Mason Pratt Young Executive of the Year 2007

MoT | Discover Intranet

The Ministry of Transport (MoT) have recently deployed their new Intranet (affectionately known as 'Discover') using the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) platform.

Provoke were engaged by the Ministry to assume overall responsibility for the design, development and deployment of a new Intranet for the Ministry. The initial phase required Provoke to work closely with MoT stakeholders and the Ministry’s outsourcing partner, Revera, who provisioned the managed hosting environment for the new Intranet.

Deployment of their new Intranet completes stage one of their enterprise content management strategy. Subsequent stages will look at leveraging the content management tools provided by the MOSS platform to extend to their public website.

Services Delivered:

  • Detailed Analysis & Design
  • Interaction Design
  • Visual Design
  • Information Architecture
  • Technical Architecture
  • MOSS Customisation
  • Computer Based Training
  • Administrator Training
  • Documentation
  • Quality Assurance & Testing
  • Project Management
  • Support & Maintenance

Why did MoT select the MOSS platform for their new Intranet?

The decision to proceed with the MOSS platform was made based on future MoT needs to leverage enterprise class content management tools. They wanted to deploy a platform that would deliver a robust technology framework for future business growth.

Stage one of the project was delivered successfully and Provoke and MoT are currently working through stage two requirements. The long-term strategy involves future migration of the MoT public website into the MOSS environment to ensure maximum re-use of new content templates, publishing workflows and other content management tools. This work will also look to integrate our E-Government 'wrapper' for MOSS that is currently in development as a part of the Microsoft Innovation Centre.

What the Client said...

Claire Johnstone, GM-corporate at the Ministry, says it wasn’t that the ministry had a business problem but was seeking a communications solution.

“We wanted to develop an intranet that was easy to use, something modern and flexible, attractive to use — a communication tool people wanted to use as a first source of information”, she says. “It also needed to provide information on ministry policies and processes and provide a social forum for staff.”

Why did the Ministry select Provoke?

Since its completion, the intranet has been reliable, with staff enjoying its use; complaining greatly when ministry servers failed and the intranet stopped working. “The main thing we did right was to make sure the solution solved the business need and the social need. We are pleased Provoke won the Microsoft Partner Solution of the Year award for our new Intranet. They always kept us informed of developments, they understand partnership. They look at things as a relationship and we work better with organisations that treat us as a partner rather than a purchaser”, Johnstone adds.

Key Microsoft Technologies:

The Provoke project team faced a number of technical challenges during the integration and deployment phase of the project as the Intranet required seamless integration with Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange. In future releases the Ministry are also looking to provide direct integration with CRM 3.0. The technologies employed for the new Intranet included: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), Microsoft Office 2003, SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft .NET, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), AJAX, Visual Studio .NET.

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