Consultant, Knowledge Management and Web Development - Retainer Contract | RECOFTC
Terms of Reference
Consultant, Knowledge Management and Web Development
RETAINER CONTRACT
Applications deadline: October 9th, 2017
RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests is a not-for-profit international organization with
its headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand. It specializes in capacity building for community forestry
i.e. supporting local people to gain rights over forest resources and manage them. RECOFTC
engages in strategic networks and effective partnerships with governments, non-government
organizations, civil society, the private sector, local people, and research and educational
institutes throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. With 30 years of international
experience and a rights-based approach to capacity building – involving research and analysis,
demonstration sites, and training products – RECOFTC delivers innovative solutions for people
and forests.
In 2013, RECOFTC moved the website (www.recoftc.org) to Drupal as a solution to the
increased regional and national operations – with country offices becoming more active with
national and regional projects. Annex A provides more information on the need for RECOFTC s
knowledge management of 30 years of accumulated experience and documentation (including
publications include brochures, issue papers, policy briefs, posters, reports, research papers,
and training manuals).
Duties and Responsibilities
The Knowledge Management (KM) and Website Developer shall work closely with the Strategic
Communication Manager and a designated RECOFTC design team. He/She will be responsible
for redesigning and redeveloping the www.recoftc.org website as well as providing support to a
RECOFTC Public Institutional Document Repository. The contract period will be for a maximum
of 6 months but given the nature of the expanded scope of work, extensions are feasible.
I.
Specific duties
Based on the aforementioned scope of work, the Knowledge Management (KM) and Website
Developer will troubleshoot and debug www.recoftc.org as needed and have the following
specific duties and responsibilities:
● Consolidation of existing RECOFTC publications into an online knowledge base and
institutional document repository.
● Redesign and redevelopment of the RECOFTC website.
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
Create an auto-play setting for video content on pages with stories (stories of
change and news)to help users engage with the RECOFTC web page; and
Suppo t i de elopi g a e p oje t e pages fo ‘ECOFTC s V4MF p oje t
I lose oo di atio ith ‘ECOFTC s Mo ito i g a d E aluatio tea , de elop a d
implement a monitoring and evaluation system for publication downloads
In close coordination ith ‘ECOFTC s CDTS U it, desig a d i ple e t a
integrated e-learning strategy for curriculum distribution and blended learning
activities.
Ad-hoc support on debugging website as issues arise
The site should be designed following best practices including stakeholder engagement and
activity-based decision making. The new site should clearly represent the communication and
advocacy objectives of RECOFTC, as well as exploit modern approaches to building an
integrated communication platform, including:
● A consolidated communication strategy, with blog, stories, news, events all brought
back into a coherent structure (including re-integrating the separate WordPress-based
RECOFTC blog).
● A modern design
● An e-zine like storytelling platform with broad appeal providing access to broader and
t aditio al o
u i atio st ategies as opposed to o l t aditio al i te atio al
de elop e t fo used p og a su ess sto ies, outputs, out o es et . . The sto telli g
platform can also be used as a behavior change communication tool, helping to elevate
the status of communities and economically disadvantaged groups, while also helping to
change attitudes and behaviors related to conservation, livelihood improvement, land
tenure, and climate as well as the broader issues associated with community forestry
across the region.
● Strong social media integration and integration with social as well as other
communication channel strategies.
● Improved search features and
● Multi-language support – both interface and content translation support, as well as
partner country-focused areas – including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and
Vietnam.
II.
Qualification and Experience
Essential
● More than 8 years hands-on experience working with Knowledge Management systems
● More than 6 years hands-on experience working with Drupal
● Demonstrated hands-on experience with conversion from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8
● Working knowledge of system analysis, design, development and integration of both online
and hardcopy document repositories.
● Good verbal and written English communication skills
● Availability to meet periodically, in-pe so at ‘ECOFTC s offi e i Ba gkok
Desirable:
● Public-service oriented and versatile with exceptional interpersonal and communication
skills,
● Experience in working with non-profit or knowledge-based international organizations is a
plus
● Experience in creating responsive websites that support mobile, tablet, and desktop devices
● Experience with developing a website with multi-language support
● Mi i u of Ba helo s Deg ee i computer science or related field
Interested firms are requested to submit CVs, a detailed proposal with budgetary cost
estimates (including daily rates) and the proposed schedule periods for the three key
deliverables: 1) Document repository; 2) Website redesign and implementation; and, 3) elearning strategy for curriculum distribution. Proposals should also contain references and
current contact details to apinita@recoftc.org.
