Troubleshooting and adjustments to existing features of the Parline database

Background

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is the world's organization of parliaments. It was founded in 1889 as the first multilateral political organization, encouraging cooperation and dialogue between all nations. Today, the IPU’s membership comprises approximately nearly all of the world's national parliaments. It promotes democracy, helps parliaments to become stronger, younger, gender-balanced, and more diverse. It also defends the human rights of parliamentarians. Twice a year, the IPU convenes over 1500 delegates and MPs in a world assembly, bringing a parliamentary dimension to the work of the United Nations and the implementation of the 2030 global goals.

IPU’s Parline database on national parliaments data.ipu.org was redeveloped recently with the current version launched in September 2018. At the time many changes were made, including moving to the Drupal platform, revising the scope of the database contents and overhauling the public user interface. Meanwhile, the IPU web site www.ipu.org was rebuilt in 2017 and further linkages between the web site and Parline were established in September 2019.

The purpose of this contract is to make adjustments to some of the existing features.

A separate Request for Proposals is being issued for the development of new features. Suppliers are encouraged to propose their services for both contracts.

Overview

Parline objectives

Parline is the IPU’s open data platform on national parliaments. It allows users to consult and compare data on national parliaments including information on structures, working methods, gender parity, women’s caucuses, youth and MPs’ human rights.

Parline covers 272 parliamentary chambers in 193 countries. The database comprises more than 500 fields. Some of the data goes back several years allowing users to see evolutions and trends over time.

Generally, the information on the platform is provided to IPU by national parliaments. It is updated regularly to take into account any changes that result from elections. The data covers a wide range of themes; for example, the number of chambers, the number of women MPs, the number of laws initiated by parliament and the average age of MPs.

New Parline allows users not only to find information on national parliaments but also to compare the data for all parliaments or a particular region. Users can reuse this data through an API and download data in different formats, including charts and maps, and share it according to the Terms of Use.

Audiences

The main audiences of Parline are the staff of national parliaments (library and research services, international departments, procedural services etc), parliamentary development practitioners and researchers working on parliaments (scholars, students, etc). Secondary audiences include international organizations (UN agencies and civil society) as well as the media.

Technical considerations

The Parline database data.ipu.org is built using Drupal 7.59 and is hosted on Platform.sh.

The IPU web site www.ipu.org is built on Drupal 8 and is also hosted on Platform.sh.

The two platforms are managed separately. More interactions between the two sites should be explored.

Languages

Parline is published in the official languages of the IPU, namely English and French. All developments should function equally in both languages.

Scope of work

Various adjustments should be made to the front and back end. They include:

Back end

• For example, to create a new “Notes” field, or to move a field from one Content Type to another. These changes are likely to require corresponding modifications to the front end

Display of fields on the front end.

• Adjust the layout of certain Country pages.

Search results

• Adjust the presentation of search results

Comparative pages

• For example, when a certain field is selected in the Comparative pages, to display related fields in the country table below the graphic in order to provide relevant contextual information, such as an accompanying “Notes” field.

Admin tools. Parline admins would like to have some additional tools to simplify their work. For example:

• Extend the existing “admin widget” to enable them to launch frequent actions with a single click, or to get an overview of which fields are empty for which chambers.
• Improve the process for creating a Country or Chamber Time Series node in English and French

The exact scope of the task is to be defined during discovery.

Deliverables

• Workplan defined in coordination with IPU at the beginning of the contract
• Troubleshooting and adjustments delivered as per workplan

Duration and volume of work

The volume of work is estimated to be around 100 hours of work.

The contract should begin in early November 2019 and the work should be completed by the end of December 2019.

Criteria for selection

The IPU will evaluate each proposal and may contact the top proposals for follow-up questions or face-to-face meeting.

The IPU will choose the supplier based on the following criteria:

• Experience of the company
• Technical expertise and flexibility to accommodate the proposed timeline
• Quality of portfolio / past work
• Cost proposal