Ms Marion Martin:

It is estimated the tendering process will take eight to ten weeks. As we will work through a mini-competition under an ICT framework, it will be a shortened tendering process from that perspective. Once we get the go-ahead from the OGCIO, the tendering process will carry through.

Regarding the development timeframe, from our analysis of all the requirements, it is estimated the development will probably take approximately five months. This is dependent on the vendors that tender for the development and the number of developers they can provide for the project. There will be parallel development going on and then an integration process within that. We anticipate that we would probably need six to eight weeks of testing and bug-fixing once the full integration has happened. Then, as the Minister has already mentioned, approximately 12 to 16 weeks are envisaged for the launch implementation in which applications are made.

Regarding the public online portal, we are working with a consultation group with stakeholders on business and systems and are working through the requirements and the system functionalities with that stakeholder group to get its views and its processes from parents through to service providers who will use each part of the system. We are taking that into account. In addition, as part of the final technical designs, a user experience expert will make the public-facing element as easy and applicable as possible.