Vishnu, glad to see your prompt replies...not good enough..you left some
important points!!
All i see is plans and reports.. No outcome!
Ansuman
On 16 April 2014 21:28, Vishnu <visdaviva(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Wikimedians,
Sharing the below some replies, which were put up on Meta [1], in case you
have missed seeing it. Sorry for cross-posting. It would be good to
continue the discussions on Meta.
On Monday 14 April 2014 12:24 PM, Ravishankar wrote:
(copy of this comment placed at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015. We can
continue discussing there)
Hi,
Thanks for the elaborate work plan.
1. The way the budget is presented at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_
Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015#Budget
is misleading. A good percent of this budget will be spent on staff
salary, travel logisitics and other things which will not be there if the
work is done by the community. So, this is not the actual cost needed for
the desired output but the cost arising because of the involvement of paid
professionals.
So besides this way of presenting the budget, there should also be a
regular way of presenting budget like how the chapters are asked to submit
during FDC application. It can be noted that during the last round of FDC
funding application, WMIN faced very strict criterion regarding
infrastructure cost, staff salary cost.
Hi Ravi, thanks for engaging with the work plans and the questions. Have
tried to address some within the context of the work plans.
We had shared a google spreadsheet [2], which gives a micro level picture
of the Budget against each of the planned activity. Also each plan has an
independent budget and is closely mapped on to the implementation plan, and
clearly lists the proposed expenses for CIS-A2K staff costs and travel
costs. An attempt is made to correlate why we are spending a certain amount
on a certain activity. Thus all these budgets are very optimally planned
and the overall budget is an assimilation. CIS-A2K chose this design to
provide mission level transparency to our work and to provide a clear
structure of accountability to the movement and community. However, based
on your feedback we have realized that it would be useful to also give
item-wise break-up on Meta. We have given this budget break-up here [3].
2. I have an eerie feeling that the community
development work in India
is getting outsourced to NGOs like CIS at the cost of crippling budding
local chapters like WMIN. The way Hindi Wikipedia seeks help for content
management (fixing Google articles) confirms my concern.
3. Where can I find WMF's open assessment of the work done by CIS-A2K in
the previous year? How is the cost for the work done justified? If the cost
if justified, then the actual communities and the content they have
developed on their on own are worth many crores of Indian rupees. But, we
face strict guidelines when applying for grants whereas NGOs like CIS don't
have that strict criterion.
We feel it is more productive to see the complementarity between the WMIN
and CIS-A2K than to pitch them as competitors for financial resources. The
later would undermine trust-building and consequently threatens the growing
synergies between WMIN and CIS-A2K. It is particularly intriguing that
outsourcing is being mentioned here as a model. Would be useful to have
more clarity and larger discussion on these. Probably, it would be apt to
raise these broader concerns on CIS-A2K's FDC proposal discussion page [4].
Best,
Vishnu
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_
Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015#Budget.
2C_CIS_support_rationale_and_Assessment_by_WMF
[2]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=
0AshSF7ZKRBR5dGpMUnNKdHItUFJGMHluQUFxZGRHMmc&usp=sharing#gid=4
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_
Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015/Budget
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/
Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_
Society/Proposal_form
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