Helps to catch any entity related to terrorism quickly at the start of the financing process
The Client
International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global humanitarian aid, relief, and development nongovernmental organization. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC oers emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees and those displaced by war, persecution, or natural disaster. The IRC is currently working in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities where it resettles refugees and helps them become self-sufficient. The President of the International Rescue Committee is the former U.K. Member of Parliament, David Miliband. Consisting of first responders, humanitarian relief workers, international development experts, healthcare providers, and educators, the IRC has assisted millions of people around the world since its founding in 1933.
Case
ATC acronym stands for Anti-Terrorism Compliance. The project was started to help manage safety checks for terrorism links due to the Patriot Act, which is a US federal law for preventing terrorism funding. IRC funds and helps many organizations, companies, and individuals. To be compliant with the law every financial operation has to be considered as ‘clean’ meaning that any involved party is not connected with terrorism. IRC wanted to have a straightforward, easy to use the system. Application had to be integrated with an external service called LexisNexis Bridger, which serves as a repository, database about individuals and companies, and their potential connections with terrorism.
Solution
Solution was implemented using Django web framework. Main feature revolved around external API integration with Bridger service. We developed stable mechanism for managing huge amount of requests going outside of ATC. System included a feature for email notifications about each status changes. Other features centered on: PDF/Excel export, Amazon S3 hosting for instructions file, filtering of ATC requests, external authentication with IRC’s credentials. Throughout the project (at most) there were 5 people involved.
Result
ATC was successfully implemented and deployed on production. System is used on daily basis by many users from around the world, and it helps to manage huge number of safety checks. Thus it helps IRC to catch any entity related with terrorism quickly at the start of the financing process.
Project was extended to 2nd phase after finishing the go-live with 1st version. There is also discussion about starting development of the new version of ATC.
Technologies used
