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.

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.

The work said one application, not two

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.