It has now been two years since 7 October 2023. I have marked two Days of Atonement since then — long enough to reflect on grief, guilt and shame. No more. I am done repenting, done apologising. Now, dear Open Government Partnership governments and civil society members, it is your turn to reflect on whether these OGP processes are truly working.

Israeli civil society is stretched to its limits. It has stepped in where government services collapsed after the massacre of 7 October and the war that followed. It provides psychological support to survivors, financial assistance to families whose homes have been destroyed by missiles, and helps children learn how to cope with trauma. Beyond these basic Maslowian needs, Israeli civil society has been on the streets every week for the past two years. We have urged our government to reach a deal to release the hostages, and as the war dragged on and began to look like a political survival strategy for the Prime Minister, even more people joined the protests, calling for an end to the war.

Israel civil society appeals to the Supreme Court to stop abuses of power and threats to justice by the government on numerous fronts. Civil society submits Freedom of Information requests to hold the government accountable and expose corruption. We, civil society, stand alongside our Palestinian and Arab Israeli neighbours to fight injustice.

At the upcoming OGP Summit, Israeli civil society will not be there. Not only because the summit was scheduled on a Jewish holiday — as if to exclude us from the outset — but because we have run out of resources. Dare I say it, perhaps also because the OGP community simply doesn’t care.

Let’s be honest — it’s easier this way. One less uncomfortable conversation to have. No one will have to confront the issues of Gaza, famine, antisemitism, or diplomatic sensitivities. But can we truly advance open government if we avoid the difficult questions? We are ready to ask them. Are you ready to listen?

Throughout this entire war, we, Israeli civil society, have had just one call with the civil society steering committee. I did not feel that OGP offered us much. We were asked what we needed — placing the burden on us to respond, even as we were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of our work. Our country coordinator has remained in touch, but even he has few tools to support us.

How can you help?
- We need financial support — we cannot continue fighting for open government in Israel, especially in times as dark as these.
- We need mentorship — people who can listen, advise, and remind us that we are not working in a void.
- We need clear protocols — can a government at war remain a member of OGP? What do prolonged conflicts mean for the principles of open government?

Leonard Cohen wrote in his song Anthem: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

This belief is what keeps Israeli civil society going. Hopefully, this war will end soon, and we, Israelis, will move towards elections. Hopefully, we can start building a better future now. We will need to face some hard truths and ask tough questions.

Is the OGP community prepared to confront difficult questions, such as why it wasn’t there when Israeli civil society needed support?

The term “X for Good” has been bothering me for a while. I too have used the phrase tech/data/AI for good before. However, it has become a catch phrase for too many things, but mainly, a feel good phrase (see what I did there?) for tech companies thinking they can compensate for some dodgy stuff they are doing by working with nonprofits. I was very excited to see this taxonomy by Jake Porway trying to define this field. However, the more I read it the more I got upset and worried that funders will take this taxonomy and suggested activities as is, and that was ALARMING to me. This taxonomy doesn’t answer key questions— Good for whom? What power dynamics exist? And who gets to decide what is good? This blog will try to untangle these questions and offer some alternatives.

First of all — What is good?

The methodology of the taxonomy defines good as “reducing harm” and “increasing benefits from”. However, both of these are very subjective. As a philosophical exercise — if I am a pro-life activist that wants to track abortion clinics to reduce harm for fetuses, is this a data for good initiative? For some people, it is reducing harm and increasing benefits from data, but for others it isn’t. If I am a company tracking millions of people and ignoring climate change but I give free storage for nonprofits, is this enough to say that I reduce harm and increase the benefits of data?

What the taxonomy piece is lacking is something that the data feminism framework keeps advocating — examining power. “X for good” initiatives should actually be framed as initiatives that are promoting justice and disrupting power dynamics. Justice is not only limited to the rule of law — How do we bring justice to our climate and ecological systems? How do we create health justice by eradicating cancer for all?

