Design Consultancy

The NHS Confederation appointed BOCC to provide assistance developing a new website structure, defining additional functional areas and working up the visual designs provided by a design agency.

The website is to be created using the comprehensive content management system (BOCC CMS) provided last year for the related NHS Employers website.

The web team had already begun a review of the requirements and BOCC undertook discussions and consultancy sessions with sections within the organisation. BOCC helped assess the needs and wrote a specification which would provide a content managed feature-rich website and also to advise on the navigation and visual design for the new site. The CMS links seamlessly with the separate member relationship management system.

BOCC subsequently created standards-compliant mock web pages for accessibility and usability testing, so that the design and navigation could be refined prior to implementation in the CMS.

October 2006

Council Server Hosting

Two additional servers have been installed and configured by BOCC for a local council's e-forms system.

BOCC installed and configured:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Oracle

prior to the application being loaded.

The servers were configured to be accessible via the internal council network over a secure virtual private network (VPN) and dedicated leased line and on the public Internet. BOCC advised and worked with the council's technical team to configure the necessary routes and firewall changes.

The servers are hosted and managed by BOCC and backed up using a networked Veritas BackupExec system.

September 2006

Flexible Grant Applications

A new grant round has been added to the Union Learning Fund (ULF) portal. Round 10 includes changes to the application requirements and processing methods.

In addition, bidders can now optionally prepare the majority of their application in a specially designed Microsoft Word document and upload it, instead of completing the web page forms online. The Word document's contents are dynamically extracted and imported into the Microsoft SQL Server database using a special module developed by BOCC. This was considered an important new feature since it provides users with alternative ways to submit their bids.

BOCC originally created the online portal for the Union Learning Fund (ULF) in 2003; it allows unions to submit funding bids and the ULF to manage these through to successful contracts and during the term of the contract. The system provides:

• bid creation, submission, review and update
• bid management
• contract management
• communications through email broadcasts and extranet facility
• online reporting

Site and database hosted by BOCC.

September 2006

Security Review

BOCC was appointed to undertake a security review of an existing website to ensure it met current best practice, and to identify future requirements.

The project, for a City-based company, encompassed:

• review website front end and content management system
• identify security risks
• review procedures and controls
• review data security
• check compliance with security best practice
• provide recommendations for actions

BOCC met with key staff and reviewed the website, associated sites providing functions such as payments and administration methods and web management screens. Following an interim meeting, a document detailing BOCC's finding and recommendations was submitted.

BOCC is now also providing systems advice on hardening the database and web servers.

September 2006