Jump-Starting the GDC Content Ecosystem
From Global Development Commons
Contents |
Introduction
version 9-26-08 cwolz, kvoelker
We outline here a possible pilot project to get started in testing the concept of a Global Development Commons as an open ecosystem of content and services, made possible by the use of content standards, web best practices, collaboration between key development sector partners, and the innovative application of online services.
This document outlines a pilot project to jump-start participation in building the Global Development Commons. The project will lead to the launch of a demonstration web content aggregation standard and service that can be widely adopted by organizations in the development sector.
The project will demonstrate how an online service, based on open and transparent web technical standards, can enable a range of organizations to contribute content to "The Commons", and how other organizations can develop services that aggregate and republish the content.
Together these two effects - the open publishing using standards, and the ability of organizations to aggregate and repurpose that content - will expand the reach, findability, and value of development content from multiple players. Development organizations will be able to have their content reach and be used by a much wider audience than they can just publishing materials on their own web sites. And other development players can, on their own, build innovative online services that take and repurpose that content to meet their needs.
This pilot is an example of starting the "ecosystem" of the Development Commons, where multiple content providers and content services work together, made possible by a standards-based approach. The ecosystem does not depend on any single web property or sponsor for its success, and so is a robust "business model." The success of the pilot will be indicated by the growth in participation of organizations adopting the content standards and developing services to use the content. This adoption may take months and years but the pilot is a necessary first step to demonstrate what can be done and to engage a few key player sin participating.
A sponsor is needed to play a valuable role in sponsoring this pilot project, to show what is possible. The sponsor must also, to foster the project success, ensure that the content and organizations involved in the pilot are a wide range of development players and not focused primarily on its own work and content. In the long-term the sponsor can certainly be a key contributor of content and services, but to engage the participation of the development sector, the sponsor will need to ensure that the pilot project is not overly sponsor-focused.
The Pilot project will provide an initial demonstration of these Global Development Commons principles: (See http://www.developmentcommons.org)
- An ecosystem to enable the sharing of information and ideas on the internet among international development stakeholders.
- Is enabled by the contributions of various sources and contributing partners, each of which own and control their contributions.
- Any individual or organization can contribute, and any individual or organization can make use of the information that composes the GDC.
- The GDC uses open- and nonproprietary standards for information and technology to encourage inter-operability, cost-effectiveness, and wide adoption.
- It is supported by a robust network of online services to track and organize information, services which are provided by multiple players in collaboration.
- It can be composed of information at various levels - data, information, opinions, discussions, tools, and more.
Pilot Project Approach
- Selection:
Identify several valuable types of development-sector related content and activities (e.g. situation reports, needs assessments, project descriptions, job vacancies, project needs, inquiries to the development community). This definition will be done in consultation with web information experts from several development organizations (eg the international NGO community, multi-lateral organizations, on-the-ground national development NGOs.) The focus will be on identifying a few content types that will be of immediate apparent value to the development sector.
- Develop standards:
Develop open web content standards for those content types. This definition will be done in consideration of existing open content standards (e.g. microformat standards), to buld on prior work. The standard will define, for example, a core set of information fields (topic, georgraphy, organization, time, nature of content...) and some open tagging fields, sufficient to allow filerting and categorizing, but not so overly-defined as to be a burden to adoption.
- Collect and channel
Pilot service will collect content from several key development players and channel into the standard formats. We propose that the pilot begin by aggregating existing information streams from development organizations' web sites, using RSS where available, and modern screen-scraping tools where not available. The pilot service will then transform the aggregated content to meet the shared GDC content standard, making the standardized content feeds freely available to the development community.
- Develop publishing plugins for popular platforms
We want development practitioners to be able to easily publish their own GDC standard content feeds for use by any service within the GDC ecosystem. We know that most programs, projects, and organizations working in the development community today already publish a great deal of valuable information to the web. The pilot will produce "plugins" that will integrate with existing web publishing platforms (e.g Microsoft Sharepoint, Drupal, Wordpress). These plugins will allow existing web site publishers to automatically publish their existing development content using the GDC standard with minimal effort.
- Develop aggregation service and site
Develop a web-based aggregation service to demonstrate how the content can be filter/streamed, and used by any parties. The portal will provide the aggregated content in a way that users can filtered and sort as is valuable to them. Most importantly, the portal will promote how other organizations can adopt the standard to publish their own web content into this content Commons.
- Promote adoption
Go to key development organizationsto demonstrate the pilot project and how they can participate. We will identify 20 key organizations and associations in the development sector who would be prime candidates to publish to the Common or to develop tools to repurpose content, and initiate discussions, demonstrations, and - as needed - coordination with them to enlist their participation.
Schedule
The Pilot project can be developed and the portal launched within three months. The "Promote Adoption" phase is also critical to success, and should be scheduled for another three month period.
Questions? Ideas? Suggestions?
Post your ideas or questions here or contacts us - wolz@forumone.com
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