Checklist for Funders

We realized that program officers have expertise in their domain, but not technology. It's a different point of view, so we would like to share our expertise and point of view.

Would like to develop a list of considerations that would either them to more information or more resources. For example, does this proposal collect any data on any device? Does it rely on a smart phone? Does it collect data on any vulnerable population? These are all triggers, that should point to other considerations. It's not “if this, then that”, but “if this, then escalate this area to another resource.”

The not secret agenda is to set up bodies of resource so that they can develop internal capacity to answer these questions. If you ask foundations how they currently answer these questions, it's ad hoc. So it's inconsistent, relies on tech savvy friends, and we need to do better.

We assembled a checklist around privacy, but what other might be susceptible to these sorts of issues.

IP policy. If they're funding the grantee, all the outputs should be openly licensed. Scoping. Case studies of example projects, to convey order of magnitude of effort. Better aligned expectation. Infrastructure. Hardware, physical equipment.

Gallery of case studies could be interesting. How was it built, who did it, what did it cost? What order of magnitude of cost is a mobile app or a website? Can I get ten websites for an app? Help funders decide how to design RFPs.

Other possible issues:

Metrics and evalution best practices. Incredibly subjective and hard to do consistently. Managing the relationship. Making sure you're dealing with the right person in the right way. Degrees of separation from the actual person implementing the program.

Draft IP checklist. Not a legal policy, about access and reuse.

What are the outputs of this product? Technology, policy? How will these outputs be made available? On grantee website, uploaded to central repository? Does the project make effective use of existing open source and Creative Commons resource? Who will own the rights to the content produced in this project? Will the products of this project be licensed for sharing and reuse? Are they publishing material in standard, editable formats (PDF, DOC, ODT)? Have you considered the form through with public feedback might take place, such as peer review, editable (wiki), or comments? Are you building on what our grantees have done before? What is the distribution platform for material? What is the plan for ensuring that your target population finds your open materials? Are your staff/partners aware and supportive of your open licensing policies? Do you have a plan to introduce these policies to new staff/partners? What people, policies or institutional barriers do you anticipate for an open policy? Who do you expect to copy/modify/reuse this material?

Participants

Deborah Farrell Rachel Wolfsohn Jane Park James Vasile Ruth Miller

Next steps:

Follow up on [1]