Consultant - Rationalizing the Resilience Program’s SharePoint Site

Consulting Opportunity with the International Institute for Sustainable Development focused on

Rationalizing the Resilience Program’s SharePoint Site(s)

Statement of Work

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is an award-winning independent think tank working to accelerate solutions for a stable climate, sustainable resource management, and fair economies. IISD’s Resilience Program has experienced significant growth in its staff complement and activities in recent years and anticipates continuing this trend. To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its internal operations while it grows, the Resilience Program is seeking support from an external contractor to restructure and further develop its use of SharePoint.

Purpose of the Assignment

The contractor will work with a steering committee comprised of IISD staff members to develop a SharePoint structure that enables improved knowledge management for a geographically distributed, largely virtual, team. Specifically, the contractor will:

• Develop and implement a plan to improve the usability of the Resilience program’s existing SharePoint sites. The updated Resilience SharePoint structure should reflect the following characteristics:
  • Easy to navigate—facilitated by a logical architecture—and searchable to ensure that team members can use it efficiently.
  • Designed for purpose, meaning that the revitalization will focus on meeting the essential needs of the program rather than exploiting all of SharePoint’s capacities.
  • Meets the needs of the different users within the Resilience team, which includes research leaders, junior researchers, program coordinators, project managers, finance officers, and communications officers—and with the flexibility to enable (controlled) access by select external collaborators (i.e., contractors and individuals within partner organizations).
  • Adaptable to growth.
  • Facilitate the archiving of completed work so future staff members can easily locate it.
• Ensure that current and future Resilience team members have the capacity to use the site as planned, drawing on tailored training resources and protocols for updating and maintaining the site.

Background

IISD is progressively moving all of its internal information sharing and knowledge management to SharePoint as part of its efforts to increase interoperability and internal controls/searchability. The Resilience Program within IISD has developed a series of SharePoint sites as part of this transition, including three major sites focused on the following: (1) the program’s internal and external communications activities, (2) project management, and (3) its largest initiative, the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Global Network. A number of smaller sites for individual projects and initiatives have also been established that may or may not be linked to these major sites.

Concern has been expressed that there is a lack of coherence and logical flow between these different sites and, when required, with other third-party software used by the program (e.g., SurveyMonkey). Specific problems include the following inter-related issues:

• Difficulty finding specific files, in part due to limited searchability.
• Inability by staff and external collaborators to access folders/files due to access restrictions.
• Duplication of materials within and between different SharePoint sites.

In part, this situation stems from Resilience team members’ lack of understanding of SharePoint’s advantages, how and when it should be used relative to other IISD and third-party sharing/storage tools, and how to set up and manage SharePoint sites. This situation is compounded by the absence of (among other factors):

• Agreed-upon common architecture across sites.
• Agreed-upon file and folder naming conventions.
• A dedicated person who is responsible for oversight of the team’s overall SharePoint site’s structure and expansion and who would work with individuals responsible for specific sections of the site.
• A shared management plan or “operations manual” to guide the development and use of the SharePoint sites.

Given the Resilience Program’s ongoing growth, there is a desire to review and revise its current SharePoint architecture and capacity within the team to interact with and manage this system.

Tasks and Work Plan

Working with a 4–5 person Steering Committee composed of members of the Resilience team and a member of IISD’s corporate services team, the work will be undertaken in the four phases described below.

Phase 1: Needs assessment and parameter setting (February to mid-March)

1. Meet with members of the project steering committee to confirm the goals of the consultancy and review the anticipated work plan.
2. Undertake informal discussions with selected Resilience team members who represent core user groups to understand the program’s current activities and SharePoint concerns; review the existing architecture.
3. Develop a survey for team members in collaboration with members of the project steering committee, and, if agreed upon, select external consultants to better understand their collaborative work, information sharing, knowledge management, communication, and workflow needs, how they currently access and use SharePoint, and their current concerns with respect to its structure and usability.
4. Based on survey outcomes, prepare 3–4 use cases for the Resilience team’s SharePoint site.
5. Determine the parameters for a revised Resilience team SharePoint site—such as how it should support each of the use cases, if there should be a single site or linked sites, etc.
6. Confirm the parameters and desired outcomes of the revised SharePoint site architecture with the project steering committee.

