CONCEPT NOTE: Development of a Tax Dashboard (OIP) Contents Background ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Project ........................................................................................................................................................... 2 Iterative development ............................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Support ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 Communication with other institutions.................................................................................................... 2 Specifications ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Presentation .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Automated Extraction ........................................................................................................................... 4 Information Integration ........................................................................................................................ 5 Data collection and Platform Maintenance .............................................................................................. 5 Background There are many tax related projects in the different international organizations. Projects may differ on their type, their scope, objectives. Appendix 4 i Project The objective is to develop an online integrated platform that is continuously fed with information about tax-related projects the different organizations are implementing in various countries. The interface has to be very user friendly and will become a single point of reference for the different projects of the different organizations. IT will not replicate the detailed information already contained in these organizations but rather serve as 1) A link to the different projects' detailed information and 2) A visualizer of the different projects with different filters and search options. Support The technical support for the platform should be strictly minimal. The current state of the art in terms of usability and user interface particularly make that visualizer type of portals can be easily deployed and communicated to end-users without having a large effort on training and/or support. However, there must be a strong support at strategic level. The platform has to be able to become a tool and the necessary activities and/or developments necessary have to be planned beforehand so that the development phase for every functionality can be streamlined. Communication with other institutions This project is an information integration project. For that it is essential to be able to coordinate the delivery, availability and validity of any information exchanged with other institutions. For that there should be focal points that will be working in the development of the platform. There are two types of focal point per institution: • Business focal point: This officer will participate of the concept note review and feedback, identification of the material that we should display in the platform, provision of the data, and review of the design of platform’s prototype/templates. • Technical focal point: This officer will basically provide the information about the technical aspects of the integration scheme with the institution’s information, including specifications of web services or similar. This focal point will ease the implementation of the automated extraction process with the institution. Depending on the institution capabilities this is optional, typically if the institution maintains and deploys their own information system (system, portal, website, etc.) this focal point is essential. Specifications The platform should be developed in an iterative manner for many reasons: we don't know the full scope of the tool in the long term; there are some challenges that should be split in different phases to mitigate the risk of failure; and it is easier to adjust the specifications and the final result when we have visibility of the platform in the short term. There are at least 3 stages that have been identified: Presentation: In this stage the platform should be able to display all the information in a correct manner and up to the expectations of the stakeholders. It should be possible to view the potential of the platform with search and filter capabilities. In this stage the information is submitted manually in a centralized manner. Appendix 4 ii Automated Extraction: In this stage the platform should be able to extract the information from different institutions. This extraction can be performed • Manual: procedure that was present in the previous phase. • semi-automatic: providing the institutions with interfaces for them to be able to upload the information; • fully automatic: with the implementation of web services or similar interfaces; This phase will ease the administration of the information in the platform. Not all institutions will be able to provide a fully automatic extraction of the information; the objective is to provide sufficient tools to ease the extraction and update of the information. Information Integration: Current web capabilities include that any site can collaborate with the information on other sites; even when the information is not structured in databases or specific formats. The general idea is to incorporate semantic tools in the platform so it can benefit from the information present in the external institutions. Presentation In the case of the first stage, it is important to start identifying as many specifications as possible. This is a non-exhaustive list of all the requirements identified thus far: • The platform should be very user friendly and easy to use1 • The platform can be implemented on any technology as long as it complies with international best practices. • Credentials will be the email and password for each authenticated user. • Every authenticated user in the system will have a set of permissions that will enable or disable the platform management features. • Only a platform administrator can create new users and assign the corresponding set of permissions. • The home page has a list of no more than 5 KPI2; e.g.: o Number of projects o Budget of projects o Impact of projects o Number of beneficiaries • A file with a specific Excel format can be uploaded to the information management module and its format and content is validated • There is a method to upload information in an automated manner (prototype) • It is possible to undo previous uploads to fix the uploaded information • The home page enables the user to filter the information in an easy way, the main filter being the country. • When the user is viewing a specific project the link to the source information is displayed and takes the user to the original content when available. 