Friday 21 November 2008

Service Level Agreement

Example of the agreement between ICELE and Local Authorities wishing to use VOICE 

This non-binding agreement (in-line with the open-source community) outlines the indicative services provided between ICELE and your organisation in relation to VOICE. 

Both recipient and ICELE will make sure that every reasonable endeavor is made to uphold it.

Intentions of the project 

The VOICE service has been developed with government funding but requires ongoing investment to pay for the running and maintenance of the service by ICELE. 

The nature of the shared service means that these costs are split by the number of authorities and organisations subscribing to the system at any time.  It follows that subscription costs are devised in a way that is proportional to usage but equal among organisations of similar types.  The fees are set at the outset of each financial year. Ongoing technical developments will be made based on any funds left-over or grants received beyond our base operating costs. 

A proportion of VOICE fees will cover ICELE management and support costs.  The technical development fund is allocated by a steering group, represented by VOICE subscribers.  You are encouraged to suggest improvements or changes for consideration to this group. The nature of ICELE is that it is a not-for-profit centre and as such the subscriptions will be utilized in a manner which benefits the community at large. 

An online community for VOICE subscribers can be found at www.e-voice.org.uk/voiceusers which contains various FAQs, news, updates and copies of the VOICE toolkit. 


Agreement

Definitions VOICE service – The online service at www.e-voice.org.uk , a bespoke instance of the open source dotCommunity software operated by ICELE.


VOICE Toolkit -training materials, user guides and supporting documentation relating to the VOICE service

Service Provider - The International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE) which is lead by Lichfield District Council and hosting subcontracted to Lightening Internet Ltd.   

The service provider (us)

·        Will provide you with an instance on the VOICE toolkit at www.e-voice.org.uk, typically in the form www.e-voice.org.uk/yourarea

·        Will set-up a single administrator log-on for the applicant (additional administration logins can be set-up through this account) 

·        Will provide the bearer with a single ‘VOICE toolkit’ which consist of administration and end-user documentation as well as details of how to customise the look and feel of your portal

 ·        Will provide telephone technical support during the hours of 9.30am to 4.30pm to a single nominated administrator at your organisation. This service will be a recorded message on public holidays or outside of these hours.  In this instance, queries will be dealt with as soon as possible and no longer than two working days of them being received. 

·        Will offer a single ‘train the trainer’ course during the subscription and point to other ‘at cost’ training resources 

·        Reserves the right to withdraw the provision of free services at any time  

·        Reserves the right to retract the provision of VOICE after March 2009 as long as this is done by serving notice within six months before the service terminates and refunding any ongoing fees proportionately to the subscriber 

·        Reserves the right to disable any community site which breaches the terms of use without prior notice 

·          Will endure to provide the best continuity of service over the period and inform users of any planned outages within a reasonable amount of time.  If the service is halted or interrupted with the exception of force majeure for a continued period of 5 days or more then the subscriber will be compensated

 ·          Will not apply any increases or decreases to the subscription fee to the subscriber until the time of renewal.  Subscriptions are reviewed every 12 months and every effort will be make to keep prices stable 

·          Will endeavour to make enhancements and improvements to the service based on recommendations by the steering group within the available budget 

·          Cannot refund fees once paid unless there are unprecedented mitigating circumstances as determined by the ICELE programme board 

·          Will hold your portal content data no longer than 6 months if your subscription should lapse

 ·          Recognises that although extensive user acceptance testing has been performed cannot guarantee that all functions will work as advertised, particularly when obscure end user systems such as non-mainstream terminals or web browsers are being used.  We will endeavour to patch or correct any high priority bugs as they are reported 

·          Cannot be attributed to any loss, be it data or otherwise, as a result of using the service  

·          Cannot implement localised changes to the system for individual subscribers unless prior approval has been made by the steering group   

The subscribing organisation (you) must

 ·        Manage (e.g. approve or decline) subsequent community groups applications to your portal on a regular basis 

·        Provide the end-user support, if appropriate 

·        Abide and whenever possible enforce the terms of use at http://www.e-voice.org.uk/terms/ 

  • Agree that the use of the VOICE toolkit will be for a non-commercial purposes in-line with the VOICE terms and conditions for acceptable use.

  • Will not unwittingly disclose their login details to any other organisation or non-authorized individual

  • Not resell your VOICE portal, community pages or subsites

  • Not wittingly break, hack or cause damage to the service

  • Use the service for the storage of secret or sensitive data at your own risk.  While we understand the VOICE private area to be secure, it has not been tested for resilience.

 

Department for Communities and Local Government