Main Page

From Global Development Commons

Jump to: navigation, search

Global Development Commons Wiki

Introduction: This wiki is a space for collaboration to build upon the efforts of the Global Development Commons (Commons). The concept of the Commons is a call to increase access to information for people in developing countries. It seeks to provide both a space and an infrastructure to enable the virtual and physical sharing of technology innovation to increase access to information and ideas to make progress in international development - human, social and economic development.

The Global Development Commons concept was launched in 2007 by US Agency for International Development's Administrator Henrietta H. Fore and is outlined at USAID's Commons page (http://www.usaid.gov/commons) and (http://www.GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net).

This wiki is hosted by Forum One Communications as a neutral space for any players in the development sector to share ideas about what the GDC could become and how it can grow. Please register and add your own ideas to this wiki.


Pilot Project - "Jump-Starting the GDC Content Ecosystem"

We've posted a detailed description of pilot project entitled "Jump-Starting the GDC Content Ecosystem." 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.

Definitions

Definition - The Global Development Commons

  • 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.

USAID Definitions

In USAID slide show it outlines the GDC as...

  • A virtual space where development stakeholders share information and exchange ideas in real-time.
  • Not owned by any one government, business, or entity but by the development user community.
  • Builds on recent dramatic changes in the development assistance landscape.
  • Repositions information sharing to optimize fast-paced changes in the internet, communications, and web-based applications.
  • Responds to consumer and end-user information needs.

Guiding Principles

The Global Development Commons is an "ecosystem" of online content and services that helps the international development community make progress on important issues of human, social and economic development. Some guiding principles:

Destination

The Global Development Commons is not a web site or web property – or even a suite of web sites. It is an initiative to increase access to information and to incite international development practitioners to collaborate for a more open approach to development. It creates an interconnected set of services and information/content floating among those services, made possible by the use of common standards and tools.

Ownership

The Global Development Commons is a collaborative effort of many content sources and online service providers. It is catalyzed by USAID, who is coordinating, defining and exploring common standards and other pilots around technolgoy that promote a Commons. But there is no “ownership” of the Global Development Commons, any more than anyone “owns” the Internet.

Open Legal Standards

The GDC is based upon legal standards to encourage the sharing of content online. Contributions from individuals or organizations will be appropriately attributed in whatever manner the creators of the content specify. A logical set of open legal standards to use is the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) and described along with the Science Commons here: http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/AReviewofCreativeCommonsa/40575?time=1206543273),

Open Technical Standards

The GDC is built upon open technical standards which enable information flow. This will make possible the innovative use and reuse of information in unexpected and valuable ways! (Example – see ReadWriteWeb post on the semantic web http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_supports_semantic_web.php The GDC uses existing open technical standards whenever possible, and when developing new standards follows existing approaches. (Example – see the “Resource Description Framework” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework )

Quality

There is no central quality control on the GDC, but many people will develop services which aid in the filtering and rating of information. Much as there is no quality control on the internet, but many services which aid users in finding and identifying what is reputable and high quality.

Content

The GDC supports the sharing of content in many forms – data, information, analysis, opinion, multi-media files, individual profiles, organizational profiles, discussions, blog posts, social networks, value-adding services, etc.

Key Elements

Key Elements - ie "How to"

  • "Glossary of Humanitarian Terms" (PDF file) , via ReliefWeb / OCHA. (How much definition of terms is needed, versus relying on a concise set of meta-data terms and leaving most other content definition to open tagging?)
  • Content/data standards and infrastructure enable individual actors (sources) to publish information online which is then readily available to users.
  • Content standards like MicroFormat standards, provide some minimal common meta-data, while also allowing for unstructured tagging.
  • Infrastructure like ping servers, provide interconnections between various information sources.
  • GDC operates as a network - multiple sources contributing information in readily machine readable formats, with an infrastructure (eg ping servers) tracking contributions, and tools to enable users to filter/track what information types on which topics they need.
  • Sources publish their information online in their own URLs, using GDC information formats, and with automatic notificiation to ping servers.
  • Ping servers and other infrastructure services are provided in a collaborative effort of various development stakeholders - each providing a service but owning or controlling nothing.
  • Open source approach facilitates the development of tools and services to leverage the information contributions.

Commons Examples / Resources

There are numerous different flavors of commons - and this listing is intended to provide examples. Please add more!

  • Curriki Curriki is a project started by "Sun Microsystems to develop works for education in a collaborative effort." The site features various types of curriculum content across a range of subjects, and community tools for groups to form and share ideas on topics. The site says it is... "more than your average website; we're a community of educators, learners and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world." The site allows users to:

- Develop, publish, and access open source curricula. - Access free, high-quality lesson plans and courses. - Contribute your best content for teaching and learning. - Create new learning resources. - Revise or give feedback on the learning materials shared by others.

