Call for Proposals: Technical Consultant for Open Data Portal

National Federation of the Disabled-Nepal (NFDN)

Terms of Reference

Design, Development and Maintenance for the Disability Open Data Portal (DODP)

Task   

The Disability Open Data Portal (DODP) project seeks a consultant or firm with relevant expertise and understanding of open data to design and construct a comprehensive open data portal that offers publishing, viewing, and sharing of disability data and information in an accessible manner for all public including those with disabilities.

Supervision & Contact

Supervision and contact for the consultant / firm will be primarily carried out by the Program Manager and Project Coordinator of NDFN as well as Steering Committee. The product will be called final only after the approval of the NFDN team and Project Steering Committee.

Application Deadline:  May 02, 2018

Application for this consultancy is closed now.

Background

The DODP is implemented by National Federation of the Disabled-Nepal (NFDN) since January 2018. This project is funded by DFID via The Asia Foundation (TAF) and Development Initiatives (DI) and is carried out with technical assistance and supervision of Data for Development Project (DFD). The aim of the project is to increase the sharing of disability-related data and information in Nepal.

The need for this project is realized by the lack of multidimensional data on disability. This will serve as a platform for the public to access various data and information required for conducting research, implementing projects, executing advocacy, and designing policies related to disability. Its main objective is to increase users’ access to data and information on disability.

User Groups

The intended users of the portal include, but are not limited to, the following:

• General public
• Different stakeholders from government ministries, departments, and other agencies
• INGOs, Disabled People’s Organization (DPOs), and CSOs.
• Students and faculty members
• Disability rights activists and people with disabilities
• First Responders
• AID workers

Scope of Work

The hired IT consultant will be required to:

• Project set-up: Conduct a preliminary meeting with the project focal points to understand the project scope, agree on a project timeline, and achieve infrastructure arrangements and project deliverables.
• Design portal architecture/navigation: Develop adetailed structure of the portal incorporating information architecture and functional elements that will reflect user needs (based on UX principles and user-centered design) and consult with project focal points for feedback
• Design mock-up of content management system and portal: Develop a portal interface template that contains pages, content, and functionality as identified in the discussion with the project focal points (home page, about page, datasets, resources, community, blog, etc.)
• Design mock-up of content management system and user interface: Develop an easy-to-use template for information and data linked to disability, with content editing interface editable and different levels of permission. This will include different permissions for submitting, reviewing, and publishing data on the portal. Different user categories should include web administrator and user.
• Portal development and integration: Develop visual and functional elements of the portal and incorporate feedback from project focal points. Develop all the respective inner pages of the portal based on the agreed design template and integrate it with the content management system and website analytics.
• Conduct website testing and staging: Conduct in-depth testing on a staging site to identify issues
• Training: conduct training with the project focal points to enable them to use the portal, for example on entry and editing of content (data, publications, images and text) and making structural changes to the portal. Develop a user-manual to support this.
• Arrange website hosting and deployment – Set up the necessary domains and server to deploy the website and release the portal to the public.

