Sector(s)
Team Members
Project Team
The Education Policy and Data Center (EPDC) was founded with the insight that education policy has to be based on strong evidence, including accurate and timely data, and sound analysis of the challenges and solutions. As a research unit within EPDC serves as a resource for education data, profiles, and data reports on education status at the country and subnational level, research papers on issues and challenges in education in developing and transitional countries, as well as medium-term education projections.
About the project
The EPDC database is a Microsoft SQL server database hosted on 2,000 MB of managed SQL server disk space. The database contains approximately 2.7 million observations. Linked tables with attributes describing each data point range in size from four rows to 2,161 rows. A back-end data management system allows EPDC staff to modify the contents of attribute tables without requiring knowledge of SQL. The interface also provides a mechanism for appending new rows to the database in bulk while checking for potential problems such as duplicate data points.
In addition to the database, the EPDC website provides visuals with data presented in graphs and maps, as well as education profiles presenting the current status and both historical and future trends of the education systems in most developing countries. At this time, the visuals are generated on local machines as static images and are uploaded to the website manually.
Further, EPDC has developed a number of projection models forecasting education indicators, such as school enrollment and completion based on observed historical trends, all of which are available on its website as Excel files along with accompanying tutorials and methodologies. Finally, EPDC contributes to important debates in the education development community through its publications analyzing trends and relationships in education data.
The goal of this project was to create a uniquely satisfying user experience with education development data.
Why Drupal was chosen
EPDC.ORG is a data-intensive website with very structured content, reporting, data visualization, and integration with third party databases. Drupal was chosen because it scored the highest ratings in its ability to solve the technical challenges required by the organization.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
These modules were chosen primarily to interact with the database and present data in a structured way.
