[foundation-board] (regular) Update from Pavel

Wed Aug 19 16:19:09 UTC 2015

Dear all,

please find below an update on important developemnts here at Open
Knowledge International. You can find the text as a Google Document here
<https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/1B4eWorc4MJ5vgNdifouXoMcmbqjo8OZFVVbuehlqIo0/edit?usp=sharing>
.
Purpose of this Document

Dear all

I want to make sure I am keeping the Board informed about important
developments within Open Knowledge. I want to try out doing this as an
regular update email about major developments and  areas of advice. Please
see this as an extra layer of information, in addition to our meetings and
my regular calls with Karin as the Board chair.

I will put actions/questions at the end of each section and underlined, for
example:

It would be great to get feedback from you on this format (as well as on
the content, of course). Is this helpfull for you? Do you require more (or
less) detail? Are you missing anything (the notes below cover a period of
roughly four weeks, so anything prior to this has been mentioned by me on
the last board meeting). How often would you like to receive these updates?

This update includes

   1.

   Operations
   2.

   Funding
   3.

   HR / Staff
   4.

   Financials
   5.

   The Board and strategy development

   1. Operations

Operational Focus for Open Knowledge International

Currently, I am working on a proposal to focus the activities of Open
Knowledge International. In the past, we have taken on many projects in
many geographic and thematic areas, funded from a huge variety of funders.
At the moment, we are running around 45+ projects, funded from more than 40
different grant agreements.

Of course, we will honor our commitments towards our partners and funders
and continue our current projects (we will review, however, all projects
that are funded from unrestricted fund and retire projects in the process).

For the next 12 months, OKI will focus on sub-Saharan Africa as a region,
and on leadership development as an approach of change. So, going forward,
we will develop projects and seek fundings mainly in these areas. We will
review this after 6 months and after 12 months. (Please note, all funding
opportunities that are mature right now, we will continue to close. The
focus applies only to new opportunities, with new or existing funders.

I will attend the Africa Open Data Conference in early September in Dar es
Salaam / Tanzania. My main activity will be identifying partners and
individuals to engage in the next 12 months, building a network of local
partners and supporters, as well as potential leaders.

Could you all reach out to their respective networks and identify
organizations or individuals who might be at that conference. Please be so
kind to introduce me to them, so that I can connect while I am in Tanzania.

One immediate consequence of this focus will be seen in our hiring
approach: We will hire a number of project assistants to support our
project managers, and we will hire two new project managers, to replace
people who left the organization. All these new hires will be filled with
people based in sub-Saharan Africa.

Org chart / role definitions

I am working on a new org chart, that reflects our delivery approach going
forward, and that gives more clarity on roles within the organization. You
have seen a first draft of this chart during our last meeting in London.

In addition, we are improving and clarifying various processes (resourcing
of projects, reporting, inboarding, etc.).

Future of our commercial operations

As discussed before, we are currently working on a plan to spin-off all our
commercial CKAN operations into a separate, for-profit entity, controlled
by Open Knowledge. We are in talks with a potential CEO who would lead this
new entity. Rufus, who I asked to lead on this, is working out the details
now and will initiate board approval shortly.

   1. Funding

Open Society Foundation

We are currently pursuing a number of interesting funding opportunities.
With existing funders, we are talking with the Open Society Foundation,
which has indicated that it wants to extend our existing grant by another
100.000 USD to support School of Data.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

I have been contacted by Patrick Rossol-Allison from the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation; Patrick works on Higher Education approaches in the US
for the foundation and reached out to me to understand what we are doing
and how we could work together.

   1. HR / Staff

I am looking for a COO (temp or permanently), and hope to send out a job
description asap.

Open Knowledge International will hold an all-hands meeting on October 7th
2015 (with everybody arriving a day early). The location and agenda are
TBD, but I have asked Karin to attend at one point to represent the Board. We
will have a dinner on 6th of October 2015, and it would be great if many of
you would find the time to join me and the staff for that.

Even so the location is TBD, it will be in Brighton. If you are planning to
come, please ping Naomi (naomi.lillie at okfn.org), who can also help with a
hotel if you need one.

Marieke Guy gave us notice that she will leave OKI by mid September;
Starting with her departure, I will have exit interviews with people who
leave us, to better understand why they leave us and if we could have done
anything better.

In the case of Daniela Mattern, we did not receive any further
communication from her lawyer. The deadline for substantiating her claim
with the tribunal will be in around 8 days.

   1. Financials

Michelle has finalized the accounts for the financial year ending May 2015;
she asks who at the board would be willing to review the accounts. Karin
and I wondered if you might Tim or Jane?

I have commissioned a freelancer to review or financial systems and to
design certain reports (management and project reports) to accurately
report on our overall finances, as well as on actuals for all our running
and future projects.

   1. The Board and strategy development process

The finance committee is vacant at the moment and needs to be filled.

Just so that I have already mentioned it here: It would be great if we
(Board and CEO) could schedule a two day offsite meeting early next year,
so that we can work together on strategic directions for OKI; it would be
very helpful to develop a common understanding of our Theory of Change as
an organization, so that the staff and I have a clear direction for our day
by day operations.

The next in person meeting is on 9th September 2015 in London. I will
confirm locations asap, but if anyone of you could make room in their
offices, that would be great. Please ping Naomi (naomi.lillie at okfn.org) if
you have space that we could use.

I will sent the next CEO Update on 4th September 2015.

-- 
Kind regards

Pavel Richter
CEO
Open Knowledge
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