[foundation-board] Summary/FAQ for ePSIplatform project now on board wiki

Wed Jan 26 10:49:18 UTC 2011

Hi all,

I'm pleased to say that the ePSIplatform tender has been awarded to a
bidding team of which the Open Knowledge Foundation is a member. I've
prepared a brief FAQ (pasted below) to explain the main details of
this for the board, and I've attached the full proposal document to
the following page on the board wiki:

  http://board.okfn.org/ePSIplatform

All the best,

Jonathan

= Summary of ePSIplatform work =

== What does this project aim to do? ==

To continue, develop and extend the work done on the current (March
2009-February 2011) ePSI platform (epsiplatform.eu).

ePSIplatform is a policy network for people interested in public
sector information (PSI) in Europe, including government
representatives, legal/policy experts, and stakeholders in civic
society, the media and the private sector.

== Why is the OKF doing this? ==

This is a great opportunity to network with key PSI stakeholders and
government representatives in lots of different countries in order to
promote open government data policies, practises and projects across
Europe.

== What are the key objectives? ==

  * Creating and maintaining a web site as one-stop-shop, building on
the existing work of the current ePSI platform;
  * Further development of the community of relevant stakeholders;
  * A PSI advisory service and a Member State PSI Scoreboard;
  * Undertaking awareness raising actions.

== What is the budget? ==

Total budget is €549,050. OKF budget is put down as a subcontractor
with a budget of €62,850. We need to clarify that (as discussed) the
technical work (creation of website, sysadmin stuff, etc) is being
done out of central budget (ZENC?) and is not meant to be done out of
OKF's share?

== What, concretely, will the project be doing? ==

  * A one-stop-shop website
  * 10 weekly news items, 1040 in total
  * Event calendar
  * Lists of sources, spaces, search terms and people in the PSI domain
  * MS PSI Scoreboard including a narrative database
  * 24 Monthly reports
  * 6 Newsletters
  * 1000 new active users
  * 12 guest bloggers
  * 24 Mission Meetings
  * 2 Conferences
  * 2 Sectoral Workshops
  * 20 Information sheets
  * 24 Showcases of novel products/services

== What will the OKF be doing? ==

  * Community building / events / outreach
  * Building or overseeing the creation of the technical platform

== Who will be doing this? ==

The three people named in the application are:

  * Jonathan Gray
  * Daniel Dietrich
  * Antti Poikola

We also need a main technical contact, who could either do (some of)
the technical work, or liaise with and oversee work from external
technical contractor.

== What technical stuff will the OKF be doing? ==

More information on this on pp. 22-23 of the proposal document. An
excerpt of some of the features that were floated (but not necessarily
committed to):

  * Making the network of people visible, which is the first step to
more interaction. Such as the team and item and blog authors in
general as  individuals, by mentioning authors name, linked to a
profile and other items by that author;
  * Making interaction taking place much more centrally visible
(‘latest comments’, ‘latest registered users’);
  * Timeline based browsing, retrieval and findability of content
(what was news in September 2010 or April 2011?);
  * Sector and/or country based and/or key-word/topic based
(RSS-)feeds and overviews, allowing interest specific reading;
  * More accessible presentation of content in place of current lists
of only headlines;
  * Sharing each item in a visitors own social platforms with
one-click button (Twitter, Facebook, delicious.com etc.), helping
dissemination and information value creation for users;
  * Keeping track of links from elsewhere back to the content, thus
showing where content is used and discussed;
  * Log-in based on generic authentication services (OAuth etc.), so
that new users of the site do not need to register on the site
specifically but can use credentials from elsewhere;
  * Tag-based and tag-cloud based navigation, using the existing
key-words for the already existing content;
  * Tagging for all users, allowing visitors to increase relevance of
information for themselves;
  * More open commenting, lowering the threshold for participation;
  * Collection tool for stories regarding the impact of PSI (see
advisory service and MS PSI Scoreboard);
  * Extensive use of multimedia material (embedding of photos, video,
documents and presentations), making PSI more real, visible, and
tangible;
  * Possibilities of re-use of the platform’s own content and data for
external parties (applying re-use to ourselves, widgets);
  * Using all existing and coming content itself as a database to help
make development over time per country or sector visible, using
visualization techniques;
  * A public calendar all visitors can subscribe to with all PSI
related events in the EU and key events elsewhere, both on EU,
national and regional/local levels. (showing the volume of activities,
as well as pointing stakeholders to where they can connect to others).

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg