The following work areas and objectives were presented and agreed at the Annual Partners Meeting on 16 January 2014:
1. Strengthen the Partnership
We shall:
1.1 Develop a shared vision statement (how we want the world to be)
1.2 Promote connections among the Partners and among individual Dgroups
1.2.1 Increase knowledge sharing and communication among Dgroups Partners (?role for KM4Dev)
1.2.2 Increase visibility and navigability of individual Dgroups and how they relate to each other, by primary theme sector (eg health, education, agriculture, environment, human rights), theme geography (eg Euro, Africa, Asia, Americas) and language (eg En, Fr, Sp, Pt).
1.2.3 Create a visual map of Dgroups using DebateGraph
1.3 Promote connections with other CoPs (outside Dgroups)
1.3.1 Progressive mapping of Global CoP ecosystem
1.3.2 Explore potential for Dgroups to lead efforts towards a long-term goal (2020):
– All (open) Communities of Practice will be readily visible and searchable by moderators and users.
– All (open) CoPs will be able to connect and share seamlessly with one another
– All (open) CoPs will be able to harness the collective intelligence of their members (multi-stakeholder input into policy and practice).
2. Platform improvement
We shall:
2.1 Continue to improve the platform through a user-driven process. (Lead person: Kristin Kolshus)
2.1.1 Address the “top 3 priorities” identified by [redesign]
2.1.2 Continue to monitor all requests and ideas for functionality improvements raised through the [redesign] discussion group and continue to make freely available to all users.
2.1.3 Continue to assess the feasibility (or otherwise) and provide progress updates on each request.
2.2 Improve metadata and public directory (Lead person: Pier Andrea Pirani)
2.3 Continue to explore how Dgroups can take advantage of mobile opportunities
2.4 Continue to develop API in response to demand (Lead person: Hapee de Groot)
3. Service reliability
Working with WA-Research, we shall:
3.1 Continue to maintain service reliability at or very near to 100%.
3.2 Continue to increase our disaster preparedness, so that normal service is maintained in the event of disaster (eg technical breakdown, illness, injury).
4. Users’ support for optimum use of the platform
We shall:
4.1 Introduce peer support/training programme (Dgroups Training module – ECDP)
4.2 Continue to organize regular online peer exchange sessions (1 each quarter)
4.3 Continue to develop dgroups.info website, including regular blog posts, presentations.
5. Engagement with current partners
We shall:
5.1 Continue to have regular communications with all our Partners, through 1-to-1 calls (at least 2 times per year).
6. Marketing and outreach (Lead person: Sarah Cummings)
We shall:
6.1 Enrol 6 new organizations into the Partnership
6.2 Produce leaflet in different languages
6.3 Coordinate and provide support to at least 6 Partners to promote Dgroups at conferences and through their websites (conference calendar, leaflets, PPT)
6.4 Build personas.
7. Governance
We shall:
7.1 Expand the number, skills and influence of the Board
7.2 Continue to improve Board representation: gender and geographical location
8. Finance (Lead person: Rob Witte, Treasurer)
We shall:
8.1 Implement new membership and financial contribution structure
8.2 Strengthen the financial position of the Dgroups Foundation.
9. Monitoring and evaluation
We shall:
9.1 Provide basic stats to Partners on a quarterly basis
9.2 Collect examples of benefits/impact.