; follow other users and add personal interests to receive personalized resource recommendations.
• Visitors should be able to post content on the website which needs to be approved by the Pathfinder-nominated publisher prior to getting published.
• During Registration, Visitors will create a profile and shall provide a name, password, valid email address, Profile Photo, country, organization/university name & a short bio and should be able to link their social media for easy sharing. This information excluding passwords shall be accessible to Pathfinder.
• Visitors should be able to create a Favorites list based on the “Add to Favorites” icon/button placed on all relevant pages, with the ability to save information for future use based on visitors’ preferences. Visitors can save their favorites to do by simply clicking on the icon and retrieving those saved experiences by navigating to the favorites page. The favorites page should list all the favorite items added by the user in a visually satisfying way and let the user share them on social media and print them.

Content Management System (CMS) Requirements:

• CMS solution should provide high security and cover SEO requirements.
• CMS should provide Audit Trail, Captcha, Login History, Problem Notifications and SSL support
• CMS should have a detailed logging of all activities performed by the back-end user on the CMS and features to register events such and when a page disappears.
• Data submitted by the public to the website must be held securely.
• Vendor should demonstrate and recommend Open Source and Custom CMS solutions
• Vendors should demonstrate how their chosen technology can cover the CMS requirements.
• CMS should have multi-lingual support and future scalability and have the option to add other languages/features/modules/workflow in the future and accommodate changing organizational needs.
• CMS system must support non-IT literate users to operate the contents within the overall rules and workflow laid down. This will include creating content, editing, and publishing across all modes including text, videos etc. across all pages on the site or on specific areas of the site.
• Add, modify and delete information in all available languages in the website should be implemented within the content management system.
• Navigation must be simple and easy to use.
• Easy upload of Videos, Photos, and documents. It should also support Slideshows/Carousel, e-modules creation by the publisher
• Easy to preview linked YouTube Videos
• CMS must have a Media Library
• Download and Upload feature to be supported. Display of content in selected order should be supported. Drag, drop, cut, and paste options should be easily supported.
• CMS should offer to preview content before publishing. Font type and size should be uniform across all the pages.

Technical Requirements:

• The vendor will propose and assist Pathfinder in the procurement of the domain for the website.
• The vendor shall provide hosting on a reliable server/cloud platform with up-to-date security features. Server requirements, Performance, Memory, Storage Disk space, backup space, platform and other software required for the proposed application is in the scope of the vendor within the quoted cost. The proper hosting specifications should be proposed by the vendor.
• Pathfinder would have the final decision on confirming the hosting.
• The Vendor will discuss the scope of work, index of the website and required functionalities and based on this they will propose a platform for the development of the Learning Lab, preferably a platform that offers innovative features and is easy to manage
• The developer will design wireframes and share several options with the Pathfinder team for review and discussion
• Create a source code repository for all components of the websites
• Support the integration of third-party code and modules
• Standard page elements including header, footer, tabs, persistent navigation, contact us email, community guidelines, privacy policy, and print options should be added

Documentation Requirements:

• The vendor should prepare users, design & technical manuals, and other documents for the developed website in an easy-to-understandable and user-friendly language with proper diagrams, screenshots and charts wherever required.
• Content developer’s user guide. This document will offer all the guidelines and instructions necessary for the website content developers to add modify or remove information in the system.
• System administrator’s guide: this document will offer all the guidelines and instructions necessary for the management of the website and all other key features in the administrative section.
• Source codes: Source codes should present in a way that the programmer/analyst possessing the relevant knowledge shall be able to use it and the software codes to recreate the system from scratch.

Training Requirements:

The Vendor shall provide training to a minimum 5 members of the Pathfinder Team to enable them to operate and update the website. The vendor shall organize training for the content managers/Publishers and system administrators. The vendor shall be open to providing this training at a later time to Pathfinder or its nominees at additional cost.

• Publisher’s training on how to use the system to add, modify or remove content from the web portal.
• System Administrator’s Training to transfer the ownership of the system administration. The topic of this training shall include the operation and maintenance of the system.

Maintenance and Support:

After the official handover of the website, the vendor shall provide maintenance and support of the website for a period of 5 Years. Within this support, any bugs or errors should be corrected. A contact person should be allocated from Vendor’s Team for technical support issues. Pathfinder can report all revealed error cases and bugs to the Vendor by email or phone.

Reporting Requirements:

The vendor shall provide weekly progress reports during the implementation schedule as mentioned below.

Deliverable:

The Vendor shall propose its initial plan of the project implementation during the bidding phase, which in general, shall be following the proposed one in this document. In case of any deviations from the proposed schedule Bidder should describe the reason of such deviation

Phase 1 – Initiation & Planning - 5 days

• Evaluate technical infrastructure (including equipment, HR) and make recommendations of mechanisms best suited to our needs
• Procurement of Domain.
• Develop a detailed action plan
• Vendor to organize kick-off meetings with Pathfinder to discuss our requirements and approaches.
• Document technical factors such as server load, bandwidth, database performance, and browser and device types.
• Incorporate technical considerations such as budgets, equipment, performance requirements, or legal issues including accessibility and privacy.

Phase 2 – Execution - 30

• Develop a systems diagram
• Write, design, or edit content, or direct others to produce content. Write supporting code for respective web applications and web portal
• Develop and document style guidelines for the platform (perform any domain registrations if necessary, and select programming languages, design tools, or applications as well).
• Establish appropriate server directory trees.
• Develop system interaction or sequence diagrams using authoring or scripting languages, content creation tools, management tools, and digital media.
• Develop website maps, application models, image templates, or page templates that meet project goals, user needs, and standards.
• Create searchable indices.

Phase 3 – Testing – 10 days

• Evaluate code to ensure that it is valid, is properly structured, meets standards and is compatible with browsers, devices, or operating systems.
• Test the website with relevant staff and stakeholders
• Recommendations are presented and after approval implementations are made for betterment in presentation and back-end processes.

Phase 4 – Monitor & Control – 10 days

• Monitor security system performance logs to identify problems and notify security specialists when problems occur.
• Make a change to the system as required
• Develop and implement automated updates or product revisions, if needed
• Design and implement security measures such as firewalls or message encryption.

Phase 5 – Implementation – 5 days

• Organize Training based on the training requirements mentioned in this document
• The components or module that requires a software license, shall be adequately transferred to Pathfinder after the implementation.
• Create Documents as per the document requirements mentioned in this document.

Desired Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years experience in IT with a focus on website and web-portals development
• Experience with WordPress development and CMS delivery.
• Extensive knowledge of multiple front-end languages and libraries (e.g. HTML/CSS, JavaScript, XML, jQuery)
• Extensive knowledge of multiple back-end languages (E.g. C#, Java, Python, and JavaScript frameworks (e.g. Angular, React, Node.js)
• Experience of database design and development using Microsoft SQL Server 2008, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHL
• Proven success in the provision of creative and innovative design solutions to the requirements of other clients in previous projects
• Case studies with references of previous projects that have been undertaken that are in support of the requirements of this project.