You can say, “Mor, justice is a subjective term as well.” True, philosophers have been arguing on the meaning of the term for centuries. However, justice takes the discussion a step further than good. Something can be done for good, but it’s not always fair or distributed equally. Justice makes sure we discuss what is fair and how we are doing things. As a good friend of mine told me — “Good should support justice but most times in these type of initiatives it supports tech solutionism”

The term justice is not something the tech industry finds easy to deal with. The traditional tech world is filled with stories of startups and unicorns that create tech/data/AI solutions that are sold for millions of dollars. So let’s acknowledge that the tech world is about fiscal profit. The world in which nonprofits, government and academia are on the opposite end, they usually don’t create any fiscal profit. Therefore, investment in tech/data/AI within these institutions doesn’t (usually) come from the market. This is where the invisible hand fails over and over again. This is where I see most “X for good” initiatives coming in — charity and good will of others to donate to nonprofit on their terms. It is actually a big problem.

But Mor, it’s important to donate time, resources and money to those in need! Sure it is, but this also creates power dynamics and silos, which we need to acknowledge. Why should social issues not be dealt with in cooperation? My experience shows that usually when it comes to X for good initiative the solution is what the techies want to work on, not necessarily what the nonprofits need. Like pushing AI instead of looking at data basics, or pitching NFT because they are the latest cool thing but not thinking about the environmental toll of cryptocurrencies. It works to a point, but it doesn’t help with the important and boring stuff like stability and long term data sustainability. The framework of Build With Not For was created for civic tech work eight years ago, we should refer back to it in our data work now too.

So I suggest we should change the term “X for good”. We should be bold and honest about what we are doing here — we have data for (fiscal) profit and not for profit data. I think that data for non-profit creates long term profit, but this is another blog post.

What about humans?

The second issue with this taxonomy is that it’s very technocratic. It misses the human aspect of data. When the suggested data pipeline discusses humans, it refers to those who are the data people, the techies. There is little to no mention of other roles. The world does not and should not revolve around data. Data without context is hazardous.

What can we add to this taxonomy? For starters, if this taxonomy is going to be used, it needs to ​​be written with the assumption that people are before data/tech. All the people involved must be responsible and ethical with data and tech.

In addition it misses terms culture, team work, and emotions. Emotions such as fear of change or anxiety from not knowing where your income to cover a data person will come from. The data pipeline starts from problem-solving when actually, the biggest challenge I have encountered as a data person working in nonprofits is that people are afraid or don’t know how to ask questions. We retreat to solutionasing than questioning and exploring because it is easier for us not to deal with hard emotions that questions bring.

Another example is that the taxonomy focuses on communities for data people but not on communities where everyone, even those who are not data people like the marketing or HR people are welcome to come and discuss data. Data is political and in order to make sense of it we need to have other people in the room, even if they don’t know what a pivot table is.

Interestingly enough, data.org released a couple of resources that touch a bit on these issues, like the data for impact or the resource library and data maturity assessment, but the taxonomy seems to be a separate line of thinking from them. I also think that those resources can address power dynamics even more.

Not everything that is given for free to charity is X for good

The taxonomy defines storage and off the shelf software as “for good”. While I am thankful for the ability to get free of charge storage or software as a nonprofit, I don’t think this should be considered as X for good.

Firstly, a lot of these schemes are limited by space or features. For example, big charities still need to pay for some of these tech solutions since they go over the limit of users/space. This is not for good, this is a business strategy — let’s hook organisations to our service and then ask money for money if they need an upgrade or more features. Fair enough, companies are trying at the end of the day to make money. It means we can’t call this strategy “for good”.

Secondly, the fact that some companies have “for good” initiatives doesn’t mean they are overall doing no harm. Sometimes, those free schemes for non-profits look like a bit of a cover up to other harmful stuff that they do. So the fact that Google is offering free stuff while at the same time having scandals in its AI and ethics team creates a bit of a conflict here. It leads us to the question of power again — what is the power dynamics of big tech companies and nonprofits?

Lastly, the taxonomy suggests the following “If you’re a funder who believes we need more storage available in the social sector, you might fund them to provide it”. I hope I read it wrong, but I don’t see why Amazon or Google, multi billion dollar companies (with a turnover bigger than some countries GDP) need to be funded by other funders specifically to help the social sector? Why can’t they give if the cause is really important? Just putting it out there.

