annex 1 - european parliament
TRANSCRIPT
Annex 1
Website and Support FacilitiesTechnical specifications
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. GENERAL 4
1.1 Purpose ........................................................................................................................ 41.2 Services that the European Parliament expects to receive ........................... 51.3 Tendering requirements in respect of Internet dissemination ...................... 61.4 Reference..................................................................................................................... 71.5 Abbreviations and acronyms ................................................................................. 7
2. SPECIFICATIONS FOR THE VANGUARD WEBSITE 9
2.1 General ......................................................................................................................... 9
2.1.1 WEBSITE ADDRESS ..........................................................................................102.1.2 STRUCTURE AND FEATURES OF THE SITE .......................................................10
2.1.2.1 Content and structure ................................................................................102.1.2.2 Inter-site links ..............................................................................................102.1.2.3 Print function ...............................................................................................102.1.2.4 RSS Functionality.......................................................................................11
2.1.4 FACILITIES ........................................................................................................112.1.5 PHASING ..........................................................................................................11
2.1.5.1 Prior to election night .................................................................................122.1.5.2 Throughout election night .........................................................................122.1.5.3 After election night .....................................................................................12
2.2 Description of the vanguard website pages..................................................... 132.3 Requirements of the vanguard website............................................................. 13
2.3.1 OVERVIEW OF THE MAIN REQUIREMENTS ........................................................132.3.2 PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS......................................................................132.3.3 GRAPHIC REQUIREMENTS................................................................................142.3.4 LINGUISTIC REQUIREMENTS.............................................................................142.3.5 ACCESSIBILITY REQUIREMENTS.......................................................................152.3.6 REFERENCING REQUIREMENTS .......................................................................152.3.7 AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT REQUIREMENTS ....................................................15
3. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE 17
3.1 General ....................................................................................................................... 173.2 Description of infrastructure ................................................................................ 17
3.2.1 BACK-OFFICE PRODUCTION INFRASTRUCTURE ...............................................173.2.2 WEB INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE VANGUARD WEBSITE...................................18
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3.2.3 WEBCASTING INFRASTRUCTURE ........................................................................183.2.4 INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ADDITIONAL OR INTERACTIVE SERVICES ....................19
3.3 Infrastructure requirements.................................................................................. 19
3.3.1 OVERVIEW OF THE MAIN REQUIREMENTS ........................................................193.3.2 PERMITTED TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES ....................................................203.3.3 AVAILABILITY AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION ..................................................20
3.3.3.1 Performance and availability in relation to web production workflow.213.3.3.2 Proposed performance evaluation (benchmarking)..............................213.3.3.3 Monitoring and measurement...................................................................21
3.3.4 RELIABILITY REQUIREMENTS ...........................................................................223.3.5 SAFETY REQUIREMENTS ..................................................................................223.3.6 USER-SUPPORT REQUIREMENTS .....................................................................23
4. EXPECTED RESPONSE FROM TENDERERS 23
4.1. Proposed technical solution................................................................................. 234.2. Proof of experience................................................................................................. 244.3. Proof of competence .............................................................................................. 244.4. Methodology and QAP ........................................................................................... 254.5. Deliverables .............................................................................................................. 26
4.5.1. ORGANISATION AND CONDUCT OF THE PROJECT ............................................264.5.2. DESIGN AND CREATION OF THE VANGUARD WEBSITE AND WEBSITE STATISTICS
264.5.3. ARCHITECTURE (OPTIONALLY BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE CRITICALPERIOD) ........................................................................................................................26
4.5.3.1. Functional architecture .............................................................................264.5.3.2. Technical architecture ..............................................................................264.5.3.3. Security architecture .................................................................................27
4.5.4. SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTATION.............................................................................274.5.5. ARCHITECTURE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT .............................................274.5.6. RECOVERY ON DISTASTER...............................................................................274.5.7. GENERAL REHEARSAL .....................................................................................27
4.6. Implementation......................................................................................................... 284.7. Resources assigned to the project ..................................................................... 294.8. Terms and conditions............................................................................................. 29
4.8.1. AGREEMENTS WITH SUB-CONTRACTORS ........................................................29
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1. GENERAL
The next European elections will be held from 22 to 25 May 20141 throughout the28 Member States of the European Union. For the eighth time, the people of the EUwill elect representatives to the European Parliament on the basis of universalsuffrage.
On the occasion of the elections, the European Parliament intends to:
- provide an overview of the election results at both national and European levels;- make reliable information on the participation and future composition of
Parliament available to the media, partners and the public as soon as possible afterpolls close on the night of 25 May2;
- inform political debate and analysis nationally and at European level.
It is strategically important for the European Parliament that dissemination of theelection results via the various media, social networks and partner sites should beorganised effectively.
1.1 Purpose
This document is the technical annex describing the anticipated services necessary forensuring ‘just in time, closest the real time’ dissemination via the Internet (includingmobile reading devices) of the projected and actual results of the 2014 EuropeanParliament elections in all the official languages of the EU and throughout all the EUMember States.
The aim of these services is:- to host, set up and operate a website (as well as a simplified version for
mobiles), referred to as the ‘vanguard website3’ for 2014 European electionnight and the following weeks;
- to create an efficient infrastructure (servers and appropriate network ofservers) for publication and dissemination of the election results on theInternet. This infrastructure shall be capable of withstanding a massive userload on election night and over the following days.
1 This date is given for illustrative purposes only.2 This date is given for illustrative purposes only.3 The vanguard website shall form a buffer between users and the EuropeanParliament’s main ‘Europarl’ site, which is available at the following URL:http://www.europarl.europa.eu.
