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<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-western"> Hi,<br>
<br>
Here is an email that I had sent to the members of the HOT Board
on June 2nd.<br>
<br>
Kate had replied. Netiquette would make it inappropriate for me to
send her answer to a public mailing list, but she can do it
herself if she wishes, of course.<br>
<br>
As it appears that I may be censored soon, I'd like to share this
with you while (and if) I still can.<br>
<br>
<br>
----------<br>
<br>
<br>
Hi, <br>
<br>
A while ago, input has been asked from members of the HOT mailing
list about the strategy of HOT. I've put together a few thoughts
about HOT, that I have had for a while - for some of them. <br>
<br>
I've followed HOT since before it was created. Mostly remotely.
Recently, I am grateful to have been able to attend the internship
in Saint Marc in March, which has given me an opportunity to
witness directly and appreciate the work done in the field. <br>
<br>
I have a lot of respect and appreciation for the individuals in
the HOT Board, and what they have done. I don't know much about
the inner workings of the Board. Yet there are things that I think
could be improved in what I could perceive of the Board's way of
working. <br>
<br>
I think that the potential of OSM for humanitarian action and
development is very important, and that it might be useful to
share my views on these things, in an attempt to try to raise some
hindrances to this potential. <br>
<br>
<h4>Commons-Based Peer Production and HOT</h4>
<br>
What is the fundamental organizational principle that explains how
OpenStreetMap in general, and the remote mobilization after the
2010 Haiti earthquake as an example in particular, work ? Yochai
Benkler had described it as "commons-based peer production" (CBPP)
in his paper "Coase's penguin" (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html">http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html</a>),
that Schuyler mentioned in his talk at Where 2.0 2010. <br>
<br>
Why do I feel the need to recall this? Because in this same
enlightening paper, Yochai Benkler opposes this mode of production
to hierarchical management based organizations and to market
prices based organizations. <br>
<br>
So these are fundamentally different modes of organization. <br>
<br>
In practice, for some of the activities of HOT, a mixture of these
types of organizations may be appropriate. For example, for the
mapping project in Saint Marc, a dimension of top-down managerial
organization was probably appropriate to organize the logistics,
training and coordination work of 30 young local mappers, and to
satisfy the requirements of the sponsor USAID. <br>
<br>
Yet, for the broad spectrum of OSM activities related in some way
to humanitarian action and development, this mix should be done
carefully. Otherwise, the risk is to sterilize the huge potential
of CBPP for the humanitarian dimension of OSM. <br>
<br>
Let me quote Yochai Benkler (p. 47): <br>
"The point here is qualitative. It is not only, or even primarily,
that more <br>
people can participate in production. The widely distributed model
of <br>
information production will better identify who is the best person
to <br>
produce a specific component of a project, all abilities and
availability to <br>
work on the specific module within a specific time frame
considered. With <br>
enough uncertainty as to the value of various productive
activities and <br>
enough variability in the quality of information inputs and human
creative <br>
talent vis-à-vis any set of production opportunities, coordination
and <br>
continuous communications among the pool of potential producers
and <br>
consumers can generate better information about the most valuable
<br>
productive actions and the best human agents available at a given
time. <br>
Although markets and firm incentive schemes are aimed at producing
<br>
precisely this form of self-identification, the rigidities
associated with <br>
collecting and comprehending bids from individuals through these
systems <br>
(i.e., transaction costs) limit the efficacy of
self-identification, relative to <br>
peer production." <br>
<br>
and (p. 50): <br>
"This initial statement is a simplification and understatement of
the <br>
potential value of the function by which the sizes of the sets of
agents and <br>
resources increase productivity. There are two additional
components: the <br>
range of projects that might be pursued with different talent
applied to a <br>
given set of resources and the potential for valuable
collaboration. First, a <br>
more diverse set of talents looking at a set of resources may
reveal available <br>
projects that would not be apparent when one only considers the
set of <br>
resources as usable by a bounded set of agents. In other words,
one of the <br>
advantages may be not the ability of A1 to pursue a given project
with r2 <br>
better than A2 could have but the ability to see that a more
valuable project <br>
is possible. <br>
<br>
Second, the initial statement does not take into consideration the
<br>
possible ways in which cooperating individuals can make each other
<br>
creative in different ways than they otherwise would have been.
Once one <br>
takes into consideration these diverse effects on the increased
possibilities <br>
for relationships among individuals and between individuals and
resources, <br>
it becomes even more likely that there are increasing returns to
scale to <br>
increases in the number of agents and resources involved in a
production <br>
process." <br>
<br>
You can also refer to figures near these pages that show how the
potential of positive interactions increase when restrictions are
reduced. <br>
<br>
An area that I see as having a potential for improvement from this
point of view in the context of HOT is the exchange of information
(I'll use this term instead of "communication", which tends to be
ambiguous with "public relations"), between, on one the one hand,
the needs and existing data resources of ("traditional")
humanitarian actors, and, on the other hand, the volunteers that
could help. <br>
<br>
HOT Inc. present itself as a "bridge" between the two. It should
be more careful not to be a bottleneck. <br>
<br>
Let us illustrate this with a very simplified model, that should
yet be sufficient to give an idea of the orders of magnitude
involved. If N is the number of NGOs, international, governmental
or local organizations that could interact in a positive way with
the humanitarian OSM community, and V is the number of volunteers
or potential volunteers in this community, the number of potential
interactions, matching needs with volunteer resources to act on
them, is of the order N x V, (O(N.V) in computer science
notation), IF all volunteers can be aware of all the needs, and
decide to allocate their time and competence to them if they think
it can useful. <br>
<br>
If all the potential interactions have to go through a central
point, such as the Board of HOT Inc., for example, the number of
potential interactions is limited by the processing capability of
this center, which is a constant C (small relative to V -
currently C is no more than 7). The number of potential
interactions "with the outside" is O(NC). And the number of
potential interactions "with the inside" is O(CV). The total
number of potential interactions is not more than O(CN + CV).
Which is in general very small relative to O(NV). <br>
<br>
If we plug in example numbers, to give a concrete idea, and, to be
conservative, set N to the order of 100 and V to 1000, the number
of potential interactions if information flows freely is of the
order of 100 000, but only of 7700 if they have to go through a
center point. That is to say that more than 90 % of potential
interactions does not even have any chance to happen. (And nobody
knows about it). <br>
<br>
Basically we fall back to the limitation of the hierarchical
management model, where allocation of "resources" relies on the
limited knowledge of management hierarchy. <br>
<br>
Whatever the quality and talent of the members of the Board, the
actions that can be understood, approved and controlled by them is
only a very small subset of all the potentially positive actions
that could be carried out by the community at large. The Board
should thus be careful not to reduce this potential by limiting
information exchange. <br>
<br>
Some external organizations may be happy to find interlocutors
with whom they can interact in the traditional way they are used
to. But if this were the only way to interact with the community,
the true potential of CBPP would essentially be lost. <br>
<br>
"Center does not scale." <br>
<br>
CBPP cannot really scale to its full potential without more
transparency in the interactions with the outside. And it should
be accepted that not everything that can happen in the
interactions between the "traditional" humanitarian community and
the OSM community be controlled by the HOT Board. <br>
<br>
There are already so many things to do in support functions. And
there will be even much more if these interactions are left to
grow naturally. <br>
<br>
<br>
It is not easy to define a priori exactly how this new paradigm of
CBPP should best be organized. But at least,organization types
that go against its core principles should be avoided as much as
possible. <br>
<br>
Good intentions are not enough. (It is not difficult to find
examples of good intentions that had bad results). "The road to
hell is paved with good intentions". <br>
<br>
So please be careful, and take this into consideration. It is a
fundamental problem, and a lot of damage could be done if it is
not taken into account. <br>
<br>
"We do not know what we ignore, until we know it." <br>
<br>
<h4>Financial Tranparency</h4>
<br>
After this fundamental organizational question, I think there is
more specifically a governance question. <br>
<br>
Actually, it depends upon what HOT Inc. intends to be. <br>
<br>
If it wants to help support the humanitarian OSM community, there
are some governance principles that should be appropriate. For
example, those that apply to non-profit organizations. The
intention to get this status formally in the US has been stated.
Given the international status of the community, some
international considerations could be taken into account as well.
<br>
<br>
For example, in France, it is a basic fiscal principle that people
who receive a remuneration from a non-profit association cannot be
on its board. The reason is probably that if there are divergences
between the particular interests of the employees and the general
interest, it would be too much to ask from the employees on the
board to systematically make choices against their own interests.
(Thus the non-profit status would be endangered.) I think this
also applies to people who are professionally active in the field.
<br>
<br>
The proposed status rule that a member of the Board should abstain
when his or her direct personal interests are at stake is not
really satisfying, as in practice it is known that in
organizations where this is the rule, people can easily work
around it with behaviors that can be summarized by "you are nice
to me, so I'll be nice to you". It is also quite possible that
there be a kind of corporatist interest for the "professional"
members of the Board, distinct from the general interest. <br>
<br>
So it seems that having at least one level of independence in the
decision process would be a good thing. <br>
<br>
Given the current situation and history of HOT, I don't know what
would be the best way to improve the situation in this respect.