Open until suitable candidate found.
To learn more about RECOFTC, please visit our website www.recoftc.org
Annex A: Public Institutional Document Repository RECOFTC publications include brochures, issue papers, policy briefs, posters, reports, research
papers, training manuals as well as other program- and research-related material and outputs.
Collectively these documents represent 30 years of accumulated experience and knowledge
and are of enormous value to students, researchers, academics, practitioners, and local
communities.
RECOFTC publications are currently available from the main RECOFTC website. Documents were
previously published directly to the website by publication type and thematic area. A new
Document Management Databases (the PDF publishing system) was developed in-house, and is
now being used to store publications in an internal database. At the moment, documents are
submitted to the librarian at RECOFTC for classification and storage in the new system. Once
stored, a link is given to the website user in order to publish a title, abstract, and classify the
title on the website, as well as embed the given link to the source document. For country level
publications, the process is even more convoluted and requires that the document be classified
twice – once in the new document management system, and once again on the RECOFTC
website (some of which is not happening for national level publications in local languages). The
document management database also now serves the documents directly from the new system
ia a po t add essed li k – su h as…
http://dev.recoftc.org:4080/publications/uploads/forest_tenure_in_asia_2011_11_en.pdf
It s u lea hat effe t se i g do u e ts i this a is ha i g o isiti g sea h e gi es su h
as Google a d Bi g. Do u e ts a e also ot i de ed fo full te t – i.e. the full text of the
document is not currently indexed and made available via a search function; if it were, it would
greatly increase the likelihood that relevant documents could be found by visitors to the site.
The U‘L do u e t add esses itself does ot follo est p a ti es i
eati g du a le li ks to
resources available on the Web (i.e. via document handles, or digital object identifiers).
Migration to the new internal system is not complete with approximately 370 documents still
hosted directly by the main RECOFTC website, and 190 documents available via the new
document management database.
Also, while basic security measures have been put in place to protect RECOFTC servers, hosting
these documents on internal infrastructure does increase the surface area exposed to malicious
software and users, as well as potentially placing other systems at RECOFTC at risk.
It should also be noted that the new system was built during a period of limited financial
resources at RECOFTC, and that the intention of building a unified document repository for all
RECOFTC publications was a good one, albeit with the aforementioned shortcomings.
The ideal solution for the RECOFTC document repository is a unified system with a simplified
classification and publishing process including advanced search and discovery features (browse
by author, by subject, by document type etc., as well as full text search).
RECOFTC is considering two open source solutions for its public facing institutional document
repository - DSpace http://dspace.org/ and Drupal 8 https://www.drupal.org/. DSpace is a free
and open source institutional repository management system ideally suited for academic, nonprofit, and commercial organizations building open digital repositories. Drupal 8 is a large and
well-known open source content management system, with good support for taxonomic
classification schemes, full text search (via plugins to search components such as Solr, and
Elastic Search) and strong multilingual content support.
Either option should be considered by the Knowledge Management (KM) and Website
Developer. The proposed solutions must follow repository best practices in terms of full text
indexing, resource URIs (handles), discoverability in open repositories, and multilingual content
support. The repository must be usto ized o the ed to at h i stitutio al spe ifi feature
and branding requirements so that the transition by visitors from the main website to the
document library is seamless, and does not interfere with the overall RECOFTC brand and
online experience.
In terms of overall approach, in the first implementation phase, all documents will need to be
published (re-housed) in a RECOFTC document repository (either using DSpace or Drupal 8),
moving all publications from the existing database management system as well as the current
Drupal 7 website. Communications and program related material including news and stories
will still be published on the main RECOFTC site as required, with any references that promote
repository publications provided via links – such as https://library.recoftc.org/
RECOFTC Website
The current RECOFTC website is a Drupal 7 site. The site was created with the intention of
migrating and re-desig i g the o e all the e f o a ea lie site. While the ig atio to
Drupal 7 was completed successfully, the re-design was not. The site is now somewhat dated in
appearance and no longer clearly represents the strategic communication and advocacy goals
of RECOFTC.