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1.2 Services that the European Parliament expects to receive
On the night of the election on 25 May 2014, the European Parliament would like todisseminate, and distribute among its partners, a continuous stream of projected andactual results on the Internet, for the EU as a whole and for each Member Stateindividually. The results shall then continue to be updated regularly until the newParliament holds its constituent meeting in July 2014, and they shall remain onlineuntil the end of September 2014.
The information to be disseminated is intended both for the ordinary citizens of theEU and for specialists in European affairs. The proposed content shall therefore besuitable for the general public and accessible in all the EU official languages.
For the same reason, simplicity, legibility, speed and impartiality will be the keyconsiderations in generating the information for publication on election night –information which will be collated as the figures come in from the relevant bodies inthe Member States. Any individual should thus have easy access to these web pageswhich will be the focus of attention on the night, and also to the ‘Election 2014’4
section of the European Parliament’s website.
The high visibility of the vanguard website is politically and strategically importantand it must meet the following criteria in order to be successful:
1. The availability of the web pages (including via mobile reading devices) and datafrom our partners, regardless of size, is the key factor for the success of electionnight from a technical perspective. It is therefore imperative that the webinfrastructure deployed and the services utilised should be capable of copingsimultaneously, and with a response time of under one second, with a numberof visitors that cannot be predicted in advance but is likely to be in the order ofseveral hundred thousand in a very short space of time5
2. The availability of data in real time for the audio-visual service responsible for thesupport on election night and for the European Parliament’s partner sites.
4 This site shall be designed and developed by the European Parliament during 2013and launched by the European Parliament on 1 January 2014 at the latest.5 As a guide, the following figures were recorded during the 2009 European elections:Monday 7 June from 18.00 pm to midnight (election night): Number of requests:100 million with a maximum of 13 000 requests per second, number of page views2 million with a maximum of 300 page views per second, number of single visits:400 000 single visits with a maximum of 110 000 visits per hour, average responsetime: 0.12 seconds. For the following day (00.00), 240 million with a maximum of8 000 requests per second, 4 million page views with a maximum of 150 pages persecond, 700 000 single visits with a maximum of 65 000 visits per hour, respectively.For the month of June 2009, 10 million single visits were recorded.
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3. Accessibility of the information for people with disabilities or impaired eyesightor hearing, and for the most popular browsers and mobile devices, combined withoptimum information ergonomics and professional response times (on averageabout 100 ms).
4. Reliability and resilience of the installations and services that are put in place, notonly in terms of performance, failure-resistance, security and peak-loadadaptability but also in relation to the integrity and quality of the informationpublished.
5. Strict observance of deadlines, particularly on election night.
Specifically, the European Parliament expects to receive the services detailed below.
1. Prototyping, final implementation, operation and hosting of the vanguard website,which shall contain the following main elements:
- a splash page, and pages related thereto;- a home page in the relevant local language, guiding visitors to the results
of their choice;- consolidated EU-level projections and results pages;- projections and results pages for each Member State;- analysis pages.
These elements shall be developed:
1. in line with the functional analysis annexed to these specifications, whichconstitutes the main editorial content for the vanguard website and
2. in line with the principles underpinning the main “Europarl” sites (graphiccharter, performance, accessibility, referencing, etc.).
However, given that it is not possible to provide an accurate description of theexact content to be published well in advance, the European Parliament reservesthe right, whenever appropriate, to submit new content to the contractor forpublication. Such content shall be supplied to the contractor in a form similar tothe models and/or to the functional analysis annexed to these specifications.
2. Installation of suitable broadband infrastructure (servers and network of servers)that will enable the information to be accessed in the context of exceptionally highviewing rates on election night and the following days.
1.3 Tendering requirements in respect of Internet dissemination
To facilitate preparation of tenders for the Internet dissemination and distribution ofthe 2014 election results, this technical annex outlines these aspects in the followingorder:
- vanguard website specifications- constraints affecting the vanguard website- technical specifications for infrastructure
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- infrastructure requirements- expected response from tenderers.
Annex 3 contains an indicative diagram of the anticipated overall architecture.
Within their submissions, tenderers are asked to:- demonstrate a thorough understanding of the issues (including in terms of
quality) and sound project management skills for dealing with unexpectedevents and keeping strictly to deadlines;
- demonstrate a thorough understanding of the actual services required,especially, on the one hand, the tools, services, processes and procedures to beimplemented in preparing, producing, publishing the data and consolidatingthe multimedia web pages and, on the other hand, the infrastructure to bedeployed for guaranteeing the dissemination thereof and ensuring, without fail,that these pages are continuously available for mass consultation on electionnight;
- set out clear and complete point-by-point solutions for each of the requiredservices;
- give detailed reasons for all the options chosen, including, where relevant, thehypotheses that prompted these specific choices;
- define a general roadmap for the implementation of the site and the servicesrelating thereto.
- include any comments or observations.
In respect of any element where the tenderer has not explicitly expressed reservationsabout the content of these specifications and the requirements they include, the tendershall be assumed to meet the criteria. The European Parliament may therefore insiston implementation of the element in question, without any adjustment of the statedcost.
Likewise, any service that the tenderer has indicated in the tender as being availablemust be deliverable to the European Parliament without any adjustment of the statedcost.
See point 4 below for further details on the expected response from tenderers.
1.4 ReferenceReference DocumentEuroparl_2012.doc_graphic_charter Europarl site graphic charterModel_site_results.zip Model of the vanguard website pages
1.5 Abbreviations and acronymsAbbreviation / acronym MeaningAV AudiovisualCDN Content Delivery Network
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EP European ParliamentEuroparl The main websites of the European ParliamentISP Internet service providerQAP Quality assurance planUE European UnionW3C World Wide Web ConsortiumWAI Web Accessibility InitiativeWCMS Web Content Management Systemwww.europarl.europa.eu
Portal address (URL) for accessing the main websites ofthe European Parliament
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2. SPECIFICATIONS FOR THE VANGUARD WEBSITE
2.1 General
The vanguard website consists of a tree of web pages, to be implemented inaccordance with the functional analysis annexed to these specifications that willenable the projected results as well as the provisional and actual results of theEuropean elections to be illustrated in tabular and graphic form.
All the pages on the vanguard website must be designed so as to:- be as lightweight as possible, facilitating simultaneous use by the greatest
possible number of visitors (precise figures not predictable);- be accessible to the greatest possible number of users, and therefore readable
by all web browsers and mobile reading devices, and compliant with WAIguidelines (Level AA);
- reflect the state of the art with regard to referencing;- make effective use of caching and proxy-access mechanisms.
As part of the tender, the tenderer shall provide references suitable for validating hisability to build the type of pages concerned.
All projected and actual results must be validated in advance of publication by theresponsible entities at the coordination centre.
All the results shall be updated on a regular basis until the end of the inauguralsession, or even beyond if any results have not been approved by the interior ministryof one or more Member States. Major updating is anticipated in the days immediatelyfollowing election night. The site shall be maintained online until the end ofSeptember 2014.
The date on which all projections / results were last updated must be clearly stated.
The system must be designed to allow for the publication of partial results (interimresults based on incomplete data).
No logo other than that of the European Parliament shall be permitted on the pages ofthe vanguard website. The European Parliament’s graphic charter shall be sent tothe successful tenderer after he has duly completed and submitted theconfidentiality declaration included in annex 6 of these specifications6.
6 See annex 6 of these specifications.
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2.1.1 Website address
The vanguard website address and the addresses of all sites related thereto arespecified in the functional analysis annexed to these specifications. Addresses forCroatia shall be communicated at the time of its accession.
As part of this contract, the contractor shall be responsible for registering all usefuladdresses with a registrar of their choice.
2.1.2 Structure and features of the site
2.1.2.1 Content and structureThe vanguard website shall comprise a tree of web pages enabling the projected andactual election results to be displayed. As such, the aggregated data shall begin tochange on election night and, in principal, shall continue to do so until the inauguralsession.
The tree of web pages shall comprise,- a multilingual splash page, where visitors can select, if necessary, a language
in which to navigate the following pages;
and, in each of the 24 requisite languages, the following:- a home page, guiding visitors to the results of their choice;- consolidated EU-level ‘projections and results’ pages;- ‘projections and results’ pages for each of the 28 Member States;- analysis pages (to be specified by the coordination centre).
The information on the vanguard site shall be organised so that the EU 28 section andthe respective national sections are each independently accessible. Specific (preferred)URLs shall thus provide access to the EU 28 ‘projections/results’ page or to thecorresponding pages for each of the 28 Member States.
2.1.2.2 Inter-site linksLinks to all of the European Parliament’s Europarl websites and to those of politicalgroups and parties shall be shown in a standardised header and footer on each of thesite’s pages.
Conversely, Europarl websites and information office sites shall all offer links to theelection results website.
2.1.2.3 Print functionThe contractor shall provide a solution for printing the full contents of a given pageunder the heading ‘European results’ or ‘results of the country in question’ withoutthe header, the menus and the footer.
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2.1.2.4 RSS FunctionalityThe tenderer shall implement an RSS function (for Europe and per country) asdescribed in the functional analysis annexed to these specifications.
2.1.4 Facilities
The tenderer shall also provide the following services:- a simplified version of the site for mobile reading devices;- customisable widget for partners who wish to have the results of the European
elections automatically updated on their sites;- access to an XML ‘results’ file directory and a secure web service publishing the
results (and the metadata that qualify them) updated in real time (and, wherenecessary, other confidential data allowing analyses to be carried out at Europeanor national level on topical issues).
- direct access to the database (or, where necessary, to an intermediary database)allowing the relevant indicators to be retrieved via (SQL) requests or storedprocedures. This service is designed to meet the needs of the EuropeanParliament’s audiovisual service responsible for reporting on election night withthe television stations. The indicators shall be used to feed the Broadcast graphicdistribution system set up by the audiovisual service.
- a video player for watching the streamed content of some of the debates before, onand after election night as well as a sidebar containing enrichment content orcontent from social media.
- a procedure for automatically updating some of Parliament’s social networks.
A general description for most of these services can be found in the functionalanalysis and shall be subject to a more thorough analysis in due course.
The web infrastructure shall be sufficiently flexible to facilitate the addition, atminimal cost, of interactive services such as chat rooms or forums should they provenecessary.
2.1.5 PhasingThe vanguard website shall evolve in three successive phases:
- prior to election night;- throughout election night;- after election night and until the end of the inaugural session, being shut down
at the end of September (following the hearings of Commissioners-designate).
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2.1.5.1 Prior to election night
Once the vanguard website has been validated and approved by the EuropeanParliament, it shall be launched on 1 April 2014 at the latest, i.e. approximately twomonths before election night.
This means that many users will have heard of the site before election night and thatthe most well-known search engines will have it properly referenced.
2.1.5.2 Throughout election night
On election night, partial results and projections of the breakdown of seats at bothnational and European levels shall be published.
