Note for Website Redesign and Rebuild Meeting ALC and Words of Colour
Note for Website Redesign and Rebuild Meeting – ALC and Words of Colour.
Friday 4 May 2018
Context:
Objects and Purpose
The Association of Lawyers for Children (ALC) is a membership organisation with the following overarching objects:
- To promote justice for children and young people (‘children’), primarily in the family justice system.
- To influence the development of the law of the jurisdiction relating to children so as to ensure that the law evolves and progresses in a manner consistent with the welfare of children and the right of children to comprehensive and effective legal protection and redress.
- To improve the knowledge and professional practice standards of those who are charged with applying that law so as to ensure that children receive comprehensive and effective legal protection and redress within the justice system.
ALC structure
The ALC is governed by an Executive Committee comprising 18 members, who are a mix of solicitors and barristers. The ALC’s work streams are driven by sub committees (listed below) which were set up in January 2018.
- Equality and Diversity
- Communications
- Legal Aid Consultations and Policy
- Membership
- Conferences and Events.
The Operations and Development Officer is responsible for the day to day administration and coordination of the ALC’s activities. This includes the management and maintenance of the website and database.
ALC Website and Database: Overview of issues and needs
The ALC Website found at: was custom built in 2003 by a company called Electric Putty. Electric Putty have continued to support the maintenance of the ALC website and database, however this is becoming increasingly less viable due to the age of the system.
The website is maintained and managed through the database (CMS). Most parts of the site are static there are very few sections that are dynamic.
We would like the new site to function as a communication tool, to facilitate marketing to ALC members and prospective members, through publishing content on the website.
The new site will also have greater multimedia capacity. Much like most updated versions of WordPress sites.
We would like a system that we can independently manage and maintain. At present we are too reliant on Electric Putty for support and this has ongoing cost implications.
We are investigating the rebuild of the database and have been advised to set this up as a ‘standalone’ system, rather than rolling this into the Website Content Management System CMS. We have already engaged Economic Change to help us scope a design and implementation project using the Salesforce CRM.
We would like to explore solutions where the website can interact with the database and we of course we need everything to be GDPR ready.
The initial quote from Electric Putty to redesign the website is £10K. At the time that the quote was presented, they were offering a 2.5% discount on this amount, because of the long standing relationship with the ALC.
At this stage the Executive Committee would like to consider comparable quotes and are keen on exploring word press sites such as the one below:
Proposed initial agenda for meeting on Friday 4 May
- Discussion about issues and needs of current ALC website
- Exploration of Word of Colour potential offer
- Timescales and presentation of quote.
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