The Team Ireland Portal is an athlete database created for the Olympic Federation of Ireland to manage information for athletes and their support teams. The Olympic Federation of Ireland needed one dependable place to hold everything it knows about its athletes and their support teams. We won the tender to build it, and we have looked after it ever since.
The challenge
Getting a team to a Games means keeping track of a great deal of detail about a great many people. Measurements, competition entries, qualification status, support staff, required training. Held in scattered documents, that information goes stale quickly and is hard to trust when it matters.
The OFI wanted a single, current record of it all. Staff needed to manage athlete applications, track qualification and pull reports without asking anyone technical for help. Athletes and their support teams needed to keep their own details up to date without being trained first. And because this is sensitive personal data about identifiable people, it had to be held securely.
The work was put out to tender. We bid for it and won it.
What we built
We built a central athlete database with a private, web-based interface, and a separate portal that different groups sign in to. The two are deliberately kept apart. Ease of use for athletes and ease of management for OFI staff shaped every decision.
The system was built entirely on WordPress, so the people who use it day to day are working in something familiar rather than something bespoke and forbidding. It has four parts:
- A central database with a private web interface, reachable only by OFI staff, holding everything from height and weight to competition entries and qualification status
- The Team Ireland portal, where athletes, support staff, sponsors and other groups sign in to view and update the information that belongs to them
- A learning portal where athletes complete the training courses required before they can enter competitions
- Data management and reporting tools for staff, covering athlete applications, qualification for competitions and the other administrative work that surrounds a squad
Keeping athlete data safe
Security shaped the architecture rather than being added at the end. The portal stores no data locally at all. Everything shown to a user is fetched from the central database through an encrypted API request, and everything a user submits travels back the same way.
- Two-factor authentication on the Team Ireland portal
- Access to the central database restricted by IP address as well as two-factor authentication
- No local data storage in the portal, so every read and write goes through an encrypted API request
- EU hosting on high-capacity secure servers, managed by us, with GDPR compliance enforced throughout
How the work was delivered
The build ran in stages across 2022, 2023 and into early 2024. Each stage came with its own documentation setting out the functionality, the system architecture and how it would be delivered, so there was always a written record of what had been agreed.
We met the client regularly and reported as we went. Goals were met, functionality landed as described, and the work stayed within budget.
The result
The OFI now has one place to look. Staff manage applications, qualification and reporting themselves. Athletes and support staff keep their own records current. Sensitive data sits behind two-factor authentication and encrypted requests rather than in an inbox.
The relationship has kept going since 2022. The OFI has since asked us to rebuild olympics.ie ahead of the Paris 2024 Games, to support their schools outreach project daretobelieve.ie, and to deliver the Road to Paris schools challenge website.