The publication system must be capable of publishing four types of data:1. Turnouts2. ‘Projections / results’ data for the EU 283. ‘Projections / results’ data for each of the 28 Member States4. Gender balance (on the night, or the next day).
In order to assess the volume and type of data, and the form in which results are to bepublished on the Internet, tenderers are requested to view the results of the 2009elections, which can be accessed via the following web address:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/fr/00082fcd21/Les-résultats-par-pays-(2009).html
As a guide, on election night 2009 the first figures to be published were the turnoutrates. These were followed by the ‘projections and results’ for the EU 27 and thenprogressively by those for each Member State.
2.1.5.3 After election nightDuring the post-election period, the results shall be consolidated both nationally andat European level. These results shall be updated regularly on the basis of the officialdeclarations of results by Member States, up until the inaugural session.
Once the inaugural session has ended and the results have been finalised, thecontractor shall supply the European Parliament with a static HTML version of thesite, and pdfs of the updated results for the EU as a whole and for each country.
A PDF file template shall be provided by the European Parliament 15 days afteracceptance of the vanguard website.
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2.2 Description of the vanguard website pagesA detailed description of the website pages and the performance of all its componentsis provided in the functional analysis annexed to these specifications.
2.3 Requirements of the vanguard website
2.3.1 Overview of the main requirements
The pages developed by the contractor must observe the founding principles of all theEuropean Parliament’s Europarl websites and must reflect the state of the art,particularly with regard to the following:
- Performance: the contractor shall be required to optimise navigation and pageweight to facilitate dissemination in a context of mass use of the site throughoutelection night and the following days, while also guaranteeing a response time ofless than one second.
- Graphic charter: The European Parliament’s graphic charter shall be sent to thesuccessful tenderer after he has duly completed and returned the confidentialitydeclaration included in annex 6 of these specifications. As the graphic charter issubject to change, the final version to be used for the results site shall be handedover at the kick-off meeting with the successful tenderer.
- Multilingualism: the pages developed must be available in the 24 official EUlanguages and must comply with the European Parliament’s current languagerules.
- Accessibility: the pages developed shall be compliant with Level AA of theWCAG 2.0 standard.
- Search engine referencing: development of the pages must reflect the state of theart with regard to referencing and search engine optimisation (SEO).
- Measurement of site usage: site usage shall be measured for all pages from themoment they go live, and this data shall be displayed in a dynamic dashboard.
- The standard Internet version of the site must be accessible from all availablebrowsers and the simplified version for mobile devices must be compatible withall the top devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets.
2.3.2 Performance requirementsThe pages on the vanguard website must be as lightweight as possible to ensureoptimum loading speeds for the most widely used browsers while also guaranteeing aresponse time of less than one second.
Pages may need to be pre-generated in static form to ensure acceptable viewing timesduring periods of heavy traffic. Should this be the case, the static pages themselvesshall also be implemented within an acceptable timeframe.
In order to ensure the performance of the site on election night, the contractor shallensure that it cannot be indexed by external robots.
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2.3.3 Graphic requirements
It is imperative that the page rendering be compatible with the latest versions of themost widely used browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera).
Images depicting the results shall be in line with the functional analysis annexed tothese specifications. Furthermore, all images generated by the contractor must also bein a web-compatible and/or mobile device-compatible format.
The tenderer shall describe the technologies and techniques used in designing the webpages, especially terms of graphic readability by all web and mobile web browsers.
Flash technology must not be used as it is not compatible with WAI standards andsome mobile platforms (Apple).
2.3.4 Linguistic requirementsThe entire dedicated website must be available in the 24 official languages of the EU,which are listed in annex 4 of these specifications.
The back-office and publication systems must be internationalised and geared tofacilitating editorial and technical consistency in the management of multilingualismacross the whole project.
The system must reflect the current language management rules and the linguisticorder of protocol.
All editorial elements of the site shall require translation, i.e.:- all navigation elements;- all textual content (headings, captions, dates, etc.);- all non-visible attributes used to enhance web accessibility, including the ‘alt’
attributes of images, for example;- all other linguistic elements.
However, it should be noted that the political groups and parties shall be designatedby their official English-language acronyms. National parties shall remain in theirnational language(s).
The contractor shall also check which other elements must be translated in order tocomply with Level AA of the WCAG 2.0 standard and state-of-the-art referencing.
The contractor shall take responsibility for all translations, which shall be ofimpeccable quality. They shall subsequently be validated by the internal services ofthe European Parliament before publication.
All text accompanying images (including as attributes) must be available in the24 official EU languages.
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2.3.5 Accessibility requirements
In accordance with Resolution P5_TA(2002)0325, eEurope 2002: Accessibility ofPublic Web Sites and their Content, all elements published on the Internet by thecontractor on behalf of the European Parliament under this contract must be compliantwith the web-content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0) laid down by W3C.
The required level of accessibility is level 2, also known as AA. Details of WAIstandards (Guidelines 1.0) are available at the following URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/.
WCAG standard Version 2.0 is available on the W3C site at the following URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/.
2.3.6 Referencing requirementsDevelopment of the pages must reflect the state of the art with regard to referencingand search engine optimisation (SEO).
Tenderers shall provide the European Parliament with a description of the proposedprocedure for ensuring that the pages are correctly referenced by search engines byelection night at the latest.
2.3.7 Audience measurement requirementsThe contractor shall install a tool for collecting detailed statistics on the size andnature of the website audience.
