Search support: ActionApps

The DEA had managed a static site for several years when they approached GreenNet for a solution to their changing publishing needs. Their growing databases of publications and contacts needed an online home which the static site simply couldn’t accomodate. After working together with DEA on a new architecture for the more sophisticated dynamic site, we developed this resource rich site of materials and services for the education sector. The databases of contacts and publications are fully searchable and easy to update.

After GreenNet won the tender process for this high profile project, we were given just 5 weeks to build a site that would work as the main administrative organ of this major event. We worked with ActionApps to build a system that could process secure payments for tickets and handle multilingual publication of content in five languages

Forests Monitor investigates the forest industry to empower forest-dependent people and raise public awareness, as part of an effort to increase transparency and accountability of the sector.
In 2006 Forests Monitor had a static presence on the web, and they asked us to rebuild the site so that it could make a greater contribution to supporting the transparency and outreach work of the organisation. We used ActionApps to create a database backend for the site. This allowed for easy updating of all sections by FM staff, as well as the integration of the hitherto separate ASP database of forestry projects, into the main site.

In 2004, GreenNet was commissioned by the ‘Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa’ project (component 1a), to design a technical solution for a telecoms licensing ‘One Stop Shop’ – basically everything you ever wanted to know about telecommunications regulations and licenses across Africa under one roof. We designed the system with a distributed database built on ActionApps, which comprises 64 independent nodes.

GreenNet rebuilt the Genewatch web site in 2006. The volume of new content flowing onto the old static site was making site management too labour intensive. The new site needed to make lighter work of content management, and improvements to the site structure. We developed it using ActionApps (AA), and used it to successfully pilot a new approach to dynamic navigational menus in AA – something which developers had been struggling with for some time.

This website was commissioned by the APC at very short notice to support the campaign for affordable international bandwidth in Africa, in time for the Mombasa consultations.
The site was built using ActionApps, and was designed to make minimal content management demands on project workers. Indeed much content is automatically fed through from the APC’s African ICT policy monitor website.
In the event, the site was listed as providing source material for a raft of mainstream media coverage of the situation.

The IWPR works on free media projects in conflict zones, as a way of promoting peace and democracy. Staff are spread out in offices in ten countries, from where they support local journalism initiatives in getting news out. The website fits into the picture as part of IWPR’s role as an “electronic samizdat,” supporting local reporters under siege and utilising new technologies to disseminate their reporting in country, regionally and internationally.
The site was initially built in 2004 using ActionApps. The nature of the site’s readers and writers required us to develop a system that could support content in any number of languages and scripts.

Privacy International is a human rights group working as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations. It has conducted campaigns and research globally on issues ranging from wiretapping and national security, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police information systems, medical privacy, and freedom of information and expression. In 2003 GreenNet rebuilt the PI site with a new interface fronting a database for all content, old and new. Structurally it is based on a single database table. It features a two-level category menu, and further menus that allow users to narrow down the selection of listed items. The extensive database contains hundreds of articles. And the site itself serves as an excellent model for functional information architecture.

The Global Transparency Initiative (GTI) is a network of civil society organisations promoting openness in the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank, the IMF, the European Investment Bank and Regional Development Banks. The GTI brings together two communities of activists and experts from around the world – one, those groups campaigning for full accountability in the use of public power vested in the IFIs; the other, groups that have been campaigning for the right to access to information at the nation-state level. We developed GTI’s website using ActionApps dynamic content and content sharing technology. The finished site includes a calendar and extensive database of resources and organisations.