Photo: DIT

The Department for International Trade is to conduct a review of the technical and cultural barriers it faces in helping its workforce use technology effectively.

DIT has allotted up to £150,000 to spend on the 12-week project, during which the department wishes to “review our existing internal landscape and identify technical and cultural barriers to working together effectively as ‘One DIT’”, it said.

The programme will feature two tracks, the first of which will address the “technical barriers” to the department’s employees working together more effectively. The second area of focus will be “cultural challenges” to the use of technology-based ways of working.

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The trade department intends to “establish a clear picture” of its incumbent “digital workplace” intranet, which is built on the WordPress content management system and the Ruby on Rails coding language. The DIT will then look at how this platform could better integrate this with other tools in its tech estate, such as SharePoint and Office 365. The DIT also wants to “identify ways to improve paper-based business processes”.

“We want our digital workplace to enable our colleagues to feel part of One DIT – where everybody is able to communicate, collaborate and transact regardless of their location”, the department said.

DIT is seeking a supplier that can provide a team to conduct research. This team will work with an internal product manager and digital technical architect that are dedicated to the department’s intranet. The chosen bidder will also be required to work with the “wider working group from across the organisation made up of internal communications, technology, data, digital, content, finance, knowledge and information management, [and] HR” professionals.

Bids for the project are open until 12 August, after which the department expects to evaluate up to five potential suppliers, before appointing one of these to a 12-week contract on 16 September.