In addition to routine data on the number of visits and visitors, number of pages,transfer volume and number of hits, the contractor shall be required to supplyadvanced statistics and a dashboard displaying changes in the main statistics since thelaunch of the website.
The table below shows examples of some of these relevant advanced statistics.
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Category of statistics Type of statisticsBasic data - Daily visitors
- Page-by-page tracking of visits andpage views- Absolute unique visitors
Nature of audience - New visitors v returning visitors- Source- Geographical location- Geographical overview- Network location- Language- Defined user- Domains
Audience retention - Content by heading- Number of pages visited- Duration of visit- Visitor loyalty/returns- Last visit
Site exit - Bounce rate- Main exit points
Website design parameters - Browser versions- Platform versions- Browser/platform combinations- Screen resolutions- Screen colours- Languages- JavaScript enabled- Java enabled- Flash version- Connection speed- Host names
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3. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE
3.1 General
In technical terms, the main challenge is to make the projected and actual electionresults available and accessible to the general public, to political parties and groups, toour partners and to the media, on a ‘just in time’ basis, in a context of high audiencelevels and mass consultation, without any physical resources failing and withoutresponse times falling below one second under any circumstances.
The second major challenge is to guarantee continuity of service throughout theproduction chain until dissemination of the results.
The contractor or a direct subcontractor shall:
- provide hardware and software hosting for the following technical environments:- back-office infrastructure: chain for publishing web pages and generating the
election results in various formats including for the Internet;- web-related infrastructure to ensure publication and distribution of the results
pages in web format;- under no circumstances shall these two infrastructures be hosted on cloud
servers; they shall be hosted on servers controlled by the contractor or one ofhis direct subcontractors;
- use efficient broadband CDN dissemination infrastructure for Internetdissemination of the results pages, which shall be capable of withstanding thesignificant load anticipated on election night and the following days;
- ensure proper configuration of CDN proxies and caches so as to prevent the pagesof version -1 or obsolete pages from being viewed.
- ensure that the operational services are monitored in real time and thatperformance data for the entire site are recorded.
3.2 Description of infrastructure
3.2.1 Back-office production infrastructure
The task of the back-office production infrastructure shall be to edit informationcontent and collect data from the Member States, from polling organisations andinformation offices, to collate them, have them validated, format them for the targetaudience and publish them. It shall also provide the multilingual managementrequired for navigation, packaging and referencing and for the accessibility of thevanguard website pages.
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The tenderer shall supply a description of all the functional components of the back-office production infrastructure and the process of preparing graphics (projections,partial and final results, analytical data, etc.) and correcting them if need be. Thedescription shall specify the chain of responsibilities and the nature of the datatransfer (template/interface) at each stage of the process.
The tenderer shall also provide a description of the resources put in place to monitorthe component elements of the service and ensure its continuity in the event of anycomponent failure before, during or after election night.
3.2.2 Web infrastructure for the vanguard website
The web infrastructure shall enable hosting, on the one hand, of the vanguard websitesource pages in order to ensure their publication and, on the other hand, the public orprivate data intended for our partners. These pages and data shall be updatedcontinually on election night and subsequently until the end of the new Parliament’sinaugural session, or longer if necessary.
The tenderer shall supply a description of the functional and technical architecture ofthis infrastructure, addressing in particular requirements with regard to load,availability, performance, security and accessibility, as well as the resources put inplace for monitoring the infrastructure and recording the required statistics.
3.2.3 Webcasting infrastructure
The contractor shall deploy the network resources and/or services necessary to ensureworldwide dissemination of the results via the Internet and provide efficient access forInternet users.
The contractor shall therefore put in place an infrastructure capable of deliveringacceptable response times, and under no circumstances less than one second7, duringperiods of peak traffic when tens of thousands of visitors will access the sitesimultaneously in the critical hours between 18.00 on 25 May and midnight on 26May8, i.e. election night and the following day.
The contractor shall undertake to deploy all the resources and services necessary(including monitoring services) to ensure that sufficient bandwidth is available tocope with traffic peaks during this critical period, prevent congestion of thepublication system networks and servers, and eliminate the possibility of any breakin service for users.
7 The average response time during the 2009 European elections was 0.12 seconds.8 The peak times recorded during the 2009 European elections were 22.30 on electionnight and 10.00 the following morning.
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Tenderers are therefore asked to use a CDN, at least during the critical period,to cover needs with regard to site failover, DNS management and hierarchicalcaching. All expenditure relating to use of a CDN and associated services musttherefore be included in the overall price of this contract.
Previous experience has shown that the peak-time load tends to decline significantlyand that it may be acceptable to revert to more conventional web architecture in theperiod leading up to the inaugural session.
Tenderers are asked to:- provide proof of their experience in creating comparable technical
environments for similar events on an equivalent scale, and clearly specify thevarious capabilities that shall be deployed in the European Parliament’sservice in terms of bandwidth, connectivity (number of concurrent users),HTTP query handling and the geographical availability of disseminationservers during and after the aforementioned critical period;
- describe the technical and functional architecture proposed for meeting therequirements of performance, security, high availability, load (in hits persecond) and accessibility in three phases of the operation, namely before,during and after election night. During election night and the five daysimmediately afterwards, all resources, both for data acquisition anddistribution, and for viewing the web pages, must be 100 % available andaccessible; a somewhat lower percentage of 99.7 % may subsequently beacceptable.