Architecturally, and in terms of technical implementation, the site is complex with a large
number of community contributed 3rd party module dependencies. Two vendors have since
provided support to the site making various modifications, further increasing the complexity of
the system.
In the meantime, Drupal 8 has been released. Drupal 8 represents a major architectural shift for
Drupal and benefits from modern principles and practices in software development, as well as
sig ifi a tl i p o ed ai te a e a d futu e ig atio paths. A la ge u e of o
u it ased odules a e also o pa t of the o e D upal 8 i stallatio fu the edu i g o ple it
of support and maintainability.
Knowledge Management (KM) and Website Developer will need to work on the website in
pa allel to the I stitutio al Do u e t ‘eposito effo t des i ed a o e. With this
consultancy, the Center will begin the process of re-designing and re-implementing the main
RECOFTC Website as a Drupal 8 site. As a first step, the Drupal 7 migration to Drupal 8 will be
simplified by the initial migration of all publications to the new Institutional Document
Repository, before attempting to migrate the remaining content items from the existing site.
E-Learning
RECOFTC has many years of experience and is well regarding for providing practical and
valuable training on topics such as community forestry, gender equality in natural resource
management, forest governance, land tenure, and conflict resolution.
The topics of e-learning and blended learning strategies have also been discussed internally at
RECOFTC. An initial e-learning pilot project – funded by a sub-award received from the USAIDLEAF, was completed in September 2015. The project was based on the Moodle Learning
Management System (LMS) and was used to re-house and host the USAID-LEAF Climate Change
Curriculum (CCC). The project also provided RECOFTC the opportunity to experiment with an
online community forest course. RECOFTC received support and training for the initial Moodle
installation – although to date, the s ste has ot ee full i teg ated ith ‘ECOFTC s
training program or the main RECOFTC website.
There are broadly speaking two approaches that can be considered for the delivery of online
learning material. One is the development of an adapted and interactive curriculum delivered
via a full-featu ed lea i g a age e t s ste LMS , hile the othe is a dist i utio fo used u i ulu deli e ed ia ore traditional Web content management systems (CMSs).
Interactive LMS platforms (such as Moodle
https://moodle.org/) are feature-rich learning environments that include instructional design
components, course enrollment, class management, quizzes, assignments, forums, lesson
completion tasks and more. However, to receive maximum value from an LMS, curriculum
content needs to be adapted to exploit the instructional design components of the system
(interactive lessons, dynamic content, quizzes, question banks, progression monitoring, as well
as peer and instructor-led interactions). Such platforms typically have dedicated human
resources for course development and system administration, requiring additional operational
support and training. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the success rate of LMS-based systems
in smaller organizations is quite low, usually due to a lack of adequate human- and systemadministrative resources needed to manage the platform.
A dist i utio -fo used st ateg e ui es less i est e t i te s of t ai i g a d u i ulu
adaptation, and focuses instead on the distribution of well-organized and visually appealing
content (with optional media components such as audio, video, or lecture recordings etc.) via a
traditional CMS (such as Drupal https://www.drupal.org/ or WordPress
https://wordpress.org/).
Both platform approaches can be used to support blended learning strategies, where material
available online is used to support workshop- and classroom-based instruction.
E-learning program strategy therefore depends on:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Longer-term strategic planning in terms of e-Learning and course delivery
Shorter-term operational requirements such as number of courses, frequency of
courses, estimated class sizes, enrollment requirements etc.
Available organizational resources and capacity including course designers for
curriculum adaptation and course management.
Platform development support for future modifications, changes, updates etc.
System-level administration and hosting support.
RECOFTC is in the process of designing an e-learning strategy. Adopting a distribution-focused
strategy, the components required to support curriculum creation and content upload must be
kept in mind by the Knowledge Management (KM) and Website Developer during the main
RECOFTC institutional repository and website efforts, with an implemented e-learning feature
scheduled following the completion of the main website and institutional repository
components above.
