[okfn-coord] Where does my money go spec for 4IP

Mon Sep 21 16:29:05 UTC 2009

2009/9/21 Martin Keegan <martin at no.ucant.org>:
> On Fri, 18 Sep 2009, paula le dieu wrote:
>
>> I think if everyone is happy and confident that we can make a real go of
>> it with MS then we should definitely go ahead and do that! :)
>
> I'm certainly happy for us to work with them. If we're going to do that,
> let's formally say so among ourselves, and work out how to amend our
> application to include MS.
>
> How do we answer 4IP's interest in "our development capacity [and] the
> named individuals that will be working on the project."  ? Does partnering
> with MS give us better credibility here? We used to employ contractors on
> short projects (e.g., John Bywater, IIRC), and I presume MS currently does
> so.

Over the w/e and today I filled in the 4IP "questionnaire" (see email
at start of this thread):

<http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYn3JiuouxLUZGN0eGIzOWNfOGhwbXpnNWdt>

Please could people look over quickly and add/comment as necessary.

As this makes clear I don't think we really have any problems with our
development capacity on this project. We've now built a handful of
websites over the last few years ourselves, we have good contacts with
Iconomical (a good bunch of designers) who are working on our WDMMG
prototype (funded by 7.8k from Cabinet Office), we've already done
research in this area etc etc.

My plan is to send this over to 4IP with a covering note saying that
here is our response to their questions. However, we have recently
been contacted by MySociety who are interested in collaborating with
us and while we don't think we'd have any difficulties delivering on
the project as it currently stands, we think it would make a lot of
sense to work on them.

We have explained to MySociety that we have already made an
application to yourselves and they have suggested that it might be
possible to put our existing application on hold and make a new one
with them. Before doing this we wanted to ask you whether this would
be acceptable and whether this would affect negatively in any way
their evaluation of a new application.

Regards,

Rufus