3.2.4 Infrastructure for additional or interactive services
Tenderers must demonstrate that the proposed web infrastructure is sufficientlyflexible to accommodate the additional services outlined in section 2.1.4, such as: thesimplified version for mobile devices, the web service enabling webmasters of partnersites to extract data, the dissemination service for live web streaming and VOD webstreaming of debates on election night (as well as a window displaying tweets as theyare posted) or direct access to the database via SQL queries or stored procedures formeeting the needs of the audiovisual service and more specifically those of the realtime Broadcast graphic distribution system.
3.3 Infrastructure requirements
3.3.1 Overview of the main requirementsElection night is a major event that will attract a lot of attention and widespreadcoverage. The European Parliament attaches a strategic importance to the success ofthis event.
Tenderers must propose an architecture that meets the following criteria.
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- High levels of availability and performance: the proposed infrastructure mustbe capable of coping with a viewing volume estimated to be in the order of tens ofthousands of simultaneous hits on election night and the following days.
- Security: The proposed infrastructure must guarantee data integrity and, inparticular, fully protect the projected and actual election results data from beingmodified or altered as well as any confidential data that may be made available toa closed group of partners to enable European or national political analysis onheadline topics. Access to back-office areas shall be restricted.
- Reliability: the infrastructure that the contractor proposes must be resistant notonly to failures of the hardware that the contractor installs but also to any failurein the environment on which it depends. This technical environment includes, butis not limited to, electrical networks, Internet access (ISP) and disseminationhardware.
- Connectivity: The planned infrastructure shall provide all the necessaryconnectivity with Parliament’s internal equipment, particularly for election night.
Tenderers shall describe in detail the overall functional and technical architecture thatthey intend to put in place for the purposes of the contract.
3.3.2 Permitted technologies and services
Tenderers are free to select the technologies and services that are most efficient orbest reflect the state of the art in order to guarantee the success of the project.However, tenderers shall host the back-office production system and vanguardwebsite on an infrastructure that he or one of his direct subcontractors owns andmanages, and not on a cloud-based solution.
Tenderers must also outline, as soon as possible, any expectations on their part vis-à-vis the European Parliament with regard to communications infrastructure.
3.3.3 Availability and access to information
The system that is put in place must be available on the Internet 24 hours a day, sevendays a week, from the day the site goes live (planned for 1 April 2014, i.e.approximately two months before the date of the European elections), throughelection night and until the end of September 2014.
Throughout the critical period i.e. the start of election night (18.00) and the followingseven days, the level of availability must be, without fail, 100 %; after which it maydrop to 99.5 %, if necessary.
Whatever the system load, Internet users must be able to access the vanguard sitepages and data quickly. Taking account of data recorded in 2009, under maximumload configuration, access times must not exceed one second.
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3.3.3.1 Performance and availability in relation to web production workflow
The workflow for collection, collation and publication of the results data must be innear-real time, given that the information availability is one of the critical successfactors for election night.
Tenderers must therefore state the average time required for the publication processfor each results page (i.e. for the EU 28 and for each Member State).
Throughout the critical period and irrespective of the load, the time required topublish the vanguard website pages on the CDN servers and make them available forviewing must not exceed five minutes.
The back-office infrastructure for collating the data and making them available shallbe continuously enabled and shall be such as to guarantee acceptable publicationtimes (to be stipulated by the contractor).
3.3.3.2 Proposed performance evaluation (benchmarking)
Tenderers are asked to provide benchmarks for the technical environment of theinfrastructure to be deployed, particularly during the critical period of election nightand the following day, to give the European Parliament an objective referencemeasure for the proposed services.
These include:
- the capacity of the web infrastructure to handle the requisite load in a contextof mass consultation of the website; i.e. indicating how (page) response timeswill vary according to the number of simultaneous hits;
- the capacity of the dissemination infrastructure to guarantee reasonableresponse times during major traffic peaks (how viewing response times willvary according to the number of simultaneous hits);
- limits beyond which the infrastructure deployed will no longer functioncorrectly (resulting in no response or prohibitive response times).
- the ability of the ‘web service’ to cope simultaneously with a set number ofpartners.
- the ability of the database to respond to SQL queries or store procedures of theBroadcast graphic distribution system (real time) set up by the audiovisualservice.
3.3.3.3 Monitoring and measurement
The system installed must be subject to monitoring arrangements that will indicate thequality and performance levels of each of its components.
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Tenderers are asked to describe the monitoring tools that they intend to use to overseethe smooth functioning of the proposed technical infrastructure, and how theEuropean Parliament can access the tools on the election night should it wish to do so.
Tenderers shall put in place a tool for recording all audience measurement data aswell as a tool for monitoring and recording the number of simultaneous hits on theresults pages during election night and the following days, thus providing a realisticpicture of the load for this type of event. A final report on the findings shall beforwarded to the European Parliament.
3.3.4 Reliability requirementsThe infrastructure to be put in place must be resistant – particularly on election night –to all types of failure, however caused, including those caused by events outside thetenderer’s control.
The systems installed must be protected against risks of failure through use ofappropriate redundancy, hot back-up and high availability strategies, etc.
They must be resistant not only to failures of the hardware that the contractor installsbut also to any failure in the environment on which it depends. This technicalenvironment includes, but is not limited to, electrical networks and Internet access(information dissemination service).
A recovery on disaster procedure must also be put in place to cover all productionand publication systems and guarantee continuity of service in all circumstances.Tenderers are asked to clearly explain how such a procedure will work.
3.3.5 Safety requirements
The back-office and dissemination systems must offer a high level of security, basedon advanced security architectures and methods, to pre-empt any external or internalattack or intrusion.
Tenderers should describe in detail the measures they shall undertake to ensure thishigh level of security.
