The 2022.Q2 release for DIAL’s flagship product is now live! We’ve added brand new features, fixed some bugs, and made technical improvements to the Catalog, a platform which is designed to support the delivery of digital infrastructure using the whole-of-government approach and leveraging the SDG Digital Investment Framework.
Open Datasets - In this brand new tab on the Catalog, you can find links to freely available datasets to help with your own digital transformation initiatives. Key notation on each dataset is also available including a description of the dataset, the organization which is maintaining it, information on updates and licenses, the sector it provides data for, geographic coverage, and more. Users can find the same filtering interface that they know and love to quickly find the datasets that are most useful for their projects. Datasets can be viewed in card, list, or detail view, following the format of other tabs in the Catalog.
Why is this useful? Through this feature, there is greater access to data, equipping policymakers to make informed decisions with greater accountability and transparency. The Open Datasets tab on the Catalog has launched with 130+ entries that users can access, visualize, use, analyze, share, and redistribute. Our list continues to grow, and if you have content you would like to add, you can sign up and submit candidate entries.
Useful applications for datasets - Open data presents a key opportunity to provide essential service delivery to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Data exchange accelerates technical innovation by allowing software and AI models to be more precise and deepen their potential positive impact on development. Open datasets can help unlock value across many sectors, including agriculture, climate, health, and social inclusion.
Addition of Agriculture Development tags for intuitive searching - In our continued focus on AgDev, we are introducing new tags that will improve your search for content. Tags are simple pieces of data, usually a word or two, that provide a brief description for every entry in the Catalog, that make it easy to locate entries that have been mapped to a specific tag. Many of the tags in the Catalog are specific to data, technology, and digital, but there are other sector-specific tags (such as COVID-19 or food insecurity) that are useful for identifying data and guidance tools across the SDG Digital Investment Framework.
New Playbooks Content and Functionality - A new playbook is now available, authored by Stan Mierzwa et al. of Kean University, which facilitates the implementation of a cybersecurity assessment in digital public health initiatives. We have added a few improvements to the playbooks feature since its launch in March 2022:
Save drafts - Users that want to source playbooks content have access to an updated form which allows saving draft versions of playbooks before publishing.
Cross-share your playbooks on other website - users can easily embed playbooks in the Catalog onto other websites. Simply click on the “embed playbook” button that will generate a link to cross-share.
Add a cover image to your playbook - users can upload an appropriate cover image to any playbook they author such as their organization’s logo.
Create and edit “product” entries - There is now a new and improved form for creating and editing product entries. Registered users can easily nominate products (subject to review). In addition, product owners can claim their product pages and update provide updated information to users in the Catalog, including fields that were previously uneditable, such as SDGs, tags, projects, etc.
Edit “organization” entries - Similarly, organization pages can now be edited using an easy-to-use edit form. Each organization can now easily list sectors that they work in or projects that leveraged digital tools.
DPGA submission view - DIAL’s Catalog sources product information for the Digital Public Goods Alliance Registry. Products that are listed in the DPGA Registry have been successfully reviewed and found to meet the DPG Standard through their reviewed submission forms. The Catalog now supports a link back to each DPG’s submission form.
Category | Improvement | Description |
|---|---|---|
Playbooks | Popup functionality on the submission form | A pop-up has been added to inform the user of a successful upload or any errors to fix prior to submission. |
Playbooks | Create/edit form | The create/edit form was updated to include “moves”, which are a sub-step of each play. |
Playbooks | Author/Source field | An “Author/Source” field has been added so that playbook creators can indicate who authored/created the content. |
Playbooks | Limit display tags and products | When a user is searching for a playbook, only tags and products that have already been mapped to a playbook will be exposed to a user in the filter bar. |
Playbooks | Auto-save | As users are creating playbooks content, information is auto-saved. |
Playbooks | Add search bar for plays | When a user creates a playbook, they can search for existing plays in the plays library using the search bar |
Playbooks | Mobile views | When viewing a playbook on a mobile device, the progress runner at the top extended beyond the width of the device. Now the header is horizontally scrollable. |
Products | DIAL curated list | We now have an admin page which has a spreadsheet for DIAL curated lists of products, open datasets, and other tabs of the Catalog. This list also renders entries into the Catalog. |
Projects | Filter | Project filtering has been improved to return projects associated with the products in a particular sector instead of limiting to only those that are mapped to the sector. |
Performance | Infinite scroll | Performance of infinite scroll has been improved. The infinite scroll was redrawing all elements in the list, causing degraded performance after multiple pages had been loaded. |
Search Bar | Widened and improved display | The search bar across all Catalog tab has now been widened for a more optimized user experience for users with different screen sizes. Additionally, there wasn’t enough contrast between the text and the search bar color to make the search text visible. |
Software/ Code Maintenance | Unit tests | Added Playbooks unit tests |
Software/Code Maintenance | Front End | We are moving from Rails to React on the front end, such as editing users, approving candidates, creating and editing organizations, user admin pages, etc. The forms have been refreshed for easier updating of content by users. |
Translations | New content | New content has been translated into the available languages. |
UX | Footer | The 2 bottom lines of the footer were misaligned and have been fixed. |
Category | Bug | Description |
|---|---|---|
Playbooks | Search error | Fixed: When entering text in the search bar, an error was being returned. |
Organizations | Multiple entries | Fixed: Some organizations had multiple entries with slightly different names. Duplications have been removed. |
Projects | Card view error | Fixed: In some projects, the name of the organization was overlapping with the organization logo. |
Maturity scores | URL decode strings bad display | Fixed: Strings that were returned from the graphql query for maturity category descriptions were displaying incorrectly. |
Products | 404 Error | Fixed: Adding new candidate products was returning a 404 error |
Organization | Projects logo misplaced | Fixed: Project’s logo was being displayed outside of its corresponding row. |
Playbooks | Hyperlinks not displaying | Fixed: Hyperlinks were not displaying correctly |
Help menu | Hover not consistent | Fixed: The help sub-menu had a different hover than the resources and about sub menus and was not closing automatically . |
Display | Firefox | Fixed: The display of the hero image was not rendering properly when using Firefox |
Newsletter - you asked and we answered! Speaking with many of our users, we identified a need for regular communications and updates on what is new in the Catalog. We are launching our first edition of a quarterly newsletter. Sign up here and stay tuned!
Survey - we currently have our annual survey open to help us design our priorities and roadmap for the coming few quarters. Access the survey here.
Focus Groups - we are conducting a research project on converting the Catalog into a platform where consumers of digital initiatives in the international development space and technology providers can interact. Would you like to take part in this process? Contact Sarah Farooqi sfarooqi@digitalimpactalliance.org or Sainabou Jallow sjallow@digitalimpactalliance.org to share your views!