Call for Tender for STI International Semantic Web Site

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Call for Tender for STI International Semantic Web Site
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Work description

The goal of the work is to enable the current STI International web site 
(http://www.sti2.org/) with Semantic technologies:

- to overcome the range of limitations and problems with existing 
approaches to creating, integrating and maintaining web-based community 
information coming from heterogeneous sources,
- to benefit from the Semantic interoperability with existing Semantic 
systems and the reuse of existing metadata.


Why we need this

The use of Semantic technologies will provide the following benefits:

• Information accessible for human and software systems.
• Highly configurable, extensible and maintainable web site in which the 
overhead of adding new types of information and data is strongly 
reduced. From an economic perspective, a Semantic portal will reduce the 
personnel costs.
• Avoid the duplication of information existing in complementary and 
heterogeneous resources, allowing the integration of information of 
Semantic and non-Semantic data.
• Increase the Semantic interoperability with other Semantic and 
non-Semantic based system through the use of metadata.
• Flexibility and support for the use of inference engines that infer 
new information and metadata.
• Consistency checking of the STI International Semantic information and 
other Semantic information distributed on the web.
• Flexibility for declaratively configuring read/write permissions over 
the portal information, allowing different type of users simultaneously.
• Customizable user interfaces for searching and navigating the 
information according to different type of users with different permissions.
• Capability for searching semantically, in addition to keywords-based 
searches.


Functionality and Structure

The new Semantic driven website is based on the current website 
(www.sti2.org) and similar in terms of the content and functionality. In 
addition a member area that is only accessible by STI International 
members will be established. This member area includes interactive 
features as subscriptions to mailing lists, wikis for different service 
areas and working groups, calendar for STI International related 
meetings and events, download area for all related STI International 
documents (e.g. talks, protocols, training material) and access to the 
detailed individual member information (e.g. address, contact data, 
subscriptions to mailing lists, member fee status, participation in 
working groups and services).


Implementation Plan

Month 0: Call for tenders’ launch in which candidates should present 
specific implementation and deployment plans, distinguishing:
• Development and deployment phase’s activities and costs
• Population process and costs, including a description of information 
sources to be incorporated
• Maintenance activities and costs
• Description of similar deployments in use
• Proposal of a financing plan
Month 1: Deadline for submissions.
Month 2: Analysis of submissions, decision and contract signature.
Month 4: First version including basic functionalities and a range of 
information sources selected by STI International.
Month 6: Second version including advanced functionalities and the rest 
of information sources selected by STI International.
Moth 8: Final version.


Business Model
A business model for setting up the website and financing the 
maintenance costs of the website has to be included in the submitted 
proposal.


Submission

The proposal for STI International Semantic Web Site should be provided 
to STI International CEO, Alexander Wahler (office@sti2.org).

The deadline for submitting the proposal is February 28th, 2008.