Paper 2 - Website Update

For inform­a­tion

Title: Web­site update Pre­pared by: Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engagement

Pur­pose This paper presents an update of cur­rent web­site activ­ity includ­ing a stra­tegic risk register and accom­pa­ny­ing mit­ig­a­tion measures.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board is asked to: α) Review activ­ity on the web­site, includ­ing pro­cure­ment pro­cess fol­lowed / budget pos­i­tion. b) Review the accom­pa­ny­ing risk register to ensure key risks are cap­tured and that mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures are appropriate.

Stra­tegic context

1. The new Cairngorms Nation­al Park web­site was pro­cured via a two-stage Pub­lic Con­tracts Scot­land pro­cess: an ini­tial Single Pro­cure­ment Doc­u­ment (SPD) phase which required con­tract­ors to sup­ply three rel­ev­ant case stud­ies for scor­ing; and a final tender phase where short­l­is­ted agen­cies were giv­en the full tender doc­u­ment to respond to.

2. A total of 43 agen­cies took part in the SPD round and this was whittled down to a short­l­ist of sev­en agen­cies, with six respond­ing to the final tender doc­u­ment. After a detailed scor­ing pro­cess and inter­view round, Fife-based Whereverly were appoin­ted at the end of Octo­ber 2023.

3. The ini­tial value of the con­tract was set at £250,000 inclus­ive of VAT over a five-year peri­od, which bench­marked with sim­il­ar scale pro­jects at Nation­al Museums Scot­land and Glas­gow Life. Whereverly’s pro­pos­al came in at £139,174 inclus­ive of VAT, with two fur­ther devel­op­ments (on map­ping and con­sulta­tions) tak­ing that total to £189,094 inclus­ive of VAT.

4. After over a year of com­plex devel­op­ment work, the new web­site was launched in beta (or test­ing) mode in April. The site includes a num­ber of new com­munit­ies, wild­life and land­scape pages – cap­it­al­ising on high Google search traffic for these top­ics – as well as over 50 pro­ject pages cov­er­ing the work of the Park Author­ity and partners.

5. A new site-wide alerts sys­tem – linked dir­ectly to our social media posts – allows us to provide crit­ic­al updates on emer­ging issues such as wild­fires and extreme weath­er, path clos­ures, spe­cies breed­ing peri­ods etc, and to auto­mat­ic­ally serve these mes­sages on every webpage where they are rel­ev­ant. A dynam­ic, Ord­nance Sur­vey-powered map­ping tool includes details on key com­munit­ies, events, paths and points of interest, whilst our new con­tent find­er allows vis­it­ors to fil­ter and search for con­tent that would pre­vi­ously have been bur­ied deep in the site struc­ture. This includes a new Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Al) driv­en doc­u­ment sum­mary fea­ture, which means even pre­vi­ously inac­cess­ible Port­able Doc­u­ment Format (PDF) can be sum­mar­ised and read eg by screen read­er users.

6. The beta site has sat along­side our exist­ing web­site for a peri­od of just over a month to gath­er user feed­back, stress test the new site and con­tin­ue the pro­cess of adding con­tent – in par­tic­u­lar news and views – before the old site is switched off in mid-June.

7. New con­tent is being added daily, and the team are work­ing hard with col­leagues across the organ­isa­tion to cre­ate, review, edit and con­sol­id­ate thou­sands of pages of con­tent. Fur­ther user research has been under­taken with res­id­ents and vis­it­ors, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on access­ib­il­ity and users with addi­tion­al needs, ensur­ing that the site meets and exceeds access­ib­il­ity standards.

Risk register

1. We have developed a spe­cif­ic risk register for our Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment activ­it­ies which is presen­ted to Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee on a quarterly basis. We have copied over the rel­ev­ant sec­tion on the web­site devel­op­ment pro­ject below for ref­er­ence. Unless oth­er­wise stated, the risk own­er is the Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engage­ment. Assess­ment of like­li­hood and impact from last quarter’s report are shown in brackets.

Risk	Like­li­hood	Impact	Mit­ig­a­tion
Com­plex­ity of web­site devel­op­ment pro­ject – plus resource require­ments else­where (eg tack­ling digit­al dis­in­form­a­tion, man­aging for vis­it­ors’ activ­ity etc) – leads to a delay in pro­ject delivery.	Medi­um (medi­um)	Low (medi­um)	• New beta site already launched, with clear roadmap to switchover to full live site. • Ded­ic­ated pro­ject man­age­ment resource iden­ti­fied sep­ar­ate to the deliv­ery of wider digit­al activ­ity. • Agency pay­ment tied to deliv­ery of key ele­ments of the pro­ject. • Web work­ing group cre­ated to spread work­load re. pop­u­lat­ing the new web­site with con­tent. • Seni­or Man­age­ment Team (SMT) buy-in secured to ensure all teams feed­back on any issues / miss­ing ele­ments on the beta site before switchover occurs.

Oliv­er Dav­ies 28 May 2025 oliverdavies@​cairngorms.​co.​uk