[HOT] HOT Digest, Vol 29, Issue 7

[Tom Buckley]

Dear JGC,

Thanks for sharing.

Regarding this line:

"As it appears that I may be censored soon, I'd like to share this with
you while (and if) I still can."

I assume you are referring to administration of the list-serv.  But can you
be more specific about how and why you would be censored and why you
believe this might happen?

Tom

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 4:30 AM, <hot-request at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Some thoughts about HOT Inc. (long) (Jean-Guilhem Cailton)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 10:30:17 +0200
> From: Jean-Guilhem Cailton <jgc at arkemie.com>
> To: HOT <hot at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: [HOT] Some thoughts about HOT Inc. (long)
> Message-ID: <4FFD3999.1010607 at arkemie.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15"
>
> Hi,
>
> Here is an email that I had sent to the members of the HOT Board on June
> 2nd.
>
> 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.
>
> As it appears that I may be censored soon, I'd like to share this with
> you while (and if) I still can.
>
>
> ----------
>
>
> Hi,
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
>
>         Commons-Based Peer Production and HOT
>
>
> 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" (http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html), that
> Schuyler mentioned in his talk at Where 2.0 2010.
>
> 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.
>
> So these are fundamentally different modes of organization.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Let me quote Yochai Benkler (p. 47):
> "The point here is qualitative. It is not only, or even primarily, that
> more
> people can participate in production. The widely distributed model of
> information production will better identify who is the best person to
> produce a specific component of a project, all abilities and
> availability to
> work on the specific module within a specific time frame considered. With
> enough uncertainty as to the value of various productive activities and
> enough variability in the quality of information inputs and human creative
> talent vis-?-vis any set of production opportunities, coordination and
> continuous communications among the pool of potential producers and
> consumers can generate better information about the most valuable
> productive actions and the best human agents available at a given time.
> Although markets and firm incentive schemes are aimed at producing
> precisely this form of self-identification, the rigidities associated with
> collecting and comprehending bids from individuals through these systems
> (i.e., transaction costs) limit the efficacy of self-identification,
> relative to
> peer production."
>
> and (p. 50):
> "This initial statement is a simplification and understatement of the
> potential value of the function by which the sizes of the sets of agents
> and
> resources increase productivity. There are two additional components: the
> range of projects that might be pursued with different talent applied to a
> given set of resources and the potential for valuable collaboration.
> First, a
> more diverse set of talents looking at a set of resources may reveal
> available
> projects that would not be apparent when one only considers the set of
> resources as usable by a bounded set of agents. In other words, one of the
> advantages may be not the ability of A1 to pursue a given project with r2
> better than A2 could have but the ability to see that a more valuable
> project
> is possible.
>
> Second, the initial statement does not take into consideration the
> possible ways in which cooperating individuals can make each other
> creative in different ways than they otherwise would have been. Once one
> takes into consideration these diverse effects on the increased
> possibilities
> for relationships among individuals and between individuals and resources,
> it becomes even more likely that there are increasing returns to scale to
> increases in the number of agents and resources involved in a production
> process."
>
> You can also refer to figures near these pages that show how the
> potential of positive interactions increase when restrictions are reduced.
>
> 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.
>
> HOT Inc. present itself as a "bridge" between the two. It should be more
> careful not to be a bottleneck.
>
> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> 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).
>
> Basically we fall back to the limitation of the hierarchical management
> model, where allocation of "resources" relies on the limited knowledge
> of management hierarchy.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> "Center does not scale."
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
>
> 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.
>
> 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".
>
> 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.
>
> "We do not know what we ignore, until we know it."
>
>
>         Financial Tranparency
>
>
> After this fundamental organizational question, I think there is more
> specifically a governance question.
>
> Actually, it depends upon what HOT Inc. intends to be.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> So it seems that having at least one level of independence in the
> decision process would be a good thing.
>
> 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.
>
> Or, at least, a first step would be to be much more transparent.
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>
> 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).
>
>
>           Full financial transparency
>
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> So these are minimum or desirable ethical standards that I'd suggest for
> HOT if it wants to better support the humanitarian OSM community.
>
> In a word, _transparency_ would bring both scaling capacity and ethical
> benefits.
>
> It could also be a way to get interested people really involved, as the
> wish has been expressed at the last strategic meeting.
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> 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).
>
>
> Thank you for reading this far. I'd be curious to know if any of you
> agrees with anything expressed here, however awkwardly.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Jean-Guilhem
>
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> End of HOT Digest, Vol 29, Issue 7
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