OK, so what should we do now?

1. If this taxnomy is a key resource for data.org, then it needs auditing with a power dynamics lens on it. Data.org can’t claim to democratise data use without this lens. This taxonomy needs a second iteration and needs to be shaped by different communities. If needed, pay organisations to give this feedback. Value their opinion and work. Don’t put the burden on the community to give you feedback, like I did it here. Not everyone has the privilege to write a lengthy response like I did.
2. Stop speaking about X for good, start speaking about what is a non-for-profit data and tech. Start speaking about justice. What does it mean that vital data infrastructure doesn’t get created because it will shift power dynamics or won’t create revenues.
3. Stop the silos. We need to work together on a topic, share expertise and experiences to create better solutions. Siloing problems because they are “for good” is creating a broken ecosystem where we fund short term solutions and not actual culture change.
4. If you are a funder, consider looking at core funding for data and tech work, instead of project funding. If we want to break the silos we need to make sure that we not only train people, but that nonprofits have the budget to actually employ them in the long run. It is also important to consider investing internally as well as upskilling your own team on data strategy and how data can improve grantmaking and grantees as well.

Some related resources

(If you have ideas for more comment on this blog and I will add them to this list)

Humanitarian Digital Ethics: A Foresight and Decolonial Governance Approach

Civictech.guide

Decolonizing Digital Ecosystems

Decolonising data — Data4Good Fest

Big data for climate action or climate action for big data?

Many thanks to Ana Brandusescu, Heather Leson, Wakini Njogu and Tom Watson for their comments, input and ideas for this blog.

I am writing this blog during the 10 days of Teshuva (Repentance), the days we take between the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur (the day of atonement) to reflect, fix bad relationships and ask for forgiveness if needed. Let’s call it out then — we, UK government and civil society have sinned with our National Action Plan (NAP) process. It currently doesn’t promote diversity, equity and inclusion. It is time to repent.

The current UK action plan is long anticipated and coming after great delay and a global pandemic. Civil society organisations are pressed for resources and the government has to play catch up with many policies. With all of this, government and civil society didn’t plan our national action plan process right, which means we didn’t design it with EDI in mind, so now many voices are absent from the process. How should we fix it going forward?

1. Government should make sure there are sufficient resources from its side to show real commitment to this process — We need more than just auditing ofthe plan by the Equalities office, which is the current committed work on this. We need DEI to be planned into the process with budget lines next to it, so this work can actually be meaningful. Other governments, like Canada, did and do it in the past. We can too.
2. Government and civil society are not working together to bring new voices to the process — It’s a war of responsibilities at the moment: You bring your members and I bring mine. The field of civil society organisations that actually know about open government is small, and the same people are in for the same discussion. Civil society need to create a plan to reach other organisations that are not our usual suspects to come into the discussion, and government needs to help to connect the dots with other organisations that they speaks to. Yes, this takes time and resources, it is time to think if this is really working. Using social media will only create a snowball sample and reach people we already know.
3. Understanding Open government is hard and there is no onboarding process — This year we have some new members facilitating workstreams of the NAP, but some of them were just thrown into it. We need to create a good onboarding to explain how this process should look like. We need to outreach groups throughout the whole NAP cycle, not only during planning.
4. We don’t speak about this enough — If we really want to bring change, we need to hold ourselves accountable and discuss this more often, be transparent about the process, but we are not. People are not really discussing this on the forum or in social media. If you don’t want to discuss this because you don’t know anything about it, it is your responsibility to ask for help and guidance. Your silence will not protect you, but also won’t protect others who need you to speak.
5. We need a real commitment about DEI — We need to see how we can promote diversity, equity and inclusion in a manner that is not only collecting or openning more data on the topic. Our childcare system creates inequalities, parliament members and councillors are still not eligible to maternity leave which create blockers for participation in politics, and women of colour are more likely to suffer from stillbirth. These are only three topics where we can create change, but there are many more. We need to use this NAP to create a real policy change, not just get more numbers.

