Open Coalition

Welcome to the homepage of the Open Coalition project. This page will act as a portal for the project, offer useful updates and highlight ways that volunteers from “open” communities can participate in the project. More content will be added here, and to sub-pages, as the project progresses.

History

The idea for the project emerged towards the end of 2013. It became apparent that many of the organisations working in the field of open shared areas of overlap. Work was sometimes duplicated, lines of communication between organisations and communities were sometimes weak and there was lots of potential for closer ties between open groups. Following some tentative discussions, a session about this was delivered at MozFest in October 2013 based around the idea of developing an open coalition.

The objectives of the coalition are varied and include supporting various open organisations and communities in the development of collaboration, a shared web presence where useful information can be aggregated and the creation of other resources that support these aims.

The project has been initially funded by Wikimedia UK and Bekka Kahn has been appointed as the project co-ordinator for six months. During this time Bekka will be working to develop the concept as well as co-ordinating efforts to achieve the coalition's aims. While the post has been funded by Wikimedia UK, Bekka's role is to support all interested parties and support the coalition more broadly.

Resources

Bekka's role description can be seen here. This provides an overview of her role and what she will be working to achieve.

This page gives a little more context to the project's inception

Digital Democracy - add your voice to our submission to the Parliamentary Commission

In theory there are many lessons that any attempt to increase engagement with digital democracy can learn from open projects. These include the participatory nature of content development and the nature of content (and policy) being arrived at by consensus. Open organisations and the people involved in them are from a wide array of backgrounds and represent a broad spectrum of views. This could lend itself to effective drafting of the kind of evidence that the Speaker is looking for. The Open Coalition, Wikimedia UK and Demos would like to establish whether this is indeed the case. In particular, we are seeking answers to the following questions:

• How can technology help Parliament and other agencies to scrutinise the work of government?
• How can technology help citizens scrutinise the Government and the work of Parliament?
• What kinds of data should Parliament and Government release to the public to make itself more open to outside scrutiny?

Everyone is encouraged to try to answer these questions collaboratively, in much the same way Wikipedia articles are approached - using the space below for content and talk page for discussion, as well as our collaborative etherpad. Staff from Wikimedia UK, The Coalition and Demos will happily answer any questions on the talk page but are equally happy to let the process take its course.

At this point there is no fixed deadline for evidence on the theme of digital scrutiny. However, the Speaker’s Commission will be publishing publishing a single call for evidence covering our last three themes (yet to be announced). The conversation and crowdsourced evidence will be reviewed at the end of June with a view to either continuing the process or submitting as is. If there is appetite among the community, and if the first attempt is successful, there may be further attempts to develop submissions to the later three themes.

At the end of the process Demos, Wikimedia UK and the Open Coalition will prepare a report on the process and the effectiveness of this kind of approach to crowdsourcing policy and evidence. This paper will be released under an open licence. It is a real opportunity for everyone working in the open space to influence the debate about digital democracy and both Wikimedia UK, Demos and the Open Coalition thank you for engaging with this idea.

Background to the Call

The Speaker of the House of Commons of the UK, John Bercow, has established a Commission on Digital Democracy. It will report to Parliament in early 2015 with recommendations on how Parliament can use technology to better represent and engage with the electorate, make laws and hold the powerful to account. As part of their work, the Commission have issued a series of calls for evidence. These are open invitations for members of the public, either as individuals or groups, to submit responses to a series of questions. They have attracted responses from unions, academics, non-governmental institutions and private individuals. The first theme was ‘making laws in a digital age’, and the second on ‘digital scrutiny’. The Commission plans to shortly publish the final three themes.

There is a growing sense that the growth of the Internet has not paid the democratic dividends that it could. Turnout in formal political elections is steadily decreasing, and trust and support in the institutions and offices of mainstream political life are low and falling. Despite many innovative attempts from both within and outside of Government, the daily reality of democratic engagement for most people in the UK would be familiar to generations of British citizens who predate Facebook or email. The rise of the Internet has, broadly, done little to challenge concentrations of power or structures of unequal representation

Demos is one of Britain’s leading cross-party think tank and it has an overarching mission to bring politics closer to people. They contacted Wikimedia UK to propose an experiment: can an online community be used to source a response to this call? Can the ethos, community and technology like that of Wikipedia be used to engage Wikipedians to come together and collaborate to create a reply? In particular, Carl Miller, Research Director of the Demos Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, wrote this piece in for Wired in which he describes Wikipedia as a masterclass in digital democracy.

