Proposed numbering and structure of WPs (and two decisions to make)

Workspaces OpenCare
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As we work on the proposal, it is useful to have a common vocabulary. We propose:

  • WP0: Project management. WP leader: KITE.
  • WP1: Mobilizing and nurturing collective intelligence dynamics. WP leader: Edgeryders. This incorporates the project's online conversation layer, as well as the sensemaking on care issues and the collective decision on which problem/solution pairs to prototype.
  • WP2: Prototyping community-based care solutions. WP leader: WeMake. The prototyping layer, plus testing and documentation activities.
  • WP3: Design and evaluation of community-based health/social policies at scale. WP leader: Stockholm School of Economics. Self-explanatory. Includes inputs from service design discipline.
  • WP4: Data processing for aggregating collective intelligence processes. Methods and software to combine ethnographic data with data on interaction patterns to help synthetize and validate the results from large-scale online conversations. WP leader: LABRI.

    Needs decision! Alternative naming based on WP activities sheet: “Survey, analyze and feedback community activities”

There are a couple of decisions to make here. One is whether we should not give ethical issues the dignity of WP. Advantages: symmetry, with SCIMpulse leading its own WP; and signaling that we take ethics very seriously. Disadvantage: project fragmentation and loss of interdisciplinarity. As it is now, we are forced to integrate SCIMpulse at least in WP1, WP2 and WP3. @markomanka, can you give us your opinion?

The other decision is how to treat WP0 WP5. There are two possibilities:

  1. all partners are involved in WP5 – that is, they have person-months budgeted under WP5.
  2. WP5 is run exclusively by KITE. The administrative work that partners need to do is budgeted within WP1 to 4.

Solution 2 has the advantage that  WP5 becomes smaller. But that can be tricky too: the Commission obviously prefers to fund research rather than administration, but then it does demand lots of paperwork. The choice here depends a lot on KITE’s style of work. FYI, Marco, Noemi and I have been in touch with KITE: they are assembling the project team and should be online soon.

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WPs

Are you sure about what you say at point 2 on administrative workload budgeting? Independently of KITE, a lot of reporting has to be done locally by the people working (and spending the money)…

Concerning the creation of an “ethics” WP, both pro and contra are true. There is no general rule there, even in strictly “health” proposals, and it depends on the narrative associated to the structure. In my most recent experience, the consultancy firm which was assisting us in wrapping up the proposal recommended that we split the activities in WPs rather fine-grainedly, with the purpose of making it clear to the reviewers what activities were run. They then forced us through the exercise of drawing two schemes:

  1. “intellectual”, showing how the WPs could be framed in technical pillars (sort of sub-projects, if you may)

  2. “logical”, describing the information exchange and workflow, turning those WPs in one functioning ecosystem.

Unity and multidisciplinary nature would then be highlighted by the parts of the proposal  describing the project architecture and coordination, and the consortium composition.

I would like to stress that the exercise #1 could be handy in thinking of bootstrapping over alternative funding opportunities.

The advantage of this approach, is that even the quickest reviewer in the first stage of evaluation, can quickly grasp the plan. If you are familial with the workload of the reviewers in the first stage, this is not trivial.

For the sake of conversation on this: do you see WP3 being responsible of the coordination of the pilots? I see WP2 would take on “testing”, do we have a testing->piloting->deploying workflow here? Or since the emphasis is put on innovation, we consider testing=piloting and directly deploy?

I understand that:

  1. edgeryders would flex its muscles and host a community wide conversation (within EU without borders? So on a “global” scale for the sake of this discourse);

  2. WeMake would be prototyping-and-documenting (locally) practical solutions;

3) Stockholm would design policies …based on which layer of the community? Local? Global?

Most of the “hacking” that happens in healthcare everyday is ultra-local, not even scalable on the regional level… I am sure you already know this, I am just bringing it up to understand how this is tackled by the WPs’ structure…

It is also not clear to me how the evaluation would happen… at what level would the policies be enforced, to run the evaluation?

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A few questions

Hi,

  1. We agreed (tentatively) on a WP0 for management, led by KITE.

“The lead partner will employ an administrative assistant who will be dedicated the project for an average of 2.5 days a week. This individual will request, check, collate and submit required internal and external management reports and maintain the activity plan, change control and progress documentation. Each partner will appoint a named individual as local management contact who will be responsible for the timely provision of local reporting data.” (@sociotechnicalmike on 3.2 Management structures and procedures in google drive)

What we still need to decide is whether for other consortium partners to budget for administrative work in our own WPs or will you include them in WP0?

  1. I am looking at WP4 by @melancon (thanks for uploading!). In subtasks led by LaBRI he involves ER and other partners: does it mean other partners also need to budget for those tasks or is our time already paid for from our own WPs? eg: LaBRI will organise “Data-driven, collaborative working sessions”, a task led by them but where others also need to show up and maybe ER helps by providing the database and/or integration with other tools we will be using in the workshop. Can someone help clarify this?

Thanks!

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Why not…

Why not mentioning in the name of WP4 the keyword “ethnography”? I believe it has an added value.

Something like “Ethnography based evaluation of community activities”? Although I would like to maintain the “interactive”/feedback highlighted there as well… any thoughts/suggestions?