[Osmf-talk] HOT discontent - what can we learn?

[Rod Bera]

Hi Frederik,

Sorry for replying lately, I've been off-line for the last 48 hours.

Indeed in HOT we have a number skeletons in our cupboards, and no
clean-up so far.
Maybe this is a first reason to be cautious about letting too many
hotties into the OSMF board, at least until things get settled.

I also expressed concern about these candidacies of HOT members, as they
don't reflect the diversity of views existing within HOT, but only that
of a party, which appears to steer HOT without caring for minorities'
objections or proposals.

The way HOT runs as an organisation seem incompatible with the ethos of
OSM as I stated in earlier e-mails.

The danger is, would these HOT members get it onto the board of OSMF is
to see their practices percolate into OSM.

Below are the kind practices and habits I believe would be detrimental
to OSMF, would the same gang get a majority at (or just get sufficient
influence on) OSMF's board.

1.
despising minorities of thought: expressing views which are different
from the majority's, even being constructive, not a frontal opposition,
always result in disdain to start with, and aggression when opponents
don't back down.
Personally the kind of objections I made so far were about more
transparency, more collegiality, more respect towards communities,
accountability. With an explicit argument: we pride ourselves to be part
of the OSM odyssey, so at least we should live by OSM's standards. And
if we believe we are "better" because of our commitment to humanitarian
issues, then rise these standards accordingly, especially on the humane
side.
This kind of objection is enough to get marginalised. I am not alone in
this case, and relatively preserved from retaliation so far when
compared to some.

Why would this be bad for OSM?
OSM is made of diversity, and every idea expressed to push OSM forward
is welcome. Not certain having people who simply can't hear a different
sound would be an asset for OSM.

2.
Despising/ignoring local communities, in Africa and elsewhere "not in
the North". Many actions (training, mapping, crisis response,
innovation) have been successful in Haiti or Africa, despite no support
from HOT US inc.
Training and mapping in Haiti, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Cote
d'ivoire, etc. Long lasting activations (esp. Ebola, with invaluable
insight from African collectives, with a lot of work mapping as well as
reviewing what context-ignorant westerners could infer and put into the
DB.), innovation with the use of drone imagery in Haiti or SDIs to
disseminate OSM data.
All these actions were built to have a long-lasting effect on-field
(capacity building, skill reinforcement and propagation) with young and
thriving OSM communities now operating and spreading across West Africa,
with next to not a single penny.
At the same time the policy of HOT's board majority was to seek big
funding and put the money mostly on one-off projects with no follow-up
or resilient capacity building, implementing a de facto "projectorate"
(Rodriguez-Carmona 2009:
http://www.academia.edu/6410031/Rompiendo_con_el_Proyectorado_El_gobierno_del_MAS_en_Bolivia_Plural_Itaca_2009_
; Lerch, 2014: https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:40573) approach as
is unfortunately too frequent in the humanitarian and development fields.
Where efficient (and low cost by necessity) initiatives could not be
ignored, attempts were made to take control of them, or merge them into
other initiatives led by people who had the support of the Board's
majority... Or concurrent initiative were set-up, without properly
including the local communities.

Why would this be a problem for OSM?
OSM is mostly made of people volunteering time to increase commons (db
and soft), dialogue, community, in an inclusive way. And needless to say
most of it is not funded by big NGOs, companies, or governments. It
works well this way. This result in less money to implement all the good
ideas we have, but this said OSM is independent from external influences.
Will people who think in terms of "million-dollar-plus NGO" exclusively
bring a constructive insight into the board of OSMF?
Also OSM as a global community is horizontal. OSMF is not here to lead
the local chapters, but rather facilitate their work and the
availability of commons. My experience of HOT is a completely different
story.

3.transparency, accountability
I, with a number of other hotties have always asked that the board
includes and informs the members in HOT's matters, as I believe
transparency is important. It is a prerequisite for the accountability
the board is putting forward, without concrete effects. It is also
important for us members to know how things are run if we are to make
informed decisions, at least once a year as who to vote for board
elections. Even this is considered too much. There's no accountability.
For instance (this is the most recent) there are rumours of near
bankruptcy, some basic members hear in places the financial situation is
bad/quite bad/very bad. But no information is given by the board on how
bad and why.

Now why should the people in OSM care?
Well suppose these practices are transposed to OSMF board, would we be
happy having the pilot not bother telling the passengers where we're
heading to (and if there's a crash to expect)?
More seriously, this is undemocratic as we members don't have the
necessary elements to make informed decision.