1 Every modern web platform has to use extensively all possible usability concepts to achieve this throughout all its features and for all its users. 2 Development of KPI include a clear definition on how it is measured and what it represents. Appendix 4 iii • The interface of the whole platform is responsive and uses Bootstrap type of templates or similar. • All pictures in the website have been optimized for display on the web • All scripts have been optimized to use the CDN sources • Whenever needed, the interface will use Javascript/Jquery/CSS3 techniques to enhance the user experience. • The platform information is supported by a database containing the information of all projects and related information. The reporting capability of the platform extracts information from this database3. • All transactions performed on the database (especially when uploading information) have to be placed inside transactions to maintain coherence. • All publicly available libraries would be preferred over proprietary ones, unless they offer a desired functionality needed beyond any doubt. • The platform should offer the possibility to display the information in English, French and Spanish. Time Schedule Although it is difficult to estimate a schedule for this development (and this document cannot cover more than the initial development stage) here we can see a proposal for these first sprints: • Development of the requirements with the focal point unit (5 days): this will include the development of the non-functional mockup and the selection of the Bootstrap template (or similar) for the development. Also, this stage should include a first version of the required database structure. • Development of the website (40 days): This should include a fully functional first version of the website. It is important to note that this stage does not include the gathering of the different sources of information. The functionality to upload the information should be present in the system. Automated Extraction For the second stage the following specifications have been identified: • Platform should enhance the Tax dashboard with at least 5 more indicators. • The technical focal points of at least 4 different organizations have developed (if not available already) have made available web services (either REST or SOAP) that provide information on Tax projects of each institutions. • The platform implements at least 4 integrators that pull information from different sources in different servers and present this information as added information in the website • The platform implements searching capability considering the additional sources of information. • The focal points of at least 4 different organizations have provided public information about their institutions that can be viewed on the website. • The focal points of each of the institution should be able to view the statistics on viewing the projects that regard their specific institution to be able to see their impact. 3 In the first stage the database will be updated by the platform administrator with the information received from the focal points. Appendix 4 iv • The platform implements friendly URLs that are easy to be indexed by web search engines for all web pages (search, lists, details of a project or institution). • The platform sends an email confirming that all information automatically extracted is up to date every day to the web administrator. • The platform should implement a sophisticated feedback mechanism to capture any suggestion/comment from every viewer of the website. Information Integration There is no specific description for this stage as this development is evolutionary. Whenever the second stage is launched the feedback mechanism has to help identify the specifications for this third stage. Data collection and Platform Maintenance In the meantime of the development phase, it is important to make every effort to obtain the information from the different stakeholders. Also, it is likely that in the requirements phase the development team will identify the need of material about the platform objective, description, participants, and background information to be displayed in the platform; this has to be developed and approved and make it available to the developers in due time. Here it is a non-exhaustive list of the tasks that the unit should perform in the different stages of the development of the tool. Most likely these tasks will require 50% of administrative time of a person: • Coordination with different institutions to compile information • Review the information to be delivered to the technical team that will upload the first time the information • Manage the relationship with the technical provider • Coordinate the non-technical tasks and the technical tasks with the QA consultant • Elaborate the static information of the site • Get the sign off of the static information of the site • Get the approval of the site template to be used • Get the approval of the dashboard of the tool • Provide a brand or image manual for the technical team • Coordinate the possibility of automatic information extraction with the different institutions (with the technical team) • Coordinate the technical collaboration needed for automatic integration between different teams • Generate a second version of the static information • Coordinate the strategy to get feedback from users About the development life cycle For these type of projects it is usually suggested to follow an iterative life cycle. There may be no clear requirements for the site in the long term but these are clearly defined for small development sprints. This should allow the implementing group to benefit from Agile methodologies and therefore provide quick visibility of any new feature to be developed. Appendix 4 v