The back-office system must guarantee the protection (with respect to viewing,modification or non-destruction) of confidential or sensitive system data (passwords,information awaiting publication, etc.).
The dissemination system must guarantee protection of the published data against anyattempt to modify or destroy them.
The contractor must comply with the state of the art in this respect and must observethe rules currently in force (laws on the protection of privacy and personal data,ISO 27002, etc.).
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The installed systems must also have comprehensive anti-DoS (Denial of Service) andDDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack protection.
3.3.6 User-support requirementsThe contractor shall be required to put in place a help system for users, which must befully operational, particularly on election night.
In the event of failure, the help team must have the capacity to take all requisite stepsto repair or restore the system in the shortest possible time.
Tenderers are asked to submit a service level agreement for the following threeperiods:
- prior to election night;- throughout the critical period (election night and the following day);- after the critical period.
Tenderers are asked to provide the relevant equipment and an active level of on-site staffing in Brussels on election night to facilitate communication and resolveany problems that might arise.
4. EXPECTED RESPONSE FROM TENDERERS
4.1. Proposed technical solution
In respect of these specifications, tenderers shall submit the following (see awardcriterion No 10):
- a description of the DNS resolution process for the addresses set up for thevanguard website;
- an overview of the technical architecture, functional components and inter-component processes which they propose to use to meet the project aims;
- a description of the technical characteristics and strengths of the back-officeproduction system;
- a description of the technical characteristics and strengths of the publicationinfrastructure for the web and mobiles;
- the technical characteristics and strengths of the web service for our partners;- a description of the technical characteristics and strengths of direct access to
the database enabling relevant indicators to be retrieved in real time via SQLqueries or stored procedures.
- a description of the proposed measures for guaranteeing a high level of systemsecurity;
- a description of the proposed measures for guaranteeing that there will be noweak links in the production chain for publication and dissemination of theelection results;
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- a description of the technical characteristics and strengths of the recovery ondisaster process;
- a description of the user help service;- an HTML prototype of the vanguard website on a physical device, in one
language (French or English);
The tender should indicate clearly whether a distinction is to be made between thethree phases of the operation: prior to election night, on election night and afterelection night.
4.2. Proof of experience
Tenderers must provide proof of their experience, and of the levels of load handled, ina range of specific, similar projects for the technical implementation of complexcoverage arrangements for events on a comparable scale.
The tenderer must propose a solution to guarantee 100 % uptime, with response timesof less than a second, throughout election night and the following seven days in acontext of extremely high traffic peaks and a correspondingly heavy load on thenetwork and servers.
Tenderers must provide a graph showing the change in response times in proportion tothe number of simultaneous hits to view a file equivalent to the average page weighton the website (see award criterion No 11), in the context of the proposed technicalsolution and the techniques deployed during and after the critical period.
4.3. Proof of competence
Tenderers must provide proof, with the help of the references listed below, of theirtechnical and professional competence (and that of any subcontractors) to complywith these specifications (see selection criteria No 12-15):
- A list of at least two referees in respect of comparable projects that thecompany has carried out, covering events on a scale similar to the Europeanelections, in the course of the past five years; the references should beaccompanied by a description of the methodology applied, the technical andfunctional architecture implemented and precise details of a contact person(client). The European Parliament reserves the right to contact the namedclient to verify the quality and success of the service provision.
- Qualification certificates of the personnel who shall be assigned to develop theproposed technologies and architecture.
- Partnership agreements with recognised content delivery network (CDN)providers for online dissemination of the results. This stipulation does notapply if the tenderer is also a CDN.
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- A description of the quality assurance standards and processes to be used inthe development and installation of computing and network infrastructures.
Tenderers must furnish a proposal for the structure implemented, demonstrating theskills which they will be able to employ in order to master the basic aspects of thistype of editorial activity and broadband publication. The proposal must clearlyindicate the tenderer’s capacity to control the sequence of data generation, collation,validation and online dissemination with reference not only to performance andmultilingualism (24 languages) but also to the presentation, accessibility (web, mobileweb, web service) and usability of the data (see award criterion No 8).
To this end, the tenderer shall provide proof that the proposed technical and functionalproject manager has significant experience (at least five years in this type of project),covering the management of IT projects (project, quality, and methodologymanagement). The project manager must be proposed by the tenderer and not by oneof his subcontractors.
4.4. Methodology and QAP
Tenderers must provide a detailed description of the methodology to be followed inthe specification, implementation and deployment phases of this type of technicalproject and for ensuring that it operates smoothly.
Tenderers should note that the methodology used by the European Parliament(PMM4EP) is derived from PMI: this methodology may be used by default.
Tenderers shall describe the organisational structure they intend to put in place andbest practice that they intend to follow, for example:
1. Appointment of a project manager empowered to take all technical, operationaland organisational decisions necessary for the smooth delivery of the services inquestion, who has a sound knowledge and understanding of the project issues andthe European Parliament.
2. Organisation of regular project updates and review meetings, with minutes andaction plans.
3. Use of micro-plans for:- assessing understanding of the stages of the project,- assessing risks effectively, and- early detection of any delays in implementation processes, and applying
appropriate remedial action.
4. Phasing of project development and specific delivery procedures so that anoverview of progress can be obtained very rapidly, including:
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- monitoring systems development and testing,- detecting malfunctions at a very early stage in the project,- evaluating the stability and robustness of the systems and how they will
perform over time,- prompt end-to-end system performance evaluation.- etc.
Tenderers shall also provide a description of the quality assurance plan (QAP) for theproject.