So what now? the NAP commitments will be ready to be shared for comments soon. We need to make an extra effort to share them with as many groups as possible. We need to keep the discussion on equality, equity, diversity and inclusion open and keep reflecting on it. We need to push for real actions, not just talk. We are all stretched now, we all volunteers, but let prioritise this and think of a sustainable way forward. It’s time to repent.

Mozfest started last week and it is a BLAST. Like any other Mozfest, it is chaos, even online. Thta’s the magic of Mozfest though, and I would not have it any other way.
Last week was also International Women’s Day and the events following Sarah Everard death shook me as well. A week of Feminist Struggles. I live a mile and a half from where she disappeared, and I see that place safer than my current (and temporal) home in South Africa. However, I did find myself pondering more than once what is the best running route in the area after dark or which way is the safest to come back from the tube after a night out (when we could have nights out). This burden should not be on me or my fellow women. It should be on men to make me feel safe.

Stuff I did this week

Mozfest — I have attended a session by Muckrock on FOIA as API, which is a long dream of mine for Israel, but I don’t think we have the funding to pull it off.
I also attended a great session by Jackie Liu, which looked at from Nostalgia to Neostalgia, where we imagined what if we could have a different piece of tech in the past. I wish I had a piece of technology that will make me be less addicted to technology… but the power dynamics are that tech companies wants us to be addicted to their tech. I really liked that session not only because it used meditation as an excresice, but also because I don’t get to imagine future that often. It was a good reminder to try an imagine more. Check out Jackie’s work on creating a new OS system based on her childhood!

I also took part in #ShetTansformsTech , and got to learn once more how the internet can be a challenging space for women, unfortunately, just like the public space is.

Open Heroines — This week I finally publish a blog that I’m trying to write for months now. I decided that international women's day is the best date to release it to the world. It wasn’t an easy blog to write, the writing was not as fluid as I would like, but I am glad I took some hard topics off my chest. You can read my honest refelection about five years of Open Heroines here.

Data collective — I also had time last week to reflect what a community of data people in charities means and why communities are not same for everyone. Check it out here.

Helpline data — Last week I tried to dig in more to our helpline data at Parkinson’s UK after hearing that Mencap are doing work on their helpline data at the data collective. Our data quality needs to get better, but we are not in a bad starting point.

Workshops planning — We are planning our new data architecture, and we want to test some of our hypotheses with users from across the charity. I am working now on creating an agenda for the workshop, drawing inspiration from the Red Cross and Red Crecent Data Playbook.

Podcast Alert

I am on another podcast! You can listen to me speaking about power dynamics and open data here. Thank you for hosting me Caroline!Things I read

Not related to work AT ALL, but I found this New York Times article helpful to feel that I don’t need to be a super mom.

Two weekends ago I took time off the internet, so I decided to take a week off weeknotes as well. Therefore this week is a double weeknotes. I recommend to any of you to take a couple of days of the internet. I felt so full of energy and had different perspective on things. I should do it more often.

Stuff I did this week

Human resources — I feel like this is a very cold title for something that needed a lot of sensitivity and compassion. Firstly, we preformed appraisals, which while they can be really bureaucratic, we tried to make them useful and easy going. I learned a lot from my manager Shaun about it (and remembered some good practices from my previous boss Rachel).
In addition, my team had a couple of issues that required looking at how to make people better and safe, which was a reminder for me that being a manager is putting people needs first, even if it means you need to push some deadlines.

Dashboards — My team was looking at how we can be better at getting feedback on existing dashboards and create a process to improve them. Some learning — remember that dashboards are products too and need to be reviewed and actively approach users for feedback, don’t just wait for it.

Surveys — We are getting more requests to review surveys and help to improve them. We also set up a date for the first survey working group, which will bring people from across the organisation to discuss about best practices of surveys and coordination.