Other Technical Specifications

• Portal platform – The firm or consultant will advise on a suitable technology and platform for the portal
• Portal back-up – A system to back-up the database periodically for recovery purpose should be set in place and the source codes backed-up.
• Portal security – The portal should use effective security systems to ensure relevant information is kept private, for example: passwords should not be stored in plain-text, all form data should be validated, all user input should be sanitized; user interactions and activities should be logged etc. Appropriate access control method should be used to ensure secured and authenticated web access.
• Portal devise responsiveness – The should be developed following principles of responsive web design to allow optimal viewing across a wide range of desktop and mobile devices and across all major browsers.
• Portal scalability – The portal should have scalable features that will allow extension of functionality in the future.
• Portal design – The portal design should be interactive, appealing, easy-to-use and responsive. The firm or consultant is expected to company to show-case their best elements in delivering suitable portal design options.
• Portal accessibility – Design and final portal should adhere to accessibility and compliance requirements (as defined by the project team): The portal should be designed to ensure that everyone, including users who have difficulty seeing, hearing, and making precise movements, can use it.
• Portal content – The portal should be able to store and publish data on various categories with the titles, icons, tags/key words, and metadata descriptions. Categories might include: health, education, employment, census, and development data, etc.The open data portal should be able to store all kinds of data and information (i.e. open data in Excel, CSV formats, PDF reports, videos etc.)
• Portal user registration – The portal should allow users to complete an appropriate user registration process. User registration data and qualifications are to be persisted by an appropriate form with email verifications in the user registration process. There is no limit on the number of users that can register. Users should be able to view and update user generated information on self, for example personal details, password and account details, posts, preferences and interests. The registered members should be able to configure how much of their profile information is shared with different users/user groups.
• Portal administration – The portal should allow authorized project staff to edit and update the website including the ability to create, remove, edit, and publish content. These administrators should be able to review user registration/profile details, change user roles/access rights, terminate / close user accounts.Users who have been granted relevant access rights should be allowed to flag and moderate other members’ datasets.
• Portal analytics – The portal should provide authorized users with a number of relevant analytics reports, for example user registration, site usage, key interests/topics being discussed within the collaborative spaces and other relevant statistical data to track numbers of visitors, visitor characteristics, and visitor behavior etc.
• Portal Content Management System: Document or data upload (any file format) with Description – Who uploaded – Date of upload – File Format etc., creation of new relevant page (if required), Mouse Over description on File Name (compatible to major OS and Browser) image uploaded should be uploaded with the appropriate meta-data including mandatory keywords / fields (will be decided later) – for internal Search Indexing.
• Portal features – The portal should provide different features to the users like:
  • The portal should provide users with the ability to search for and locate content based on keywords and key phrases.
  • The portal should allow the users to register, upload and publish their own data sets.
  • The portals should allow viewers to download datasets in open format
  • The portal should also allow the organizations to have to their own profile and show all of the data sets of this organization at same place
  • The portal should provide a list of currently popular/trending data sets on its homepage.
  • The system should provide a feature to allow authorized administrators to contact all or group/community members, e.g. for newspaper dissemination, and notifications of new datasets. This should include opt-in and opt-out functionality.
  • The portal should be capable of having blogs.
  • The portal should be capable of hosting a quick and basic level of discussion with and w/o moderation of comments. Members should be able to view and create posts, edit their own posts etc.
  • The portal should be able to conduct a survey of around 10 to 20 questions and polling / voting system should also be available.

Deliverables

The firm/consultant is expected to deliver following:

• Plan for the Data Portal
• Website Planning
• Mock Up of the Website within 20 days
• Presentation in the meeting of the steering committee about the website.
• Final Product of Data Portal

 Proposed pages of the portal:

• Home
• Reports on Disability in Nepal
• Datasets (Journal articles, conference proceedings, NGO reports)
• Statistics
• News and Events
• Contact Us
• About the Disability Open Data Portal

Sub Sections:

• Definition and Classification
• Disability Identification and Assessment
• Education, Special Education, and Inclusive Education
• Employment and Livelihood
• Trainings and Income Generation
• Mobility
• Accessibility and Inclusion
• Social Security
• Rehabilitation
• Sports and Recreation
• Access to Justice
• Disability Related Policies, Programs and Laws

Supervision & Contact

Supervision and contact for the firm or consultant will be primarily carried out by the Project Manager and the Project Coordinator at NFDN; the final product will be approved by the Project Management Team and the steering committee.

Proposal Submission

Proposals should be structured as follows and provide complete details as indicated:

• Understanding of the Scope of Work with proposed methodology / approach and proposed technology (with justification)
• Detailed timeline with deliverables;
• Team strength (who will work on this project and their relevant experience);
• Detailed cost break-down (including for the design, programming, hosting, maintenance (with recurring charges);
• Sample(s) of similar work-done (please list active web address);
• Company profile if relevant;

Once a contract has been signed, within 20 working days, a mock-up of the proposed website should be presented to NFDN.

How to apply:

Interested applicants are requested to submit documents electronically to (aware@nfdn.org.np / admin@nfdn.org.np) and or by hard copy to the project office in a sealed envelope labeled:

National Federation of the Disabled – Nepal

Anamnagar, Kathmandu (Near Bijulibazar)

Phone: 014488540

(Donwload this ToR as PDF Document)

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