The purpose of the quality assurance plan (QAP) is to set out the requisite provisionsand follow-up for safeguarding the quality of the project and ensuring that theobjectives are achieved on schedule. (See award criterion No 9).
4.5. Deliverables
For each stage of implementation of the chosen solution, the contractor must submit aseries of deliverables.
This list below is for purposes of illustration and is not exhaustive.
4.5.1. Organisation and conduct of the project- Quality assurance plan- Organisation of meetings- Project progress reports- Handover procedure- Documentation
4.5.2. Design and creation of the vanguard website and website statistics- Prototype of the vanguard website- Implementation of the vanguard website- Test plan- Test reports- Audience measurement report- Documentation.
4.5.3. Architecture (optionally before, during and after the critical period)
4.5.3.1. Functional architecture
- Presentation of the functional model (web, mobile web, web service, directaccess to the database for the audiovisual service).
- Description of functional components- Descriptions of inter-component processes
4.5.3.2. Technical architecture
- Presentation of the technical model (web, mobile web, web service, directaccess to the database for the audiovisual service).
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- Description of technical components- Back-office infrastructure and performance characteristics- Dissemination and distribution infrastructure, and performance characteristics
4.5.3.3. Security architecture
- Description of security measures taken- Description of measures to be taken in the event of component failure- Description of monitoring tools.
4.5.4. Systems implementation- Functional testing plan (web, mobile web, web service, direct access to the
database for the audiovisual service).- Load testing plan- Testing report (web, mobile web, web service, direct access to the database for
the audiovisual service).- Handover procedure- Technical documentation
4.5.5. Architecture performance measurement- Measurement of the capacity of back-office production and publication
systems deployed- Measurement of the capacity of the dissemination infrastructure deployed for
the web (web, mobile web, web service, direct access to the database for theaudiovisual service)
- Load statistics: change in the number of simultaneous hits- Measurement reports.
4.5.6. Recovery on distaster- Description of recovery on disaster process- Recovery on disaster test plan- Test reports
4.5.7. General rehearsal- Description of a rehearsal day, simulating the situation on election night- Production of a simulation roadmap- Organisation of the simulation- Simulation report
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4.6. Implementation
Tenderers shall provide a macro-plan indicating the key project implementationmilestones and expected deliverables, in the light of the 2014 election timetable.
This reverse-order schedule is provided for information only. It is intended toindicate the tight timetable for implementation of the website and the requisiteinfrastructure.
3. Description of the different stages T time elapsed beginning/end
Closure of results website T0* 30 September 2014
End
Data transferred to and archived on Europarl T1 T0 - 2 months Start15 September 2014
end
Constitutive session: Final update of theelections
T2 T1 - 2/3 weeks end
Election night T3* 8 June (TBC)Dress rehearsal (simulation of election night)including the partners
T4 T3 - 3 weeks Start
T3 - 2 weeks EndInstallation of audiovisual set-up in EuropeanParliament
T5 T3 - 4 weeks Start
4. 5. T3 - 3 weeks EndLaunch of results website T6* 1/04 StartFull infrastructure availability for non-publicproduction
T7 T6 - 2 weeks Start
6. 7. T6 EndOverall function testing T8 T7 - 2 weeks Start8. 9. T7 EndDeployment and handover of disseminationinfrastructure
T9 T7 - 4 weeks Start
10. 11. T7 - 2 weeks EndDeployment and handover of vanguardwebsite, mobile version and presentation ofcomplete prototype of audiovisual installation
T10*
04.02.13 Start
12. 13. T9 - 2 weeks EndDeployment and acceptance of back-officesystem
T11 T10 - 2 weeks Start
14. 15. T10 EndSystems integration (back-office, web, mobileweb and dissemination) and testing
T12 T11 - 2 weeks Start
16. 17. T11 EndDevelopment of dissemination infrastructure,web infrastructure and back-office
T13 T12 - 16 weeks Start
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infrastructureSecurity architecture (back-office, web anddissemination) documentation complete
T14 14 October 2013 End
DNS-resolution documentation complete T15 14 October 2013 EndTechnical architecture (back-office, web,mobile web and dissemination) documentationcomplete
T16 30 September 2013
End
Functional architecture (back-office, web,mobile web and dissemination) documentationcomplete
T17 30 September 2013
End
Kick-off meeting T18 16.09.13 End
*: Deadline
At the kick-off meeting, the contractor shall submit a detailed plan showing tasks andcritical pathways.
4.7. Resources assigned to the project
Tenderers shall supply details of the teams to be created for each aspect of serviceprovision (back-office, web dissemination, mobile web, web service, and databaseaccess), including the numbers of people involved, their roles, profiles, names andCVs, in accordance with the project plan (see selection criterion No 13).
To this end, the tenderer shall provide proof that the proposed technical and functionalproject manager has significant experience (at least five years in this type of project),covering the management of IT projects (project, quality, and methodologymanagement). The project manager must be proposed by the tenderer and not by oneof his subcontractors.
4.8. Terms and conditions
4.8.1. Agreements with sub-contractors
In entering into any agreement with a subcontractor in relation to the implementationof this contract, the contractor shall remain liable in civil law for the contract in itsentirety. The contractor shall specify the precise nature of any agreements withsubcontractors, stipulating in particular:
- the existence of a Plan Assurance Qualité),quality assurance plan (QAP)- the existence of a service level agreement (SLA)- the characteristics of the QAP and the SLA.
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The European Parliament, having no contractual link with the subcontractors, reservesthe right to reject any subcontractor selected. Any changes may be accepted only byagreement of the two parties.