OPA DOCUMENTATION¶

Purpose of this Page¶

Initial text descriptions are being posted here prior to enhancement in markdown for posting on GitLab.

Potential Utility of OPA for ERA Operations¶

The Earth Reserve Assurance (ERA) Framework requires a transparent approach to the assessment of proposed ERA projects, and to their ongoing monitoring through time. Both of these general functions were designed into the original OPA workflow.

Outline of Available Documentation and Code¶

Joseph Potvin's original (pre-UML) pseudocode from 1999 was prepared as an employee at IDRC https://idrc.ca/en. The earlier name of OPA (Online Proposal Appraisal) was OLA (OnLine Appraisal). This was programmed into CFML (ColdFusion), the language chosen by his tech colleague at IDRC Mark Faul. This 33-year-old workflow design remains 'as good as new'.

OPA quickly got picked up by the World Bank for their Global Development Network (their largest research grants initiative) https://www.gdn.int/. It is mentioned on pg 23 of IDRC's 10th Anniversary report. https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625/37210/127854.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y GDN then relied on and maintained OPA-cf out of Bangalore India for a decade, mainly under developer Saurabh Khandelwal. He now works at 3ie https://www.3ieimpact.org/about-us/meet-the-team/saurabh-khandelwal In the past he has sent me the OPA-cf source code via a .zip email attachment but email security blocks packages with .exe attachments. So unfortunately we don't have that source code from a decade of refinement in the multilateral sector.

Around 2002 OPA was re-written into Java by Obi Anizor in the private sector https://sourceforge.net/u/anizor/profile/ for use as an HR recruitment and review platform. His work has always been shared online.
OPA-Java on Sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/opa-java-omoli/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/opa/
https://sourceforge.net/p/opa/news/2004/02/what-is-opa/

There are several other sites offering it; for example, here's a Japanese site with both the Linux and Windows configurations: https://www.pudn.com/detail/5238757
The last time I was involved in advanced it was in 2009 when I worked at Canada's Treasury Board Secretariat: I arranged this 'bounty' program for fixes with the Free Software Foundation: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/credil-contest-2009

Back in 2002 also OPA was also re-written into PHP by a team involving developers in the Netherands and in Uganda. But most attention went to the Java code stream and the PHP one was abandoned.

Technical and Non-Technical Documentation on OPA¶

Various files are being put here for now:
https://xalgorithms.redminepro.net/projects/opa/documents