"Our Currikulum Builder enables users to select individual lesson plans, course syllabi, learning activities, scope and sequence hierarchies, and other educational elements found at www.curriki.org to build a complete, fully-integrated curriculum."

Our assessment - the site (http://www.curriki.org) provides a destination location to create and share education content in a collaborative manner. The content appears to be housed using content standards, but the standards are not leveraged to allow the dynamic re-use of the content (such as though an open API). As such the site is a great collaborative education resource - but it is a destination site and not indicative of a "commons" approach.

  • Coalition for the Global Commons "The Coalition for the Global Commons seeks to provide a multilateral platform in politics, economics, civil society, science, religious communities, academia, and the media that will enable leaders, experts and the public across the world to work together for a new system of global economic and political cooperation." http://www.global-commons.org/display/CGC2/Home
  • Information Commons: "The phrase "Information Commons" refers to our shared knowledge-base and the processes that facilitate or hinder its use. It also refers to a physical space, usually in an academic library, where any and all can participate in the processes of information research, gathering and production. The term commons refers to the land (or common grounds) that villagers shared for grazing purposes in simpler times. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Commons

  • Science Commons: "Science Commons designs strategies and tools for faster, more efficient web-enabled scientific research." http://sciencecommons.org/

"Science Commons has three interlocking initiatives designed to accelerate the research cycle — the continuous production and reuse of knowledge that is at the heart of the scientific method. Together, they form the building blocks of a new collaborative infrastructure to make scientific discovery easier by design.

RDF or Resource Description Framework, a meta-data standard and more, "(t)he RDF metadata model is based upon the idea of making statements about resources in the form of subject-predicate-object expressions."

  • Wikimedia Commons: "(a) database of 2,606,070 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute..."

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

  • Policy Commons: "The policy commons is the place where public resources used to improve participatory governance are identified, critiqued, organized, and discussed." The site provides a blog and news aggregator about commons relating to governance/e-government efforts, by Dave Witzel (of Forum One Communications). PolicyCommons.org
  • MicroFormats

"Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards." The MicroFormats.org initiative shows a collaborative/community approach to develop standards for MicroFormats. The initiative has people working on a number of MicroFormats - and completed ones include hCalendar, xFolk for collections of bookmarks, and draft formats like hResume for resumes.

  • Population and Health InfoShare

A collaborative online library of information on population and health issues (http://www.phishare.org), with more than 2200 documents contributed by more than 140 partner organizations. This is sponsored by the Population Reference Bureau, and is a great example of a shared clearinghouse that is more valuable than any of the individual partners could have developed on their own. (Note - site developed with services from Forum One Communications.)

That said, PHIShare is really not a commons in that PRB controls which partner organizations are invited to contribute.

  • Development Gateway

The Development Gateway online resources portal features knowledge sharing platforms aimed at improving the effectiveness of development efforts. The target audience is development practitioners. The Development Gateway promotes the use of open source software, common systems and open standards. http://www.developmentgateway.org

  • OneWorld

http://www.oneworld.net

  • Global Assembly

An experimental site where software for bottom up prioritizing is being developed. http://www.globalassembly.net

  • ReliefWeb / UN Office for the Coordinationof Humanitarian Affairs

The ReliefWeb site compiles information from many players in the relief sector, but is not open to any contributors. ReliefWeb has outgoing RSS feeds but does not otherwise use open standards to enable the re-use of content. http://www.reliefweb.int

Related Events

See & Post Related Events

Suggested Pilot Projects

A smart approach for the GDC is to find a few good pilot projects to succeed! Some suggested information/content types which would be of great value if more readily compiled and available for development workers include:

  • Job vacancies - help organizations get the people they need when they need them
  • Who is doing what where - overview of the work of players in a geographic region
  • Situation reports - what is happening on the ground at a specific time
  • Funding needs - who needs funding for what and when
  • Business opportunities - who needs business services, for what, where and when
  • Expert/expertise/resume - individuals and the expertise they provide
  • Geographic information - geographic data sets and information about GIS tools
  • etc

License?

We'd like many people to contribute to this wiki and these ideas, and to take these ideas and further develop them whereever and however. But in the interests of giving and getting credit for the many who will contribute to this wiki, we ask that if you directly re-use original content from this wiki, that you provide attribution in the form of "From the Development Commons Wiki at www.developmentcommons.org"

We're exploring whether the "Attribution 3.0 Unported" license of the Creative Commons makes sense for this wiki - what do you suggest?


Retrieved from "http://www.developmentcommons.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page"
Personal tools