A better governance for the Frictionless Standards

Sara Petti

Funding Area: Community governance / Gobernanza comunitaria

Problem Statement: Frictionless Standards (https://frictionlessdata.io/) is a lightweight yet comprehensive set of open standards that assist data publishers and consumers in creating, using, and reusing data. Despite its broad recognition and community engagement, the standards have not been updated since their initial release a decade ago. The evolving internet requirements and demands from the user community necessitate the development of Frictionless Standards v2. To ensure inclusivity and address diverse needs, it is crucial to form a working group comprising representatives from different disciplines and capacities. This group will collaboratively establish a common data model, accommodating the requirements of all stakeholders or identifying minimal common ground. Additionally, the working group will devise a standardised process for creating domain-specific standards, leveraging existing community initiatives like the camera trap data package and fiscal data package. Enhancing the usability and accessibility of Frictionless Standards across disciplines is a primary objective. By iterating on the standards and incorporating new features, the project aims to meet the evolving demands of data stakeholders. Furthermore, establishing a solid and clear governance plan for Frictionless Standards is essential. Ownership issues have recently been resolved, enabling the core Frictionless team at Open Knowledge Foundation to make decisions and foster effective collaboration with the community.

Proposed Activities: Duration: 5 months Nov 2023 - Jan 2024: Resources needed: 0.4 FTE Community manager Conduct one community meeting to discuss the overall direction of the Frictionless project governance and announce the formation of a working group for the governance of the standards v2. Develop a recruitment plan for the working group, ensuring equal representation and equity. Consider providing honoraria to lower participation barriers. Design the governance of the working group. Finalise the functioning process and governance design of the working group. Share the governance plan with the community for feedback, allowing one month for comments and clarification requests. Select participants for the working group with intentional diversity in fields and backgrounds. Conduct a kick-off meeting. Dedicate a community call to gather input from community members, allowing them to share their ideas and provide context for future decision-making. Feb - Mar 2024: Resources needed: 0.4 FTE Community manager, 0.3 Tech Lead/Dev Facilitate monthly working group meetings. Provide regular updates to the community through a dedicated channel. Release governance of Frictionless Standards v2. Present the release at a community call. Present Frictionless Standards v2 and community governance at FOSDEM (e.g., in Community DevRoom). Begin prototype work on domain-specific standards. Develop a standard practice for domain-specific standards.

Openness: All the source code, project roadmap is openly available with a MIT License on GitHub. The ultimate goal of Frictionless Standards is fully aligned with the FAIR principles: Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of digital assets. Being an open-source project, Frictionless Data has a rich and growing community. We receive hundreds of code contributions (you can check them out on our website: https://frictionlessdata.io/people/#code-contributors) and we interact with users on a daily basis via GitHub issues, or via our community chat on Slack (also accessible via a Matrix bridge for those who prefer to use an open protocol), to understand their needs, identify bugs, and share ideas about new possible features and integrations. The community notably maintains the Frictionless Universe - a series of projects based on Frictionless Software and Standards in different programming languages (like R), and develops projects that use the Frictionless Data tooling (here’s a non exhaustive list: https://frictionlessdata.io/adoption/#community-projects). We support the community with monthly calls, which are great opportunities for our community to present their projects using Frictionless and get feedback from others. They are also a place to network, chat, and in general build community.

Challenges: Anticipated Challenges: Relying on the availability and motivation of single persons is not ideal. Thus, transitioning towards a more open system of governance with shared responsibilities is necessary, considering the nature of the project. Ensuring the sustainability of the working group poses a challenge. Strategies must be developed to attract new members while anticipating potential dropouts and changes in interests along the way. While the bulk of the work involves designing the process, establishing working groups, and conducting desk research on governance (partially completed), maintaining financial support for community management remains essential. Ensuring representation within the working group is another challenge. Establishing a system of honoraria for participants can help lower the financial barrier to participation and promote representation. Efforts will be made to engage a comprehensive understanding of user expectations and concerns. We will design strategies to encourage participation from underrepresented groups. Within the community, fostering respectful dialogue and embracing diverse viewpoints are already promoted, and it will be a priority to maintain and strengthen this environment. Overcoming these challenges will be crucial to successfully iterate on Frictionless Standards, incorporate diverse perspectives, and develop a transparent and effective governance framework.

Neglectedness: We have secured funding for the technical work required to develop the v2 of the Frictionless standards through NLnet NGI0 Entrust Fund. However, unfortunately NLnet can only cover minimal community work under this funding plan, despite its paramount importance to our project. During our recent monthly call in April, a community member clearly expressed the need for more clarity on the governance and increased community involvement in the standards work. But NLnet has stated that the funding scheme we applied to does not cover community and governance work. Currently, Open Knowledge Foundation sponsors the community management, but we anticipate a surge in workload when we begin updating the standards. Funding opportunities for this type of work are challenging to find, even though community participation and collaboration, which heavily rely on effective governance, are fundamental aspects of healthy open-source projects.

Success: Success can be measured through indicators on the adoption of the Standards by data publishers, consumers, and scientists. This can be evaluated by tracking the number of organisations and individuals implementing the standards, the volume of data published and consumed using the standards, and gathering user feedback. Active community engagement is another measure of success, assessed by the level of participation and involvement of community members in the working group, community meetings, and discussions. The effectiveness of the community engagement strategy can be determined by monitoring participant numbers, diversity, and contribution levels. Continuous feedback and iteration based on user input and community discussions are crucial for success in addressing user requirements. The establishment of a clear and transparent governance plan, along with the effective functioning of the working group, indicates success in promoting collaborative decision-making and community participation. The project's long term sustainability is essential, and success can be evaluated by assessing continued community engagement, adaptability to evolving needs and technological advancements. Overall, success will be measured by widespread adoption, active community engagement, incorporation of user feedback, effective governance and collaboration, and long-term sustainability. These indicators collectively demonstrate the achievement of project objectives and the fulfilment of user needs.

Total Budget: $18,238

Affiliations: Open Knowledge Foundation

LMIE Carveout: No, despite having a broad community in LMIEs (and particularly Latin America).

Team Skills: Evgeny Karev has been the Tech Lead of the Frictionless Data project since 2016. He is a software Engineer and Architect from Portugal with extensive experience in system creation and problem-solving. Expert Python/JavaScript programmer. Highly motivated on getting things done and keen on continuous learning. Passionate open-source developer. Shashi Gharti is a software developer from Nepal, and has been a Frictionless developer for over a year. She did her MSc in Computer Science from AIT, Thailand. She loves coding and learning new technologies. She enjoys the process of developing applications, exploring new ideas and working with the team. In her free time, she also likes to contribute to open source projects and keep up with recent developments in machine learning and AI research. Sara Petti has been the Frictionless Data Community Manager since January 2021. Since she joined, she has organised 30 community calls, one Frictionless hackathon, and has presented in several fora ways to use Frictionless to make one’s data workflow more reproducible. She has written over 30 blogs about Frictionless, and together with Evgeny Karev, an article about the Frictionless standards and community. Sara knows the Frictionless community very well.

Submission Number: 24