<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> To clarify the process, the OSfA Open Government Report Card Project, which Tom Rabon and I chair, has lead on this.  The project -- along with the other two projects listed separately from the 11 Working Groups at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/working-groups">http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/working-groups</a> -- is an outgrowth of work begun earlier this summer within the OSfA Steering Committee and remains under the watchful eye of the Steering Committee.  As such, it is different than the 11 Working Groups, including the Acquisitions Working Group, and did not have a traditional working group development.  I defer to Gunnar and the Acquisitions Working Group Chair on how best to proceed with that Working Group's mission and activities. As to the substance, Tom and I (and the rest of the OSfA Steering Committee) put long hours into whether and how to take on this initiative.  There was early consensus that if OSfA was to take on a scorecard project, then we must do so in the broader context referenced by Gunnar.   Not only must we be conscious of our destination, we must also not take ourselves to an unintended and unhelpful destination -- good intentions are no reward if we have unintentionally created the "Peter Quinn Memorial Award".   And so we seek assistance on the list of questions/metrics, and especially on questions/metrics that can be added that relate directly to oss.  But the overall "open government" approach for the project has already been established. Chris <div class="moz-signature"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="450"> <tbody> <tr valign="top"> <td height="121" width="121"><a href="http://www.sun.com"><img moz-do-not-send="true" src="http://www.sun.com/emrkt/sigs/6g_top.gif" border="0" height="116" width="121"></a></td> <td style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px;" height="121" width="329">Mr. Christopher Hankin Sr Director of Federal Affairs Sun Microsystems, Inc. 1300 I St, NW, Suite 420E Washington, DC 20005 US Phone 202-326-7522 Email <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Chris.Hankin@Sun.COM">Chris.Hankin@Sun.COM</a> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> On 12/01/09 07:30, John M. Pugh wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:4B1536A8.5070307@canonical.com" type="cite">On 12/01/2009 09:59 AM, Andy Oram wrote: <blockquote type="cite">We seem to have skipped some steps in the traditional development of a working group: although OSA as a whole has a mission statement, the acquisitions working group could benefit from its own mission statement. These activities seem time-consuming and bureaucratic, but they do help to get people excited about the group and help everyone focus on what is really important. I'm willing to go along, whether we focus on open source software or on the larger openness goal in government. Andy </blockquote> I strongly believe that we must align to what we want to accomplish in any task. You must have an end result in mind  - like climbing a mountain or driving to a destination - there is an end result to are striving to accomplish. For starters the end result for the "report card" working group is to show the target audience how they are performing when it comes to the adoption of open source software. The path to that end result is through changing how open government occurs to the target audience. This is accomplished by using generative language to suggest or enroll them in new possibilities. I agree with Andy that the conversation is sided a bit too strongly on the side of open government without the proper correlation to generate the possibility mentioned earlier. Having not dug deeply into the acquisitions working group's role, I am not prepared to bring a message forward, but having read what Gunnar is attempting to accomplish I can intelligently describe a route I believe is appropriate. JP _______________________________________________ report-card mailing list <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:report-card@opensourceforamerica.org">report-card@opensourceforamerica.org</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://opensourceforamerica.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/report-card">http://opensourceforamerica.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/report-card</a> </blockquote> </body> </html>