Earth System CoG
Governance
Why care about governance?
Studies have shown that defining a project's goverance is highly correlated with project sucess (Bannerman, 2009) (Dubinsky, 2011).
Governance aligns an organization’s practices and procedures with its goals, purposes, and values. Definitions vary, but in general governance involves overseeing, steering, and articulating organizational norms and processes (as opposed to managerial activities such as detailed planning and allocation of effort). Styles of governance range from authoritarian to communalist to anarchical, each with advantages and drawbacks. We have chosen to define our governance ontology after Bannerman (2009) which defines governance as structures, processes, and relational mechanisms:
- Structures include organizational entities such as steering committees or working groups.
- Processes included defined tasks that accomplish a projects goal.
- Relational mechanisms are arrangements that facilitate the communication between groups.
We have modified Bannerman (2009) to further divide governance into two levels of effort...strategic and operational. This division is useful when examining the project governance roll-up.
- A strategic entity is one involved with the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests of a project and the means of achieving them.
- An operational entity is involved with the the routine functioning and activities of the project.
Each of the ontological entities below can be divided into strategic and operational versions. The only difference between is the controlled vocabulary associated with each. For ease of understanding, they are listed separately.
Governance Structures
1) Strategic Bodies
| Attribute Name | Definition | Required | Cardinality | Controlled Vocabulary |
| Title | N/A |
Yes | 1 | N/A |
| Description | N/A |
Yes | 1 | N/A |
| Members | N/A |
No | Multiple | N/A |
| Terms of Reference | A description of the duties and responsibilities of the organizational body. | No | 1 | N/A |
| Purpose/Role | N/A |
Yes | Multiple |
|
| Meeting Frequency | N/A | No | 1 |
|
2) Operational Bodies
| Attribute Name | Definition | Required | Cardinality | Controlled Vocabulary |
| Title | N/A | Yes | 1 | N/A |
| Description | N/A | Yes | 1 | N/A |
| Members | N/A | No | Multiple | N/A |
| Terms of Reference | A description of the duties and responsibilities of the organizational body. | No | 1 | |
| Purpose/Role | N/A | Yes | Multiple |
|
| Meeting Frequency | N/A | No | 1 |
|
3) Lead (e.g. Strategic) Organizational Roles
| Attribute Name | Definition | Required | Cardinality within the Object | Controlled Vocabulary |
| Title | String used to succintly describe a organizational role. |
Yes | 1 | NA |
| Description | Long description providing extra information about an organizational role. | No | 1 | NA |
| Responsible Party |
Embed the CIM Repsonsible Party object model |
No | Many | NA |
| Role | Type of organizational role (see controlled vocabulary) | Yes | 1 |
|
3) Member (e.g. Operational) Organizational Roles
| Attribute Name | Definition | Required | Cardinality within the Object | Controlled Vocabulary |
| Title | String used to succintly describe a organizational role. |
Yes | 1 | NA |
| Description | Long description providing extra information about an organizational role. | No | 1 | NA |
| Responsible Party |
Embed the CIM Repsonsible Party object model |
No | Many | NA |
| Role | Type of organizational role (see controlled vocabulary) | Yes | 1 |
|
Governance Relational Mechanisms
Below is a description of the Communications and Coordination object, which has several attributes. The cardinality of the object itself can be many.
| Attribute Name | Defintion | Required | Cardinality within the object | Type |
| Title | String used to describe the name of the meeting |
Yes | 1 | NA |
|
Meeting Frequency |
String used to describe the frequency of the meeting (e.g. Weekly on Wednesdays, Monthly, Yearly) |
No | 1 | NA |
| Participation Instructions | Sting used to describe how someone might participate (e.g. dial in phone numbers for a telco, link to a face-2-face meeting) | No | 1 | NA |
| Members | List of regular participants |
No | Many |
NA |
| Type | String used to describe the type of meeting |
Yes | 1 |
|
| Purpose | Type of meeting (see controlled vocabulary) | No | 1 | Same controlled vocabulary as "organizational body" |
| Membership | Indicates whether the means is open or closed to non-members | No | 1 |
|
Governance Processes
The following attributes are simple Name/Value pairs
|
Attribute Name |
Definition | Cardinality |
| Task Prioritization Strategy | A paragraph describing how tasks are prioritized. This description may include: a) Who participates, b) How often do they meet, c) How do they meet, d) Are the results public (recommended). |
1 |
| Requirements Identification Process | A paragraph descibing how requirements are identified. This description may include a) Who can identify, b) What system is used to track requirments, c) Is the list public (recommended) |
1 |
| Governance Philosophy | A paragraph describing a project's overall approach to governance. | 1 |
| Development Philosophy | A paragraph describing a project's overall approach to software development. | 1 |
Information related to the CoG workspace:
- who can/should edit the organization of the site (the left nav bar)
- who has administrator privileges
- what do these privileges entail
- where can a user ask questions related to how the group is using the site (not technical help exactly, help understanding the decisions the group has already made about what to do with different sections -- blogs, documentation pages, etc.)
- what conventions does the group have for naming shared bookmarks, files, etc.
- what conventions does the group have for sending out newsfeed items (when to send out mail to individuals, projects, groups of projects, etc.)
Information related to the organization of the group:
- principle investigator
- administrators
- how one becomes an administrator
- members
- how one becomes a member
- affiliates/friends (or some other, more casual, relationship with the project, someone who wants to keep tabs on this project)
- how one becomes an affiliate
- dependencies with other groups (this project depends on these other platforms and is compatible with these other platforms)
Information related to priority setting:
- where can a new member find information about the group's priorities
- how often does the group have a prioritization meeting
- who should be at these meetings, who can be at these meetings
- what is the format of this meeting
- what are the products of this meeting
- where can a new member see the most recent example of the outcome of a prioritization meeting
Information related to accommodating new members:
- which elements of the workspace are changing most frequently (where is the work happening right now)
- what type of contribution might a new member engage in immediately
-
Information related to any metadata forms in use:
- when the form was last updated
- who has the privileges to make changes
- how to propose changes to the form
- how/when/where changes to metadata fields are accepted