Multilateral & Development Organizations
Public platforms and internal systems for multilateral institutions.
The Inter-American Development Bank since 2014, across several divisions, and other institutions of the inter-American system more recently. Some of what we built there we still maintain today.
What we’ve delivered, and what we still run
With the Inter-American Development Bank since 2014, across education, trade and integration, and the office that runs its business community.
An assistant that says why it proposed each match
ConnectAmericas is the IDB’s business community for the region. At that size, finding a relevant counterpart had come down to filters and keyword search. ADA reads business intent from a conversation, matches on meaning rather than attributes, and returns a plain-language reason for every suggestion a person can read, disagree with and overrule.
ConnectAmericas (IDB). Conversational AI and semantic search, with an explainability layer.
Two applications contracted, one delivered
The Bank contracted the analysis, design and build of two apps for public tenders: one for technology, one for consulting. The terms of reference asked us to establish whether one or two were the right answer. The work said one. Build for the Americas is published in both app stores.
Education statistics for twenty-six countries, rebuilt around how they’re read
CIMA holds harmonised education indicators for the Bank’s twenty-six borrowing countries, in three languages, disaggregated by sex, socioeconomic level and geography. We ran the heuristic and accessibility diagnosis, benchmarked five comparable portals, and redesigned the indicator screen as a report: data, methodology, metadata, academic citation and a table view in one place.
One view of a loan portfolio held across disconnected systems
Monitoring a sovereign lending portfolio means indicators that each depend on a different operational system inside the Bank. Smart Portfolio consolidates them into a single real-time view, with role-based access and reporting aligned to institutional standards. It was handed to an internal team and is still running and evolving there.
Still keeping it running, three years later
Two consecutive contracts cover support, maintenance and the backend migration of the ConnectAmericas ecosystem: a Drupal core on AWS, eleven government and trade-bloc white labels hanging off it, an academy, mobile apps, the web services layer other systems consume, and BIDFA. The current work completes the move from Drupal 7 to Drupal 11 underneath all of it, without the service stopping.
What the institution requires of the software
An institution financed by its member countries carries obligations a company does not, and three of them land directly on the build.
A recommendation has to be able to explain itself
Inside an institution that answers to its members, “the model ranked it highest” is not a usable answer. A suggestion has to arrive with a reason a person can read, disagree with and overrule. On ADA that is an explainability layer decided at the start, not an interface added at the end.
The data already belongs to someone
Consolidating information across an institution means every source system has an owner, an access rule and a reason it works the way it does. On Smart Portfolio, who could see which slice of the portfolio was settled before the indicators were built, because reversing it afterwards means rebuilding them.
The platform has to outlive whoever built it
Smart Portfolio was handed to an internal team at the Bank and is still evolving there. The ConnectAmericas ecosystem went the other way: we built pieces of it and we are still maintaining it three years on, migrating the backend underneath a platform that stays up. Both routes are the same requirement.
The work said one application, not two
What was contracted
Two mobile applications for the IDB’s business community, so that companies in the region could find public tenders financed by the Bank: one for technology tenders, one for consulting. Analysis, design and development of both, in five months.
What the terms of reference actually asked
They asked us to establish whether one or two applications should be developed, depending on what added the most value to the business sector. It was a validation written into the contract, not a question we introduced.
How it was answered
One UX lead across both applications instead of one per app, working them in parallel under a single view, with interviews with the companies that would use them. Seen together, the two tools were answering one question for one person.
What was delivered
Build for the Americas: one application, with its own brand and design system, published in the App Store and on Google Play. The discarded option is the one in the contract, and anyone can check what shipped.
Questions we get before the first call
Do you work with governments and ministries, or with the institutions?
With the institutions. Our work has been for the institution itself rather than for a borrowing government, which is a different kind of engagement with a different counterpart. Country-executed programme systems, an aid information system inside a finance ministry or a management information system inside a line ministry, are a specialism with its own established firms, and we don’t claim it.Is this monitoring and evaluation?
No, and the distinction matters in this sector. Smart Portfolio is operational monitoring: the status of a portfolio, where things stand, what needs attention now. Results frameworks, logframes, indicator reporting and impact evaluation are a different discipline with specialised platforms behind it.Which institutions have you delivered for?
The Inter-American Development Bank, across several divisions and over more than ten years. Two further institutions of the inter-American system have work under way with us, which we can describe in a first conversation. Nothing is closed yet, so nothing here is claimed as a result.How do you engage, and what’s the contracting route?
Simplified competitive selection through the Bank’s bidder portal, and purchase orders and work orders issued against a framework agreement for the work that follows. At the other institutions the route is public tender through their procurement portals. IPICNET S.A. is Uruguayan, which is a member country, and less than a quarter of our revenue comes from contracts with the Bank.What about security and accessibility?
Onetree is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, issued by UNIT and valid through March 2029. On the work itself both are contractual rather than optional: WCAG 2.1 AA is written into the terms of reference, the code is scanned by the Bank’s own security team, and static analysis and a minimum unit-test coverage are conditions of acceptance rather than internal practice.Which languages and which region?
Spanish, English and Portuguese across the Bank’s platforms, and the four official languages of the inter-American system where the institution requires them. The region is Latin America and the Caribbean, and the team is in Uruguay, in the same time zones as the institutions and the countries they lend to.
Tell us what the institution can’t see yet.
In a 45-minute working session we’ll go through which systems hold the information, who owns each of them, and what the first usable version could look like. Bring the report someone still assembles by hand.