Ways to get involved

Open Coalition Meet & Greet - 19 May 2014

When: Mon, May 19, 4pm

Where: Wikimedia UK Office and online

Why? To help us start building the Open Coalition (and see old friends, make new ones and have a drink)

Join us in London to meet Bekka Kahn, the new co-ordinator at the Open Coalition, and get involved in building the coalition. We'll talk about improving communication, sharing experiences and start mapping out plans for the 6 months. We'll also have a dial-in set up for those who are outside the UK, so everyone can take part.

Can't make it to the Meet & Greet? There are some simple things you can do to get involved and help us build the coalition:

• Follow @opencoalition on Twitter for all the latest news
• Tweet this: Help spread open collaboration across the web. Join the #opencoalition
• Join our mailing list: open-coalition(at)googlegroups(dot)com either by dropping a note on the talk page or by emailing above
• Join the coalition - get involved on this wiki (later to be followed by a shared presence) and help to shape the project as it grows

As the project progresses more opportunities to participate will be listed here.

Next steps

Bekka and other people involved in the development of the coalition will maintain this page with latest news. The talk page can be used for questions, comments and general discussion.

Report, 16 June 2014

Progress

Since the Coalition started work at the start of May, progress has been made in two main areas - internal organisational development and projects involving external partners. Both have been given invaluable support by Wikimedia UK.

Internally, communications have been set up, specifically via a Google groups mailing list, and this is the main space where community building is taking place. One of the key objectives for this list is to recruit community members beyond the partner organisations, and involve organisations and individuals who are involved in different areas of open work and the open movement. Hosting has been purchased (although moving to another hosting service might be necessary) and the domain open-coalition.org has been secured.

In terms of engagement with external partners, the Coalition has secured programme space at the Open Knowledge Foundation’s OKFest (Berlin, mid-July) Wikimania (London, early-August) and Mozilla’s MozFest (London, late-October). Considering the current 6-month timeframe of the Coalition project, these events are useful progress markers for evaluating the project’s activities and achievements.

The Coalition has put out a call for submissions to the crowd sourcing democracy project which is being run in conjunction with Wikimedia UK and DEMOS - some submissions have been made and this process is ongoing. The Coalition also presented a short outline and general plan of action at the Wikimania Fringe Free Culture event on the weekend of June 7-8, and reception was good, with Wikimania Netherlands showing interest in the possibility of replicating or duplicating a similar project in Europe.

Priorities

Priorities for the moment are also both internal and external. Internally, we are working on developing the Coalition’s web presence via a website with an integrated blog and designing a logo. This is high priority.

Externally, the Coalition is working on the workshop session at OKFest, which will feed into an ongoing project to map the Open Space. This project has some overlap with a mapping project that the Open Knowledge Foundation and Open Data Institute are working on, and which we have discussed as a possible collaboration.

The Coalition is also working with the Wikimedia UK team on an Open Drinks networking event to take place in the lead-up to Wikimania, which will be important for networking, building the community and profile of the Coalition and for making first contact with potential funders.

Overall, this will be vital to extending the existence of the Coalition beyond the initial 6 months for which we currently have funding.

Process

So far, the process of establishing the Open Coalition has been refreshingly straightforward and simple. This is due to the support from Wikimedia UK which has been exceptional. However, if the project is to survive beyond October, support from other partner organisations is essential and this fundraising process has begun. Key to this is developing a communications strategy for the project, which will help to communicate projects and progress to the wider community online. This strategy is currently in development. The necessity of bringing in external help to build a website and design a logo (both of which are essential for developing the profile of the Coalition and differentiating it from Wikimedia UK) has been a bottleneck - hopefully this will be resolved soon, as quotes for the work have been received from several contractors and a decision will be made soon. In retrospect, the fact that the Coalition found itself involved in collaborations and projects such as the DEMOS project has meant that the project hit the ground running and some of the initial infrastructure set-up tasks were pushed back. However, most of these have been addressed, and the growing support for the Coalition and interest in projects from external groups is heartening.

One way to support this momentum is to establish a regular “Coalition Office Hour” - a live hangout online, at a convenient time, which is open to all who might want to log in and discuss Coalition projects.

