Informing Policymaking and Tracking Impact Through an Enterprise Grade Solution

To track the impact of the declaration and inform policymaking, RCSO gathers social data and maintains two comprehensive regional indexes across 7 countries: Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. These indexes on Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda (WPSA) are crucial to compiling regionally relevant documentation on laws, public policies, and services that can be aligned with international laws.

To meet this objective, RCSO needed a website focused on the indexes that could easily be accessed by regional and global users. Vardot kept it simple and focused on maximizing accessibility, showcasing key content, and community building.

• Well-structured, interactive, and user-friendly indexes. As the website’s key content, the index section was designed to be easy to navigate.
• A multilingual, mobile-first Drupal - Varbase CMS site to maximize audience accessibility.
• Newsletter subscription functionality that allows RCSO to establish a database for relationship building, remarketing, and information sharing.

The Regional Civil Society Observatory (RCSO) does important work in creating and maintaining the VAWG and WSPA indexes for the region. The accessibility of this content is critical for their website to successfully meet its goals of providing access to methodologically sound indexes relevant to global awareness, public policy, and regional cooperation.

To make the detailed data more user-friendly, Vardot’s UI/UX and content teams ensured that the interactive index section flows through a logical hierarchy of information:

• The journey starts at a high level with a split of the two indexes into the VAWG and WSPA categories.
• An interactive map then allows a user to select country-specific data per index.
• The indexes and their indicators have options to explore full explanations categorized in a clearly defined secondary menu.
• Each index can then be searched at a more granular country level by sector filters. 
• The sectors covered include all relevant indicators, from legal frameworks to public policies and data systems. 
• All indicator information is available at a top-line level with an option to drill down into detailed information with all sources referenced.

The indexes now showcase the work of RCSO in a comprehensive and interactive format that maximizes user engagement and time on site.

A simple but effective 3rd party newsletter subscription service was set up, allowing RCSO to establish their own database. 

This database will enable them to build direct relationships and communicate with a range of interested parties, from policymakers to civil society and the broader legal profession.

It is vital for the global alignment and appreciation of RCSO’s work that their index information and contact details are accessible to the largest number of people around the world. For this reason, Vardot created a multilingual site that is available in English and Arabic, with a French version planned for the near future.

Using Vardot’s Acquia cloud hosting solution, we can ensure the fastest load times, as well as consistent website uptime SLAs. This ensures that the work done by RCSO is always publicly available and easy to access.

With an enterprise-grade solution launched in March 2021, RCSO is set up with a website that will further their goal of providing globally relevant, evidence-based documentation to inform policymaking on gender equality.