Consultant, Knowledge Management and Web Development
RETAINER CONTRACT
Applications deadline: October 9th, 2017
RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests is a not-for-profit international organization with
its headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand. It specializes in capacity building for community forestry
i.e. supporting local people to gain rights over forest resources and manage them. RECOFTC
engages in strategic networks and effective partnerships with governments, non-government
organizations, civil society, the private sector, local people, and research and educational
institutes throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. With 30 years of international
experience and a rights-based approach to capacity building – involving research and analysis,
demonstration sites, and training products – RECOFTC delivers innovative solutions for people
and forests.
In 2013, RECOFTC moved the website (www.recoftc.org) to Drupal as a solution to the
increased regional and national operations – with country offices becoming more active with
national and regional projects. Annex A provides more information on the need for RECOFTC s
knowledge management of 30 years of accumulated experience and documentation (including
publications include brochures, issue papers, policy briefs, posters, reports, research papers,
and training manuals).
Duties and Responsibilities
The Knowledge Management (KM) and Website Developer shall work closely with the Strategic
Communication Manager and a designated RECOFTC design team. He/She will be responsible
for redesigning and redeveloping the www.recoftc.org website as well as providing support to a
RECOFTC Public Institutional Document Repository. The contract period will be for a maximum
of 6 months but given the nature of the expanded scope of work, extensions are feasible.
I.
Specific duties
Based on the aforementioned scope of work, the Knowledge Management (KM) and Website
Developer will troubleshoot and debug www.recoftc.org as needed and have the following
specific duties and responsibilities:
● Consolidation of existing RECOFTC publications into an online knowledge base and
institutional document repository.
● Redesign and redevelopment of the RECOFTC website.
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
Create an auto-play setting for video content on pages with stories (stories of
change and news)to help users engage with the RECOFTC web page; and
Suppo t i de elopi g a e p oje t e pages fo ‘ECOFTC s V4MF p oje t
I lose oo di atio ith ‘ECOFTC s Mo ito i g a d E aluatio tea , de elop a d
implement a monitoring and evaluation system for publication downloads
In close coordination ith ‘ECOFTC s CDTS U it, desig a d i ple e t a
integrated e-learning strategy for curriculum distribution and blended learning
activities.
Ad-hoc support on debugging website as issues arise
The site should be designed following best practices including stakeholder engagement and
activity-based decision making. The new site should clearly represent the communication and
advocacy objectives of RECOFTC, as well as exploit modern approaches to building an
integrated communication platform, including:
● A consolidated communication strategy, with blog, stories, news, events all brought
back into a coherent structure (including re-integrating the separate WordPress-based
RECOFTC blog).
● A modern design
● An e-zine like storytelling platform with broad appeal providing access to broader and
t aditio al o
u i atio st ategies as opposed to o l t aditio al i te atio al
de elop e t fo used p og a su ess sto ies, outputs, out o es et . . The sto telli g
platform can also be used as a behavior change communication tool, helping to elevate
the status of communities and economically disadvantaged groups, while also helping to
change attitudes and behaviors related to conservation, livelihood improvement, land
tenure, and climate as well as the broader issues associated with community forestry
across the region.
● Strong social media integration and integration with social as well as other
communication channel strategies.
● Improved search features and
● Multi-language support – both interface and content translation support, as well as
partner country-focused areas – including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and
Vietnam.
II.
Qualification and Experience
Essential
● More than 8 years hands-on experience working with Knowledge Management systems
● More than 6 years hands-on experience working with Drupal
● Demonstrated hands-on experience with conversion from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8
● Working knowledge of system analysis, design, development and integration of both online
and hardcopy document repositories.
● Good verbal and written English communication skills
● Availability to meet periodically, in-pe so at ‘ECOFTC s offi e i Ba gkok
Desirable:
● Public-service oriented and versatile with exceptional interpersonal and communication
skills,
● Experience in working with non-profit or knowledge-based international organizations is a
plus
● Experience in creating responsive websites that support mobile, tablet, and desktop devices
● Experience with developing a website with multi-language support
● Mi i u of Ba helo s Deg ee i computer science or related field
Interested firms are requested to submit CVs, a detailed proposal with budgetary cost
estimates (including daily rates) and the proposed schedule periods for the three key
deliverables: 1) Document repository; 2) Website redesign and implementation; and, 3) elearning strategy for curriculum distribution. Proposals should also contain references and
current contact details to apinita@recoftc.org.
