Institutional virtual event platform for the Inter-Parliamentary Union

The IPU is the global organization of national parliaments. It was founded more than 130 years ago as the first multilateral political organization in the world, encouraging cooperation and dialogue between all nations. Today, the IPU comprises 179 national Member Parliaments and 13 regional parliamentary bodies. It promotes democracy and helps parliaments become stronger, younger, gender-balanced and more diverse. It also defends the human rights of parliamentarians through a dedicated committee made up of MPs from around the world.

Twice a year, the IPU convenes over 1,500 parliamentary delegates and partners in a world Assembly, bringing a parliamentary dimension to global governance, including the work of the United Nations and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  The participation of the world’s MPs at our Assemblies means the will of citizens across all regions is reflected and represented in Assembly decisions and declarations.  These Assemblies rotate between Geneva and a host-parliament abroad.

Moreover, throughout the year, the IPU organises a series of events with UN and other multinational organizations such as CERN.  There are also annual gatherings of women and young parliamentarians. Every five years, the IPU organises a dedicated meeting for Speakers of Parliament.  On the sidelines of other large gatherings (i.e. UN General Assembly in September or the Convention on the Status of Women in March), IPU events are held.

Purpose

IPU expects the selected vendor to develop a virtual event platform, which offers:

• Accessibility to all IPU Members
• Customised platform to look like IPU HQ or host country venue for hybrid events
• Event-specific branding opportunities
• Live video player with international streaming distribution for up to 3,000 participants
• Synchronous and asynchronous multilingual delegate chat feature
• In-session Q&A function
• Searchable documents repository
• Embedded simultaneous interpretation delivery platform (SIDP) function for all live sessions
• AI-driven subtitling for pre-recorded sessions in English and French
• Latency between the audio and visual feeds will be no more than (3 to 6 seconds)
• Integration with IPU’s existing CRM (Zoho), event registration system (Cvent) and meeting platforms
• Delegate entitlements to distinguish platform and functionality access
• Restricted access to the plenary sessions (delegates with speaking and voting rights), all other participants will follow proceedings via the event webcast
• Voting and polling functions
• Promotional spaces (booths)
• Data analytics of user engagement and post-event reporting

Additional Services Required

Large Virtual Event Project management (more than 15 hours of sessions with more than 100 participants)

• End to end management of the event
• Prepare, with the IPU event team, a project plan, monitor and report on progress
• Webcast production, hosting and management of the live stream for all meetings including incorporation of pre-recorded presentations
• Live technical support for meeting delegates – speakers and passive participants. Minimal response time on all help-desk tickets.
• Post-event report

Speakers’ management

• Management of technical rehearsals and set-up checks with remote and pre-recorded speakers
• Provision of a Zoom or Webex license for remote speakers
• Onboarding of remote speakers
• Active speakers will be given the floor, upon request
• Guidance on speaker delivery and timing
• Collection of speaker consent

Video services and post-production

• Pre-event videos to guide user journey and housekeeping
• Recording of events for VoD

Hybrid event integration

• Guidance on speaker delivery and timing
• Integration of host profile and branding
• Liaison with local AV and ICT suppliers

Qualifications and Experience

• Provide a brief profile of your agency, including how many full-time staff your agency employs, where it is based and in what time zone the team for this project will work.
• Provide relevant case studies, including project description and timeline. Please be sure to document expertise in:
• Working on similar projects with international organizations
• Virtual event platforms
• List the project team and their relevant work experience.
• Describe any subcontractors/outside resources necessary to complete the project.

Miscellaneous

• Proposals must contain the signature of a duly authorized officer or agent of the company submitting the proposal.
• Bidder must disclose any relevant conflicts of interest and/or pending lawsuits.
• Bids must be submitted in Swiss Francs (CHF)
• IPU will negotiate contract terms upon selection. All contracts are subject to review by IPU legal counsel, and a project will be awarded upon signing of an agreement or contract, which outlines terms, scope, budget, timeline, and other necessary items.
• IPU will not cover costs related to preparing or issuing proposals.