Options for platform

1. PROJECT SCOPE- if the aim is to GO BIG and:

- have a "user-friendly" website that organises all sanctions against Russia (EU, USA, UK, Japan, ... all other countries)

- and on top of that organises all studies and data that show the effects of these sanctions

- then it is a workload for more than just one person simply because there are so many sanctions, studies and data - and the biggest challenge is to "summarize" this info in a user-friendly way

- even if we assume that a person can create 3-6 "sanction / study posts" per day and administrate that on a page, it would take 200 working days for a person to organise 1000 sanctions/studies

- here is one example of an EU sanctions map (see here) lots of work has been done to structure the information, but I would not call it user-friendly (let's say its a bad example)

- here is KSE's work - fantastic job (see here) but their team is definitely bigger than one full-time person just because the database behind nice visuals is very impressive - 636 sanctions counted and on top of that they have very good design that takes time to create it

- here is one more database that lists all sanctions against Russia including sanctions against individuals (see here) - so I would call this the MEGA database which is probably outside our scope

- if the aim is to stay MEDIUM SIZE:

- and focus on building a database that is somewhat similar to the KSE database but not the website (see here) where all sanctions are listed with a focus on sorting them - and on top of sanctions - also add and links to studies that evaluate the effects of those sanctions and also with options to sort them

- then I would expect that one full-time person can do the job of finding all these things online (with some help of the academic team)

- then we should aim for the web part to outsource a proper web developer company that will cost us somewhere in the range of 10'000-20'000 EUR per website based on how big the database and visual side will be

- The main point why we need to hire a web agency - they will need to bring together at least 3 coders, 1 designer and 1 UX specialist who can build what we need in a short time (let's say such a page can be built in 300-500 hours, one freelance guy can't spend two months only for us as usually they keep a few more customers open during their month)

- if our aim is to say LOW KEY:

- and just build some type of database via spreadsheets where everyone whom we select as experts can participate in adding info

- then probably it can be done in less than a full-person role, but then our outcome will not be anything near KSE or WAR & SANCTIONS websites

- with this "list" of collected studies and sanctions we build our own database that runs on our server and looks not as fancy as KSE database, but has all the info and some minor filters (sector / type of study / sanctions / and some 2-3 more)

Maintaining and updating the platform - if the plan is to go BIG or go MEDIUM then I would imagine one full-time person with a basic level of econ background (BA level) - all web related questions we can teach the person to do, but what we can't teach in a short time is how to think about "sanctions/studies / structure / etc" type of questions

2. WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

- if we aim to GO BIG or GO MEDIUM

- my rough estimate would be to start with 10'000 EUR for development costs that could go as high as 20'000- 30'000 EUR or above simply because one hour of coding these days is 50 EUR per hour for rather simple tasks. Coding per hour goes up to 80 EUR and 100 EUR per hour if there is a need for more sophisticated tasks - such as complicated data visualisations straight out from the databases, etc

- and I doubt that this should be done with a low budget simply because a freelancer will do the coding for let's say 5'000 EUR, but once the database works, traffic is there and we have media attention - Russian hackers will hack that page and then all the hard work is no longer there. Of course risk does not mean it will happen, but website built by a freelancer is much easier to hack as an agency will add a fee for the website hacking tests

- on top of this is hosting which would be 3-6x more expensive as our FREE Network hosting just because traffic should be 10x than what we have so at least - 100-150 EUR per month or 1200 - 2000 EUR per year. I don't have good number here, but I remember KSE mentioned that their sanctions page gets 250-300 thousand visits per month. That will cost for sure.

- if we aim to go LOW KEY:

- GitHub version to come up with links and data - the current plan, ca 640 USD per year per 10 users

- if we want to present it as a spreadsheet embedded from GitHub on FREE Network website / SITE's website that's pretty much without extra costs - just Davis and Dominick's working time. I would suggest to run the sanctions portal under https://sanctions.freepolicybriefs.org/russia-sanctions-database/ where there is a subdomain that has the list of sanctions/ studies listed in a similar format as KSE has it (see here) - it will involve at least basic coding but if that's what we aim for, I have in mind a couple of coders that could do that

- if we don't need any special design - anything near the sanctions database - but just the database with links and filters (see here) we can also do it on the FREE Network page with 24-40 hours of coding budget in the range between 1200-1600 EUR hiring a freelancer

- but if this project gains extra traffic (10-100 thousand clicks per year) we might need to think about upgrading our hosting environment - that might cost between 200-400 EUR per year extra (very much depending on traffic)

- and for extra security add Cloudflare which limits the risks from Russian hacking (see here) would be around 240 EUR per year

Should we do a poll about this?