Maybe introduce a kind of "surveillance council" (similar to what
was envisioned, e.g., for Ayiti Living Lab), that could be
composed of independent personalities, both from the "traditional"
humanitarian community, from OSM volunteers or even more
independent. <br>
<br>
Or, at least, a first step would be to be much more transparent. <br>
<br>
OSGeo, that was mentioned as an example for HOT structure, has
monthly open board meetings on IRC. This is also the case for OSM
France, where the board meetings were weekly on IRC, and open to
all those interested. These organizations also have board mailing
lists, open to the interested members. (The current HOT
communication efforts - mailing list, blog, IRC - are commendable,
but it feels like they go through a PR filter, and that the real
issues are not there). <br>
<br>
Also, if you look at HOT Inc. as a company, in the traditional
capitalist sense, it would be fair to consider that a part of its
founding capital was contributed by the OSM contributors, for
Haiti and elsewhere before that, mappers and developers, whose
contribution "in kind" gave it its value. This virtual debt should
not be forgotten. And in traditional capitalist companies,
shareholders are entitled to information, including financial
information. Given the specific context and philosophy of the OSM
community, open information would seem to be an appropriate
analogy. <br>
<br>
Another thing about associations in France is that they inform
their members of their financial accounting. Especially if they
are non-profit, and especially if they are humanitarian and make
public calls for donations, they must inform the public. So this
has come to be considered as a minimum standard (and it is likely
the same in the US). <br>
<br>
<h5>Full financial transparency</h5>
<br>
While on this subject, I would even suggest to take into account
the fact that we are in 2012, and promoting open data, and to go
further than traditional financial reporting. The inspiration for
this comes from the founder of an associative ISP
(Tetaneutral.net). In a presentation to a local FOSS user group,
after explaining the technical and legal aspects of setting up an
ISP, he detailed every expense incurred in running it. His vision,
as a former finance professional, is that it is all too easy to
hide things in traditional summary financial statements. And that
the day when open data will include all detailed public finances,
for example, corruption will be much easier to detect. Corruption
is a major plague in today's World. HOT is, or might be, involved
in countries where it may have some of the worst presence at all
levels. Thus there is an opportunity to show an example of open
detailed financial data, as a practical mean to fight corruption.
<br>
<br>
While we show the benefits of open data in the cartographic field,
we could as an added benefit show its advantages in the governance
field. <br>
<br>
This could actually be rather easy to implement in practice. Since
accounting must already be done, it is only a matter of taking the
decision to open it. <br>
<br>
So these are minimum or desirable ethical standards that I'd
suggest for HOT if it wants to better support the humanitarian OSM
community. <br>
<br>
In a word, <span class="moz-txt-underscore"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">_</span>transparency<span
class="moz-txt-tag">_</span></span> would bring both scaling
capacity and ethical benefits. <br>
<br>
It could also be a way to get interested people really involved,
as the wish has been expressed at the last strategic meeting. <br>
<br>
<br>
Financial transparency could also be instrumental in finding a
proper balance between CBPP and market prices driven production.
If an organization financially supports a HOT project, the
modalities of this support should be transparent, so that
volunteers can knowingly choose to allocate their time to this
project. Otherwise, in a worst case scenario, we could imagine
that financially influential actors could manipulate behind the
scenes the mobilization of volunteers, by orienting it based on
hidden price signals. For a sound CBPP, the information about
these price signals, which may be justified and even necessary to
carry on some projects, should be transparently available among
the other elements of information available to volunteers. And
projects should be able to be considered even if they are not
financed. <br>
<br>
<br>
Alternatively, it is also possible that HOT Inc. would rather be a
consulting or humanitarian business around OSM, as there are
others. But then this should be clear, and HOT should not let
itself be perceived as representing the humanitarian OSM
community, from the outside as well as from the inside. (By the
way, it is unfortunate that the process by which the initial HOT
Board nominated itself, and then chose or approved the electoral
body cannot be, in my humble opinion, adequate to be considered a
legitimate democratic representative of the OSM community
interested in humanitarian action and development). <br>
<br>
<br>
Thank you for reading this far. I'd be curious to know if any of
you agrees with anything expressed here, however awkwardly. <br>
<br>
Best wishes, <br>
<br>
Jean-Guilhem <br>
<br>
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