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How this site was created
Background
The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) funds the development of the Australian Development Gateway (ADG), the first site of its type built by an OECD country.
The ADG's primary objective is to contribute to sustainable poverty alleviation in the developing countries of the Asia Pacific region by increasing dialogue on key development issues and by sharing practical expertise. It seeks to leverage quality Australian knowledge and expertise in development, originally focusing on six sector areas: education, governance, agriculture, health, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and water.
A "proof of concept" site was launched in September 2002 and initial partnerships were established by inviting key Australian stakeholders to provide content for the site. Following a re-assessment in March 2003, a decision was taken to design and build a new website with expanded features. The user-needs assessment, information architecture as well as the technical and graphic design (optimised for low-bandwidth users) for the new ADG site was completed in 2003. The new site was built and initial content was uploaded during the first half of 2004.
After a successful launch of the new ADG site in July 2004 and subsequent growth in user numbers from 5000 visitor sessions/month to 25,000 visitor sessions/month in March 2005, a new tender for the next phase was let in March 2005. NetReturn Pty Ltd successfully re-tendered for an extension of the ADG project to 2009.
New information sectors and content are continously uploaded and updated; and the ADG website now features over 3000 pages of free resources (up from originally 600), grouped into 13 categories: Agriculture , Development practice / effectiveness , Disaster management , Education , Enterprise development / microfinance , Environment, Governance , Gender Equality, Health , HIV/AIDS, Infrastructure, ICT for Development and Water .
The ADG's website traffic and user subscriptions have since grown at a steady rate, from originally 5000 visitor sessions (July 2004) to a new record of currently more than 48,000 visitor session per month (Oct 2007).
Key findings of the ADG project design phase
The ADG's objective of contributing to sustainable development and poverty alleviation would best be accomplished if the ADG enables the work of the development community, rather than attempting to reach the poor directly.
The key learnings and knowledge required for effective development do not necessarily reside in ready-made texts or databases, but are dispersed amongst the members of the community. The ADG will seek to tap into this distributed knowledge pool and to make the key learnings more accessible and more quickly.
Thus, the most appropriate business model for the ADG was based on serving a 'virtual community' and leveraging Asia Pacific development knowledge and expertise.
Professionals faced with a development task in the field are most interested in:
- learning from specific projects and people
- finding human and financial resources
- accessing useful, practical tools.
The basic business concepts derived from these findings are:
- The development community is a community of practice (CoP) consisting of those people working to further sustainable development and to alleviate poverty. It encompasses people working in the public, private, and civil sectors.
- The CoP is already structured as a network, but knowledge development and flow is hampered by a wide geographical and institutional spread, as well as by sectoral boundaries.
- The ADG seeks to improve the workings of that community by improving the reach, speed and connectivity of communications among the community including access to information and knowledge.
- The ADG began as a small site, designed and populated with content of sufficient persistent interest and usefulness to attract an initial, loyal user base.
User-needs workshop methodology
In the re-design phase, an expert panel of development professionals participated in a full day workshop to identify and define the potential users of an upgraded ADG. The expert panel included members of non-government organisations (NGOs), Australian managing contractors (AMCs), academia and government agencies, all with extensive experience in delivering development projects.
Ten diverse potential user profiles were developed, utilising a formal user-needs identification methodology. The potential ADG user groups (development professionals) identified included:
- trainers of trainers
- frontline development workers
- local technical experts
- Australian development professionals
- Australian research bodies
- Australian content providers
- in-country policy and program developers
- local government
- Australian networkers
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University students and "Lesser Experienced Professionals"
The initial workshop group also identified which website features were required for effective "knowledge exchange" and to meet the information needs of the user base. Extensive telephone interviews were also held with wider Australian stakeholder interests subsequent to the workshop so as to refine the workshop findings.
During the remainder of 2003, a series of six workshops were then held, covering the six initial sector areas set by AusAID, namely education, health, agriculture, ICTs, water and governance. Australia-based development professionals participated, including both Australian development professionals and partner country professionals, such as from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Fiji and Burma.
Output from the sector workshops included lists of high priority topics within each sector and spreadsheets listing numerous deep links to websites with relevant developmental content for each of the sector topics. Further recommendations on the appropriate website features needed for effective knowledge exchange for each sector area were also made.
Required functionality of the evolving ADG
Key ADG features deemed essential for the ADG to maximise the sharing of development knowledge and information were:
- virtual communications and knowledge exchange channels; e.g. discussion forums, newsletters;
- informal access to specialist knowledge; e.g. talent pools and access to "lessons learned" i.e. easy accessible project databases, complete with contact details and email addresses of the project personnel;
- a pre-filtered and thus user-friendly access point to already existing rich information resources held by researchers, government agencies, academic institutions, and non-government organisations. The focus was on the relevance of the resources to the development cause, thus reducing the information glut of the World Wide Web, rather than on the quantity of links provided.
Key website technical features deemed essential for the ADG to maximise the sharing of development knowledge and information were:
- Optimisation for low bandwidth access
- Information architecture allowing for different types of users
- Cost effective use of Open (collaborative) Source technology.
The technology used to drive the ADG is entirely Open Source (in line with the DGF's requirements) and comprises:
- Debian GNU/Linux operating system
- Apache 2 web server
- Tomcat 4 application server
- Jahia 4 CMS/Portal (Java)
- FUDforum 2 discussion forum (PHP)
- MySQL 4 database
- Postfix 2
- Mailman mailing list manager
- Spam Assassin and Anomy Sanitizer
- AWStats web usage reporting system
This solution allows considerable enterprise level performance and flexibility at minimal cost. Flexibility will be an important factor for the Gateway as its importance, size and user base increases. For example, the technology selections provide easy extension to allow the integration or provision of data feeds to and from other sites, or re-application for a regional/offshore knowledge sharing hub.
A forward marketing plan was developed to build the user base by targeting civil society groups, the private sector, non-government organisations, universities, research institutions, media and communications organisations, governments and international agencies.
Spreading the knowledge
The diagram below shows how the ADG will support the active "development workers" who are already working to alleviate poverty in the Asia Pacific region. These intermediaries are the right target audience for the ADG as they are typically:
- on email / have online access
- in-country, at centers of need
- trusted by the local community
- able to provide local context
- able to translate materials
- already effective networkers
- able to provide quality feedback to the ADG.
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