Parkinson’s UK Data Club — Last week we also hosted our first Parkinson’s UK Data Club which I was very excited about! The club came up as an idea from our data fellows who wanted to have a space to share their work, ideas and experiences of working with data in the organisation. We opened it to everyone in the organisation who wanted to participate. We had a good attendance of people from different data literacy levels. Expectations for the club were set, we discussed topic for the future (data catalogue!) and even had quick speed dating. I am excited to see the ideas that will come out of the club in the coming weeks and if it will help us break some silos.

Data Collective second call — We ran our second call, which was small but productive! We created a list of resources for data literacy. Take a look at the spreadsheet and add your favourite data literacy resource!

Mozfest last prep — Mozfest started on Monday 8/3! I spent the last two weeks doing last minute prep for our Shifting Power in Tech space, like a space all hands, and I am very excited about the sessions in the next two week!

Podcast recording — I recorded a podcast about Open Data with Elizabeth Dubios for Wonks and War Rooms. You can listen to me speaking about my favourite data subject here: https://www.polcommtech.com/podcast-1/episode/48022fab/open-data-with-mor-rubinstein

Things I read —

• The Future Manifesto is a quick read about principles for the tech of tomorrow.
• Can a visualisation have to many dots? Here is what NakedData reported on the NYT COVID death visualisations.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, Mor Rubinstein writes about growing the Open Heroines network, what we’ve learnt, and where we’ll be going next.

I am not going to lie, this past year has been tough on me. Partially moving from maternity leave back to work, but also the pandemic made me slower. I am a person with really high standards when it comes to my own work. This year I had to lower these standards a bit. Things that I love doing had to take a back seat in my list of priorities. Even though this year was not what I planned for my involvement in Open Heroines, it is better than nothing in these hard times.

In January 2021, we celebrated 5 years of the community. We grew to 700 members in total, and we are slowly implementing the findings from our user research. 4 years ago I blogged about three things I learnt from the Open Heroines community. So, for this International Women’s day (and a belated birthday blog post for Open Heroines), here are a couple of things I’ve learnt by being an Open Heroine.

Speaking up can sometimes be emotionally draining

“The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity” Julia Serano

I am a direct person, so let me start with the hard stuff — I had a lot of emotional work to do that I didn’t anticipate. Looking back now I know that I should have anticipated it. Five years ago I thought that this would be a feel-good vibe space to share and learn, but it became so much more. Over the years, women and non-binary people felt comfortable to tell me and my partner in crime Sarah Orton-Vipond things that we would never imagine could happen in our space. Hearing about toxic work environments, and thinking about how to deal with them, takes an emotional toll.

We shared these experiences as part of the Open Gender Monologues, some of which we took back to funders. For some of the cases, we are still waiting for a response while writing these lines, months after we raised them. Some of them sadly never became anything because the people who spoke to us were afraid to take action and risk the consequences, the system has power on them and doesn’t allow them to speak out. Who wants to lose their job?
Those experiences are the ones that are the most difficult. I am grateful that people chose to talk to me — but it is so frustrating that I don’t have the power to help them to bring their case forward.

Not everyone is the same though. Most of the cases I hear are from white women from the Global North — but we know there are more cases from women of colour and non-binary people, especially those in the Global South. It makes me question if we are doing enough to create an inclusive space, and how this focus on the Global North impacts the dynamics within Open Heroines.

But it’s also more than what I wrote above. It is about my personal actions too. Every time I call something online or in person my brain starts to run this dialogue:

Afraid me: Are you sure you want to do it?

Confident me: Yeah, why not?

Afraid me: Because you remember what a friend who is very connected in this space told you, right? No one wants to hire a person that is a troublemaker and hire the woman who speaks up about this stuff all the time.

Confident me: Well, but last time I called someone out about inappropriate behaviour nothing happened.

Afraid me: Well, you don’t know how many opportunities you lost…

Confident me: If you lost them, they were not right for you anyway.

Afraid me: And what about if people won’t like you after this?

Confident me: What about it? I am sure some people don’t like now sometime either

Afraid me: And if that man / organisation you are going to call out is going to come after you?

Confident me: I have not thought about it. But is silence better?

Afraid me: Probably not.

Confident me: So here we go again.

