New Content Management System

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.

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.

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 to 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. '

The Challenge

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 wished the supplier to provide a selection of designs from which they could choose the final one and they expressed an interest in future use of a Content Management System.

The 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 is now hosted by Run Deep, providing RAS (reliability, availability and security) as well as regular back-ups.  Strict Service Level Agreements are in place.

The Approach

Working closely with our design partners, Run Deep, as well as with Transport Scotland representatives, Sopra Group ran separate facilitated workshops to elicit the main design elements and to structure the information architecture.

The participants at the first design workshop brainstormed ideas, initially based on the colour and style of the new logo, and the designers quickly returned with a variety of pencil sketches.  Two of these were then transferred into a Home Page mock-up, as HTML templates, for final discussion with Transport Scotland, who formally signed off their choice. 

A sample information hierarchy was prepared before the information architecture workshop and the individual topics presented to the participants who then used the 'card sorting' technique to arrange these topics into categories.  These hierarchies were then validated against the original draft, which was updated to reflect the feedback and then formally signed off by the client.

The next step was to customise WebManager2 to accommodate the detailed requirements of Transport Scotland.  At the same time, usability testing was carried out against the design and information architecture.  Close collaboration was essential in order to deliver within the timescale required by Transport Scotland.

The Benefits

The Website was implemented on time, to 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 to 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 URL for the website is http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/