Report July / August 2014

Progress

July and August were busy months for the Open Coalition. Much of the working time during these two months was spent talking to staff and representatives from other organisations, in an effort to gauge interest in and potential commitment to the Coalition. It is satisfying to report that the response to the Coalition as a project has been positive, and enthusiastic, from organisations across the board, not only those involved in the initial foundation of the project. 

The contacts made during the first three months of the Coalition’s activities are beginning to show rewards, both in terms of activities and securing potential funding. After successful sessions at both the Open Knowledge conference and Wikimania, the Coalition has partnered with staff from Creative Commons, The School of Open, Open Knowledge and Mozilla to develop several sessions for Mozilla’s MozFest, to be held in London in October 2014. These sessions focus on implementing open practices in organisational contexts, and developing critiques and best-practice solutions for open organisations.

The Coalition has also joined with Wikimedia Germany, Wikimedia Sweden and a consortium of other European digital rights organisations to apply for funding from the European Union to conduct activities and events around network building, increasing competencies and engaging in advocacy within the digital public sphere in Europe. These activities will focus primarily on European policy, and the implications of this policy on digital civil society within the Union. If this funding application is successful, the events will take place in early 2015. This may even generate a surplus because of the way the funding programme works. If this is the case it would be shared among the partners, including a contribution to the Coalition project

Closer to home, the Coalition is also planning an event for January 2015, which will involve partnering with Wikimedia UK, JISC, DEMOS and theLondon Knowledge Lab, to bring UK-based organisations and individuals together for a day of workshops and discussions concerned with open policy implementation in the UK.

Priorities

Now that the Coalition is halfway through its pilot timeline, the focus of the project has progressed from building consensus and momentum to consolidating activities and producing publications and materials. The website is under construction, and will serve as a repository for all materials produced by the project and any partners we work with. While there is general consensus from the broader community that materials relating to open practise and implementing open policies would be valuable, the plan is to crowdsource a more detailed breakdown of possible subjects from the members of the Coalition themselves. The first of these is a handbook for community managers in open organisations. The initial content for this resource will be written during the 2014 Mozfest, in dedicated sessions at the conference, and any text still needed will be completed as a follow-up to the event. 

Process

The Coalition  is entering a new phase, and this has highlighted the need for funding to extend the project. As a response to this, it will be important for the project to do some strategic planning, with as many stakeholders as is logistically possible. This exercise will allow us to evaluate how many of our initial objectives are reachable within the timeframe of the original project, if further funding is not forthcoming. It will also allow us to scope future activities which may be possible if we do secure funding. As part of this process, Wikimedia UK fundraising staff are working with the Coalition to develop project proposals.A plan for the dissemination and (if necessary) ongoing hosting of the materials produced by the project also needs to be developed.  

Report September/October 2014

Most of September’s time was spent working with WMUK developers to set up the domain and hosting details for the Open Coalition blog and website. We also met with staffers from the Guardian to discuss plans to involve WMUK volunteers and Coalition members in the Midlands Goodshed project they are planning.

October was a month of travel and conferences – I attended AdaCamp Berlin as a participant, with the help of a WMUK travel bursary. I also spent a week in Berlin working with Beatrice Martini from Open Knowledge to prepare for Mozfest. We were both invited by Mozilla to organise and wrangle an experimental track at the festival which focussed on Community Building. This was the first time Mozilla have included this theme in their festival, and it was a great recognition of the Coalition’s work to be invited.

The track allowed us to bring community managers and organizers from across the open space together to work on a variety of sessions, including 2 ongoing initiative – the Community Building Handbook, built with staffers from Mozilla and OKF (and which now has a home on the web) and a community source-code wall built with collaborators from Sprout Fund Pittsburgh. As well as running 15 sessions over two days, we worked with researchers from the MIT Media Lab to develop a survey for all participants, in order to surface qualitative and quantitative responses. 70 participants completed the survey, of whom 60 indicated a desire to continue working on projects and initiatives they learnt about at the festival via mailing lists and working groups.

Priorities

The Coalition website is now live, in beta. We are collecting feedback from the community and asking for help with the final finishing touches. The progress made on the Community Building Handbook will also be progressed in collaboration with Mozilla and any other volunteers who wish to help. This will go a long way to meeting the documentation goals outlined at the beginning of the project.