And it happens every single time. 9 out of 10 times that outcome is positive, but it’s this one time that can break me for days and will make me gasp for air. The other 9 times though keep me going.

When we speak, it makes a difference

“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” Maya Angelou

So why do I keep doing this? First, because if I can help someone, or help to prevent this happening to someone else then there is a way forward. I am also doing this because I am part of a community, and I will have someone there to replenish my batteries and move forward. I am forever grateful for their support when I need them the most.

In the last five years, many people told us that our blogs helped them to see a new perspective. They helped others feel less alone. We are here to amplify more voices and ideas, for ourselves and our community.

So if you are an ally, how can you help, what can you do? Always support women or non-binary people to speak up, always believe them and most importantly don’t keep quiet. It is the sound of silence that make women think twice before coming forward — your retweets or support blogs can do a lot to make the whole community better.

Keep reflecting — and admit when we make mistakes

“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up.” Gloria Steinham

I can be the most well intentioned intersectional feminist, but at the end of the day, I am a white, straight, cisgender woman from the Global North. Yes, there are some places where I don’t have privilege, but 90% of the time I pass as a white woman, and that comes with the responsibility to be more aware of my privileges.

However, sometimes I still fail in acknowledging them. Sometimes I don’t pay enough attention to subtle issues of topics or wording which I should be much clearer about and take the time to digest and write. Sometimes, I make mistakes too.

What this community taught me is that I need to acknowledge my mistakes publicly and ask for feedback or try to read about topics myself so I won’t create a burden on people. It taught me that asking questions is better than assuming. I learned to try and check out my privilege before I open my mouth. Still not there 100%, but being aware of that is the first step, no?

Community is not the same for everyone

“Without community, there is no liberation…but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.” Audre Lorde

Community is a loaded word, and it means different things for different people. What I learned in these five years though, is that lurking can be as important as leading. Sometimes having space to read and absorb is also needed, so we don’t need to get frantic and see action as an impact.

However, we need to make sure everyone is feeling comfortable enough to get involved when they want to. We are a volunteer led community, so we don’t always have the resources to tend to our basic community needs. This is why we started our community research — to move things forward. I am very excited that we were awarded a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to financially support our first paid staff, and I hope that will help us to be more connected.

What’s next?

We are very excited about the near future! We are going to hire our first community coordinator to keep the community vibrant and with more activities based on the research we have done last year.

We also intend to start our toxic work environment programme that aims to create a bottom-up solution to this problem. We believe that by sharing the learning we can find tools to deal with the issue.

And if you got all the way here, a treat. This year I learned more about Data Feminism, but also about how to raise little girls to be feminist. Sometimes you can combine both.

Sometimes you need to be angry, too: Celebrating International Women’s Day 2021 was originally published in Open Heroines on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We speak a lot about emotional resilience these days, but my main aha moment this week was that I am allowed not to be resilient for a day or two. Remembering that I am allowed to feel low sometimes was important for me, it was part of my recovery.

I hope you are getting time to recover too!

Stuff I did this week

FastStats — Parkinson’s UK has been using this software for years, but now we are revising if it still fit for purpose. There are lots of legacy issues with the system, and we are moving to a new data warehouse in the next year, so the time is right to evaluate it. If you know anyone who works with the system or work with it yourself, talk to me.

Natural Language Processing — We are still working with NLP and trying to understand different opportunities where we can use it. We use Relative Insight for the majority of our NLP needs now, but we are also trying to upskill the team with NLP and map more opportunities. This week we did a case study of how we can evalaute with sentiment analysis our latest integrated campaign. We came up with some interesting findings and now it’s time to share it with the rest of the world.

Meeting with other teams — I also met other colleagues across the organisation to see how the team can support their data needs. We coordinated some future work and discuss different ideas. It was a good learning experience for me

Stuff I read

Dulcie from DataKind UK referred me to this article about NLP in the use of charities. Nice read — https://ssir.org/articles/entry/how_the_social_sector_can_use_natural_language_processing#

Weird stuff of the week

Someone used my email to sign up for Match.com and open a fake account. It was really weird because I also find the woman in the picture they used. You can see that saga here:

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Someone decided to use my email to open a @match account and it's the weirdest thing ever to watch how this person is targeted old white men... Apparently my name is Sherrie now :/ I wonder if @replyall can help me figure out who is this person who decided to use my email.

