Anunțuri de Angajare

Position:                                Software Developer (further Consultant) – 2 positions

Location:                               Chisinau, Moldova

Period of Performance:    March – May 2023

Total Level of Effort:         up to 20 working days each

Work Plan Activity:           Task: 1.1 Enhance institutional capacity of the E-Governance Agency (EGA).

Background

The USAID Moldova Institutional and Structural Reform Activity (MISRA) is a five-year project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Nathan Associates Inc. MISRA’s objective is to stimulate a sustainable and inclusive recovery from the regional crisis, improve the institutional, business, and trade enabling environment in Moldova by supporting Moldova’s public institutions and the private sector to accelerate the implementation of trade liberalization mechanisms, adopt structural and investment climate reforms, accelerate financial sector reforms, improve economic governance in the public sector, and enhance strategic communications between the private and public actors. MISRA builds on prior and ongoing USAID and US Government activities in the business enabling environment and trade facilitation space to strengthen Moldova’s economic growth and resilience, and by doing so, increase transparency and accountability.

Activity Overview

The Open Data Portal (https://date.gov.md/) is a public informational resource aimed to provide the public with data collected and produced by authorities, state institutions, and Government in general. The Open Date Portal is a governmental service that offers possibility for entities to access authentic, upright, and accurate data from registers and state information systems, in real time, in line with their legal purpose. This is statistical data or structured data that is reflected in a list or non-narrative form and that can be transmitted in digital format and processed automatically. Open government data is freely available to anyone for use, copying, transmission, distribution, modification, transformation, republication, without any restrictions or control mechanisms.

Currently 12 Ministries and 5 Governmental institutions publish open data sets on the referred Portal with more than 1170 open data sets on various categories containing structural, statistical data either reflected as a list or in non-narrative form, published and available to the public in various formats, like XLS, xlsx, PDF, CSV, Docx, Docs, ZIP, Xlsb, TXT. The data exposed through this interface is retrieved in an automated and real-time way via the MConnect interoperability platform.

From the technical standpoint, the Open Data Portal solution is developed based CKAN Portal, (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, an open-source technology used worldwide by different Governments, companies for managing open data), which is an opensource portal for open data for storing and distributing open data. The CKAN backend, the part that runs on the Web server, is mainly written in Python. The web pages they offer to users' browsers include JavaScript. CKAN retains information about the datasets to be offered to users in PostgreSQL databases. Searches are implemented by Solr. CKAN installations can be queried through web APIs.

The current version of CKAN, 2.4., is already outdated and consequently generates deficiencies in the use of the portal both by the entities (providers of data) as well as by the administrator. The scope of the work is to upgrade the Open Data Portal to the most recent version of CKAN, and make sure all functionalities work as expected.

Responsibilities and Tasks

The consultant will be responsible, but not limited to, for carrying-out the following tasks:

• Upgrade the Open Data Portal platform to the latest CKAN version.
• Upgrade of the CKAN extensions ckanext-xloader, ckanext-pages, ckanext-saml2auth.
• Reapply the necessary changes to ensure the compatibility of user authorization between the SAML extension and MPass.
• Review and make corrections of the visual theme developed for the portal.
• Review and test the scripts migrating data from CKAN 2.4 to the new version.
• Update the container image building script.
• Migrate the existing users to the new version of CKAN.
• Prepare the user guide.
• Upgrade the integration guide.

The consultant will work in close cooperation with the DevOps specialist.

Deliverables

• Open Data Portal https://date.gov.md/ upgraded to the latest CKAN version.
• CKAN extensions upgraded.
• Visual theme for the portal reviewed and corrected.
• Reviewed and tested scripts for migration of data from CKAN 2.4 to the new version.
• Container image building script updated.
• New user guide developed, and the integration guide upgraded.
• Existing users migrated to the new version of CKAN.

Consultants Qualifications Requirements

Qualification requirements:

• 3 years of experience in:
  • Python programming
  • PostgreSQL;
  • API development;
• CKAN knowledge (Python version 3.9) or jquery/bootstrap bookstores, sqlalchemy is an advantage.
• Knowledge of SQL.

Supervisory Responsibilities and Reporting

The consultant will work with the DevOps specialist on the preparation of the user guide and the integration guide.

The consultant will report to Team Lead for Component 1.

How to Apply

We welcome your CV and, preferably, cover letter at Moldovajobs@nathaninc.com. Please apply by March 31, with “Software Development” in the subject line. This short-term position will remain open until filled.