Process

This report brings the Open Coalition to the end of the first funded phase of the project. While the financial future of the project looks good (until the end of January 2015) this is a good time to consider the first six months of the project and evaluate progress against the initial goals. This will take the form of a report to be written during November/December 2014.

2014-15 report

Bekka Kahn has written a report based on the activities of the Coalition for the year 2014-15, from when she began work in May 2014 to February 2015. You can read the report here.

Open Coalition Activities Q1 & Q2 2015

Below is an outline of the Open Coalition's planned and upcoming activities for the first and second quarters of 2015. Some of these are short-term activities, with concrete outcomes which will be achieved over a few months, other are ongoing activities designed to support and develop capacity with and for our partners (both individuals and organisations working in the open sector) and others are longer term activities which are being planned, and will be implemented over the next 6 months. Each set of activities has been mapped to correspond to certain strategic outcomes for Wikimedia UK, as referenced below.

Planned & Committed

(Currently being executed at the present time, and over the next 3 months)

• Developing a resource library for open movement community managers and practitioners on www.open-coalition.org;   a multitude of high-quality, openly licensed materials on best practice, tools and organisational development exist on the web, produced by partner organisations, but sharing is decentralised. 

• Overhaul of www.open-coalition.org to reflect the shift from blog to knowledge hub

Maps to Goal: 

• G5.3 Wikimedia communities are skilled and capable.

• G5.4 Open knowledge communities with missions similar to our own are thriving

• G4.1 There are robust and efficient tools readily available to enable the creation, curation and dissemination of open knowledge.

Ongoing, short-term activities

(To be executed between the present and next 6 months)

• Adding and expanding chapters in Community Builders Toolkit in collaboration with Mozilla, Ushahidi, OpenDirective, SocialTIC
• Open Policy: work as a member of the steering committee of the Open Policy Network developing the programme for and selection of their second group of Open Policy Fellows

• Network building with open organisations in Berlin, including Wikimedia Deutschland, Hive Berlin, Mozilla  

Maps to Goals:  

• G3.2 There is increased awareness of the benefits of open knowledge.

• G5.1 A thriving set of other Wikimedia communities

In Planning

(To be executed between June and next 6 months)

• Developing a session on gender balance in open movement for the Creative Commons Summit (October 2015, Korea) in partnership with CC South Africa, and Web We Want Foundation.

Maps to Goal:

• G5.3 Wikimedia communities are skilled and capable.

• G5.4 Open knowledge communities with missions similar to our own are thriving.

Open Coalition Activities Q3 2015

Co-ordintaor Bekka Kahn is currently based in Berlin, where she is a summer fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. During the next 6 months, she will be speaking extensively to various meetings, seminars and research groups about the Open Coalition's work, and the value of openness in general web policy and governance. At the beginning of August the Coalition's seat on the Steering Committee of the Open Policy Network came to an end. The Coalition would like to thank everyone on the Committee for the experience, and wish the incoming Steering Committee members the best of luck.

Current and Upcoming

(Currently being executed at the present time, and over the next 3 months)

Policy Commentary

• Contributed submission with Creative Commons ZA on the Draft Online Regulation Policy published by the South African Government. See draft legislation here and a post outlining the responses to the draft here
• Currently working with Creative Commons ZA to provide comments on the Copyright Amendment Bill in South Africa, which has serious implications for the status of open scholarly communication and open sharing of materials in South Africa, both online and offline. Comments due at the end of August 2015.
• Have joined the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Open Leadership and will advise on the development of the Fellows programme incubeated Institute (incubated by Creative Commons) exists to train new leaders in education, science, and public policy fields on the values and implementation of openness in licensing, policies, and practices.

Maps to Goals:  

• G3.2 There is increased awareness of the benefits of open knowledge.
• G5.1 A thriving set of other Wikimedia communities

Community Building

• Working with Mozilla and School of Open on developing the model of Mozilla Clubs for online learning and developing literacy on the open web.
• Preparation underway for a session on Open Organisation Governance at the Creative Commons Summit in Seoul. (October 2015)
• Working with Mozilla on developing plan for a session at MozFest 2015 on Open Organisations.

Maps to Goals

• G5.3 Wikimedia communities are skilled and capable.
• G5.4 Open knowledge communities with missions similar to our own are thriving.