Since May 2008, Sonjara has supported the Outreach and Communications and Knowledge Management efforts of the Democracy and Governance (DG) Office at USAID by substantially contributing to the development of the DG Communications Strategy, maintaining the DG public and Intranet sites, identifying and implementing web tools, and developing 508 compliant PDF documents for posting on those websites. Specific initiatives included: DG Intranet Sites: Sonjara implemented two communications portals for DG on the USAID AIDNET Intranet: A DG CommonSpot website and a DG Communities Tool in Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS). Sonjara migrated and redesigned the DG Intranet presence for the DG Office, retaining, updating, or archiving over 500 pages of data. Online Grants Application and Tracking: Sonjara recently created a web-based online funding application and tracking tool for DG’s Elections and Political Processes (EPP) group. The tool, using Fakoli, a CMS developed by Sonjara, allows participants to fill in application data online and for administrators to review, accept, and reject the submitted funding proposals. The tool lets administrators manage multiple rounds of funding, change the application templates by funding round, and tracks the administration process of particular applications as well as gives cross-application reporting. The tool also allows participants to submit quarterly and annual reports and success stories to the site as part of their project management obligations. Presentation and Documents Management: Sonjara created two web tools within the same framework to manage DG documents. The first, DG Pubs, extends the functionality of the USAID Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs-managed public website and the Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC) to allow users to search various classification criteria to find DG documents. This website can be found via the main USAID DG website. The second, DG Docs, is an internally focused tool that enables trainers and presenters to upload presentation documents to a secure website for specific training sessions. The tool improves the management of presentation documents and updates session information as needed. Conference and Training Management: Using the same framework, Sonjara created DG Events, a tool that allows conference and training participants to apply online. This tool has an administrative backend for conference organizers to track attendees. Sonjara also supported the DG team’s training initiatives by translating three training workshops into online modules now available on the DG Intranet, as well as publishing other training materials on the DG public and Intranet sites. The specific technology work performed by this project includes: multiple task order management, project management, critical path and release cycle management, requirements gathering and tracking, development of site maps, wireframes, and new look and feel templates, usability testing, and web presence strategy documents. Software development was performed by three developers in PHP/MYSQL, .NET/SQL Server, XML/XSLT, RSS and AJAX. Sonjara established development and production environments, performed privacy impact assessments, provided security reviews and worked with ISSO on security improvements/fixes, implemented version control and issue tracking system, unit and integration testing protocols and an overall quality assurance program. Sonjara also managed a .GOV server, including identifying the host company and supplying required documentation to the Government on security, transfer of the DNS/working with the CIO Change Control Board, working with ISSO on security reviews and improvements, issuing OS patches, establishing sub domains, setting up SMTP and troubleshooting all issues with the server.