When entering data into the portal, or using it to access information, it can be helpful to understand how data upload and management works.
The Transparency Initiatives Portal was made in WordPress by One Ltd., and the data you see on the site is stored on a WordPress data manager on the back end.
However, to enable various automations and data integrity practices, this data is mirrored by an Airtable base constructed by Brainbox. All data must pass through this Airtable base before being uploaded to the Wordpress site, and the base is considered the “single source of truth”. This Airtable stores portal data in four tables which correspond to the types on entries displayed on the TIP: Actors, Initiatives, Events, and Products. In the TIP itself, Products are further split into three views depending on where the products have come from – from government, from companies, or from civil society (i.e. everyone else).
Once data is ready to be added to the portal, each of the four main tables is exported from Airtable as a CSV file, then uploaded to Wordpress. This upload process requires the names and orders of the fields used in the Airtable and the portal to be left as they are at the time of launch. Any variation to this process will attract associated consequences and cost and may have ripple effects.
As soon as the CSVs have been uploaded to the portal, new entries will be visible to users visiting the portal site. For significant data uploads, the project lead may choose to make use of a staging site to address any potential issues before the site is published. Amendments to data to displayed on the TIP can be made with the user input Airtable form (more information here), or by contacting the project lead (in urgent circumstances).
Individual new entries can be submitted by users through an online form created using Airtable. All data entered into this Airtable form goes into a separate “user input” table for editorial review. The data will then be reviewed for consistency with data entry policies, appropriateness, and credibility.
Once data has been manually reviewed, it is then copied into the relevant table for each content type – Actors, Initiatives, Events, and Outputs/Products.
There are more efficient options available for those who wish to submit entries in bulk, which can be made available upon request, and are described in the process for submitting data section.