Phase 2: Architecture and management plan (mid-March to mid-April)

This phase will involve the preparation of three main deliverables:

1. A report that captures a new architecture for the Resilience Program’s SharePoint site. Anticipated tasks associated with this deliverable include:
   1. Developing a draft architecture for a new Resilience Program SharePoint site.
   2. Reviewing the draft architecture with the project steering committee and making revisions on an iterative basis until a final draft architecture is agreed upon.
   3. Preparing a final report that captures the agreed-upon architecture for the Resilience Program SharePoint site, noting the rationale behind the agreed-upon structure.
2. A plan for transitioning from the current structure to the new architecture. Anticipated tasks associated with this deliverable include:
   1. Drafting a plan for transitioning the program’s existing SharePoint sites to the new architecture for review by members of the project steering committee. The transition plan should include, among other things:
      • The anticipated timeline required for the transition.
      • The Resilience team and corporate services staff members and their estimated time required to support the transition.
   2. Developing a final transition plan accepted by the project steering committee.
3. A draft management plan or operations manual for the SharePoint site. Anticipated tasks associated with this deliverable include:
   1. Iterative development, in consultation with the project steering committee, of a management plan for the new SharePoint site that sets out, among other things:
      • Who will maintain it.
      • When new SharePoint sites will be established and how they will be seamlessly integrated into the overarching architecture.
      • What training is required by Resilience team members (which could be tailored to the needs of different user groups).
   2. Preparing a draft management plan approved by the project steering committee.

Phase 3: Transition to the new SharePoint architecture (mid-April to early May)

Activities within this phase will include:

• Implementing the transition plan established in Phase 2, making any needed adjustments as the process unfolds.
• Finalizing the SharePoint management plan to reflect the finalized architecture.
• Preparing a user manual or process map for the SharePoint site for members of the Resilience team.

Phase 4: Training (early May to late June 2023)

The contractor will be engaged to support IISD’s Resilience program with one or more of the following tasks:

1. Development of a training plan for members of the Resilience team in keeping with the needs identified in Phase 2.
2. Delivering training to all members of the Resilience program in 2–3 virtual sessions that will
   1. Provide an overview of SharePoint’s capacities and benefits for the Resilience program
   2. Explain the revised SharePoint architecture and the process by which it is to be updated and expanded in the future
   3. Present the completed user manual or process map

Qualifications

The successful contractor will have the following qualifications:

• Experience with collaborative work platforms, information sharing, and knowledge management.
• Experience in the design of corporate SharePoint sites.
• Experience in conducting interviews and surveys to gather design inputs.
• Experience with the creation and delivery of training on the use of SharePoint.
• Strong interpersonal, active listening, and oral, visual, and written communication skills.

Application Process

Received proposals should be no longer than 10 pages in length. They should include both a technical and a financial proposal. The technical proposal should include examples of similar work that has been previously completed by the applicant and an appendix containing the CVs of the proposed personnel.

Proposals should be in English, in an easy-to-read font (10 point minimum, with the exception of any included figures and tables), with margins of 1 inch (or equivalent) on all sides. Applications will be submitted electronically in PDF format.

Please submit your proposal to Catherine Senecal, Program Manager, via resilience@iisd.ca.

Application deadline: January 23, 2023

Anticipated start date: No later than February 3, 2023

Anticipated end date: June 30, 2023

Location: remote

Contracting Process

The successful applicant will be issued a contract by IISD. General Terms and Conditions of all IISD contracts are available upon request.

Please direct any questions related to this opportunity to resilience@iisd.ca, attention: Catherine Senecal.

IISD has implemented a COVID-19 vaccination policy that requires employees who are required or choose to be at an office or participate in in-person team events or in-person meetings/events to be fully vaccinated. Anyone unable to be fully vaccinated, either because of a sincerely held religious belief or a medical condition or a disability that prevents them from being fully vaccinated, can request a reasonable accommodation.

IISD is committed to fostering a more equitable and sustainable world and welcomes candidates who uphold our values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In addition, to correct the conditions of social injustice and disadvantage in employment around the world, we encourage candidates from historically marginalized groups, including women, Indigenous Peoples, people with disabilities, people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and those who identify themselves as 2SLGBTQIA+ to apply for this position. Preference will be given to the equity-deserving groups during the hiring process. We offer reasonable accommodations in our recruitment process and seek applicants' advice on how best to accommodate their needs. Please self-identify and answer our employment equity questionnaire on our applicant tracking system when you apply.

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