4.independence
There I have only a limited insight. There were several instances I
asked for clarifications, getting no clear answers.
Some HOT board members/former members have a history of involvement with
some NGOs or governmental agencies (e.g. ARC, US state department,
etc.). This raises questions on conflict of interest and subsequently on
the independence of HOT, since these NGOs and agencies can run actions
on the same fields.
However subjective the perception of CoI can be in some cases, I got no
real justification there was nothing to fear from this.
Though this is debatable, I believe when there is a perception
(justified or not) of CoI, there is a moral obligation to speak about it
as openly as possible, and if a doubt subsists act for the good of the
organisation and take action accordingly (e.g. withdraw a board election
candidacy. If we believe we work for the best of the collectivity this
is not such a great deal: There are others way to contribute than being
on the board...).
This said, I also heard of HOT projects led "in coordination" with ARC
(not discussing the pertinence of the project), but this gives fuel to
the worries I expressed above.
So the independence of HOT is questionable. And since I got no clear and
clean answer there, I genuinely feel I should worry.

Now, do we have good reasons to believe things would be different with
OSMF, would Hotties be "well represented" on its board? Again on this
point I personally have no proof, just worries. Should we take the risk?
I leave you sole judge.

4. mutual respect
Equality of treatment (or the lack thereof) is one more issue which has
to do with basic respect between human beings, as individuals, project
stake-holders, communities. In election times it went to the point of
defamation and threatening. Beside this is the lack of basic human
respect in human resources. With behaviours you could expect from
totalitarian regimes.
I never had the privilege to be a target of such extensive defamation
(which go beyond the scope of HOT, with all the potential devastating
effect on an individual's professional and/or personal life) or threats,
but I witnessed the violence of these attacks directed to experienced
and effective members who happened to repeatedly put the board out of
it's comfort zone (i.e. no critical questions must be asked).
Violent, vicious, defaming. Though to the best of my knowledge these
acts were done by a small minority of members, the fact that subsequent
attempts to "settle things" putting the victims at the same level of
responsibility as the aggressor (and then no sanction against the
aggressor) is at least surprising. And shocks me.
And mutual respect has also something to do with point 1 and 2
(despising those advocating different orientations, and considering
local communities as peanuts when they happen not to come from the
wealthiest world).

Needless to say this is in complete opposition with basic humanism as
well as with the basic values shared in OSM. Do we need such behaviours
also happening in OSM?


Now, where do I speak from?

I am a basic HOT member. Though I'm not a founding one I came in the
year after. And before this, during 2 years or so I had several
discussions on how HOT was being set up, prior HOT US coming to existence.
I never ran for HOT's board, and have no ambition to do so.
I came into HOT with the idea it was a humanitarian declination of OSM,
combining OSM values with the idealism and principles at the source of
humanitarian action.
I am not naive. I know NGOs "sometimes" tend to work with a shift from
their principles. But I also thought in HOT we could avoid such a shift.
I am still convinced by this.

This said, some on the HOT membership list reproached me I'm not
defending HOT's interests.
I disagree.
I believe it's in HOT's own interest to evolve and improve on a number
of issues, somme being listed above.
And also, as I believe it's in HOT's interest not to take
disproportionate influence in the OSM ecosystem some reproached me not
to put HOT first.
This is true.
I believe general interest has to prevail over more specific ones.
OSM is of general interest, HOT is more specific.
I said before: without OSM no HOT.
This makes priorities obvious.



So what should OSMF (not) learn from HOT?
well...

Best regards,

Rod




On 30/11/15 19:41, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>    I must admit (as a non-Hottie) that the recent messages here were a
> bit too detailed for me to digest. I am pretty sure HOT have their fair
> number of skeletons in the cupboard, as will any organisation of a given
> age and size, and I can't be bothered to retrace years of discussions in
> the organisation. I also know that wherever people do something
> together, there will be discontent, and the fact that there is
> discontent doesn't necessarily mean that something has been done wrong.
> 
> (I do sense a rather authoritarian attempt at getting rid of critical
> voices. Sometimes it is not the presence of discontent, but how it is
> handled that tells you something about an organisation. But then again
> some critical voices can be so unreasonable that kicking them out is the
> only feasible option. I simply lack the HOT insight to judge.)
> 
> This is not a list to debate the shortcomings of HOT (unless they were
> so grave that we must stop them from using our name and database). This
> is a list about the OSM Foundation.
> 
> What I can clearly see and what is relevant for us on this list:
> 
> * Some people are very unhappy with how HOT is being run;
> * some people with a HOT background are standing for OSMF board.
> 
> So I would like to know from those who are unhappy with how HOT is being
> run: What are dangers do you see for OSMF? In your eyes, what are the
> strategic steps that the HOT organisation has taken and that you feel
> OSMF should not take because it would be detrimental?
> 
> I'm trying to get away from "do not vote for X because they are with
> HOT" here. Skeletons in the closet or not, it is always interesting to
> learn from others how they solved certain issues in another
> organisation. It'd like to hear from those who are dissatisfied with HOT
> (or disenfranchised?) - what should OSMF *not* learn from HOT?
> 
> Bye
> Frederik
>