Open until suitable candidate found.
To learn more about RECOFTC, please visit our website www.recoftc.org
Annex A: Public Institutional Document Repository RECOFTC publications include brochures, issue papers, policy briefs, posters, reports, research
papers, training manuals as well as other program- and research-related material and outputs.
Collectively these documents represent 30 years of accumulated experience and knowledge
and are of enormous value to students, researchers, academics, practitioners, and local
communities.
RECOFTC publications are currently available from the main RECOFTC website. Documents were
previously published directly to the website by publication type and thematic area. A new
Document Management Databases (the PDF publishing system) was developed in-house, and is
now being used to store publications in an internal database. At the moment, documents are
submitted to the librarian at RECOFTC for classification and storage in the new system. Once
stored, a link is given to the website user in order to publish a title, abstract, and classify the
title on the website, as well as embed the given link to the source document. For country level
publications, the process is even more convoluted and requires that the document be classified
twice – once in the new document management system, and once again on the RECOFTC
website (some of which is not happening for national level publications in local languages). The
document management database also now serves the documents directly from the new system
ia a po t add essed li k – su h as…
http://dev.recoftc.org:4080/publications/uploads/forest_tenure_in_asia_2011_11_en.pdf
It s u lea hat effe t se i g do u e ts i this a is ha i g o isiti g sea h e gi es su h
as Google a d Bi g. Do u e ts a e also ot i de ed fo full te t – i.e. the full text of the
document is not currently indexed and made available via a search function; if it were, it would
greatly increase the likelihood that relevant documents could be found by visitors to the site.
The U‘L do u e t add esses itself does ot follo est p a ti es i
eati g du a le li ks to
resources available on the Web (i.e. via document handles, or digital object identifiers).
Migration to the new internal system is not complete with approximately 370 documents still
hosted directly by the main RECOFTC website, and 190 documents available via the new
document management database.
Also, while basic security measures have been put in place to protect RECOFTC servers, hosting
these documents on internal infrastructure does increase the surface area exposed to malicious
software and users, as well as potentially placing other systems at RECOFTC at risk.
It should also be noted that the new system was built during a period of limited financial
resources at RECOFTC, and that the intention of building a unified document repository for all
RECOFTC publications was a good one, albeit with the aforementioned shortcomings.
The ideal solution for the RECOFTC document repository is a unified system with a simplified
classification and publishing process including advanced search and discovery features (browse
by author, by subject, by document type etc., as well as full text search).
RECOFTC is considering two open source solutions for its public facing institutional document
repository - DSpace http://dspace.org/ and Drupal 8 https://www.drupal.org/. DSpace is a free
and open source institutional repository management system ideally suited for academic, nonprofit, and commercial organizations building open digital repositories. Drupal 8 is a large and
well-known open source content management system, with good support for taxonomic
classification schemes, full text search (via plugins to search components such as Solr, and
Elastic Search) and strong multilingual content support.
Either option should be considered by the Knowledge Management (KM) and Website
Developer. The proposed solutions must follow repository best practices in terms of full text
indexing, resource URIs (handles), discoverability in open repositories, and multilingual content
support. The repository must be usto ized o the ed to at h i stitutio al spe ifi feature
and branding requirements so that the transition by visitors from the main website to the
document library is seamless, and does not interfere with the overall RECOFTC brand and
online experience.
In terms of overall approach, in the first implementation phase, all documents will need to be
published (re-housed) in a RECOFTC document repository (either using DSpace or Drupal 8),
moving all publications from the existing database management system as well as the current
Drupal 7 website. Communications and program related material including news and stories
will still be published on the main RECOFTC site as required, with any references that promote
repository publications provided via links – such as https://library.recoftc.org/
RECOFTC Website
The current RECOFTC website is a Drupal 7 site. The site was created with the intention of
migrating and re-desig i g the o e all the e f o a ea lie site. While the ig atio to
Drupal 7 was completed successfully, the re-design was not. The site is now somewhat dated in
appearance and no longer clearly represents the strategic communication and advocacy goals
of RECOFTC.
Architecturally, and in terms of technical implementation, the site is complex with a large
number of community contributed 3rd party module dependencies. Two vendors have since
provided support to the site making various modifications, further increasing the complexity of
the system.
In the meantime, Drupal 8 has been released. Drupal 8 represents a major architectural shift for
Drupal and benefits from modern principles and practices in software development, as well as
sig ifi a tl i p o ed ai te a e a d futu e ig atio paths. A la ge u e of o
u it ased odules a e also o pa t of the o e D upal 8 i stallatio fu the edu i g o ple it
of support and maintainability.
Knowledge Management (KM) and Website Developer will need to work on the website in
pa allel to the I stitutio al Do u e t ‘eposito effo t des i ed a o e. With this
consultancy, the Center will begin the process of re-designing and re-implementing the main
RECOFTC Website as a Drupal 8 site. As a first step, the Drupal 7 migration to Drupal 8 will be
simplified by the initial migration of all publications to the new Institutional Document
Repository, before attempting to migrate the remaining content items from the existing site.
E-Learning
RECOFTC has many years of experience and is well regarding for providing practical and
valuable training on topics such as community forestry, gender equality in natural resource
management, forest governance, land tenure, and conflict resolution.
The topics of e-learning and blended learning strategies have also been discussed internally at
RECOFTC. An initial e-learning pilot project – funded by a sub-award received from the USAIDLEAF, was completed in September 2015. The project was based on the Moodle Learning
Management System (LMS) and was used to re-house and host the USAID-LEAF Climate Change
Curriculum (CCC). The project also provided RECOFTC the opportunity to experiment with an
online community forest course. RECOFTC received support and training for the initial Moodle
installation – although to date, the s ste has ot ee full i teg ated ith ‘ECOFTC s
training program or the main RECOFTC website.
There are broadly speaking two approaches that can be considered for the delivery of online
learning material. One is the development of an adapted and interactive curriculum delivered
via a full-featu ed lea i g a age e t s ste LMS , hile the othe is a dist i utio fo used u i ulu deli e ed ia ore traditional Web content management systems (CMSs).
Interactive LMS platforms (such as Moodle
https://moodle.org/) are feature-rich learning environments that include instructional design
components, course enrollment, class management, quizzes, assignments, forums, lesson
completion tasks and more. However, to receive maximum value from an LMS, curriculum
content needs to be adapted to exploit the instructional design components of the system
(interactive lessons, dynamic content, quizzes, question banks, progression monitoring, as well
as peer and instructor-led interactions). Such platforms typically have dedicated human
resources for course development and system administration, requiring additional operational
support and training. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the success rate of LMS-based systems
in smaller organizations is quite low, usually due to a lack of adequate human- and systemadministrative resources needed to manage the platform.
A dist i utio -fo used st ateg e ui es less i est e t i te s of t ai i g a d u i ulu
adaptation, and focuses instead on the distribution of well-organized and visually appealing
content (with optional media components such as audio, video, or lecture recordings etc.) via a
traditional CMS (such as Drupal https://www.drupal.org/ or WordPress
https://wordpress.org/).
Both platform approaches can be used to support blended learning strategies, where material
available online is used to support workshop- and classroom-based instruction.
E-learning program strategy therefore depends on:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Longer-term strategic planning in terms of e-Learning and course delivery
Shorter-term operational requirements such as number of courses, frequency of
courses, estimated class sizes, enrollment requirements etc.
Available organizational resources and capacity including course designers for
curriculum adaptation and course management.
Platform development support for future modifications, changes, updates etc.
System-level administration and hosting support.
RECOFTC is in the process of designing an e-learning strategy. Adopting a distribution-focused
strategy, the components required to support curriculum creation and content upload must be
kept in mind by the Knowledge Management (KM) and Website Developer during the main
RECOFTC institutional repository and website efforts, with an implemented e-learning feature
scheduled following the completion of the main website and institutional repository
components above.