But also, I found out Match.com dosen’t have two steps authentication, why? Here is an article that explains how they benefit from fake accounts for Match.com (who also already being sued about this in the USA)— https://www.fastcompany.com/90409400/ftc-match-com-used-scams-to-trick-love-seekers-into-paying

Last week I have done SO MUCH WRITING, I barely had time to write my own weeknotes, so I am catching up now! I am grateful for every minute I have to write, and like exercise, it is just something I need to make as a habit. So here we go…

Things I did

Mozfest blog post — Technically I did it in week #5, but it was published this week, so I including it here. Mozfest is three weeks away, and I wrangling the Shifting Power in Tech space. If you don’t know what it is, MozFest is a unique hybrid: part art, tech and society convening, part maker festival, and the premiere gathering for activists in diverse global movements fighting for a more humane digital world.

I wrote a blog about our Shifting Power in Tech space so you will get to know better what we are planning. In the spirit of the pandemic, MOZFEST IS ONLINE THIS YEAR, and tickets are “PAY AS YOU CAN”. So if you were never able to attend Mozfest because of costs, this year is a great opportunity to be part of it. Totally recommended. You can get you ticket here.

Data Collective Community Call — We had our first Data Collective community call and it was going well. We ran the method of Rant for a Better Future, where participants rants about their frustrations with data and then try to find solutions. I ran a similar session about open government 5 years ago (can’t believe it has been 5 years) and wrote about the methodology here.
My main takeways from the call is that we think we are alone in our struggles with data in our organisations, but actually, others have similiar if not the same challenges in other orgs too. Speaking to others always helps to get new perspectives and ideas, and personally, recharge me with working in different ways on these challenges. Want to learn more about it? Read the Data Collective Weeknotes I wrote.

Data analysis review process — When someone submit code in Github, it will always go through review process. When we ask for editing. Why? Not because the coder or writer have done something wrong or can’t be trusted but because we are all humans and make mistakes. So why not checking our work to reduce these mistakes? Same thing we can say for data analysis — why not share our work to make sure we have done everything right? This week me and one of my team mates worked on what a review for insight and analysis work looks like and how we can implement it successfuly. Spoiler — look at the basics of methodology and the data itself.

Things I listened to this week

Freaknomics — How much do we really care about our children? Some intresting data questions and the truth about car seats.

Tweet of the week

A reminder to all - there is more to agile than sprints and scrums. Thinking that agile is only sprints is just shooting your work in the foot. Here is an old article by @trickvi I am always going back to about the topic - https://t.co/jPNaQ9kRSt

This week I felt like I got my mojo back. I finally had a routine, I have done exercise six days a week and was even able to watch Bridgerton. However, it was not an easy week at all. Let’s dive into it, shall we?

What I did this week?

Welcome day — I spent my Tuesday at Parkinson’s UK welcome day, which is a great day to get to know the charity better. Even though I have been in the charity for a while now, I have found it useful and learned a new thing or two about Parkinson’s.

Project plan template — This week my team had a very loooong session on team’s projects. The conversation from that team session made me wonder — why do we need project planning?
In general, I believe that a project planner is great for making sure you don’t forget issues, risks and success points during the projects itself. Rarely a project plan goes according to plan, and a good plan is a one that helps you prepare for different situations. Lastly, when working with other people and teams, a project plans help to communicate work that is done, and a GREAT project plan help to build collaboration between teams.
The problem, like in every tool, is when we put the document before people’s needs and forget that the document should serve the people, not the other way around. In addition, we need to remember that we can still fail with a project plan, so we also need reflections or retrospective mechanism to improve the way we work (and plan projects).
So will I use a project plan for my project? Always trying to. If you have good project planners to share, especially around data projects, let me know!

Brushed my Python skills a bit — We are experimenting with NLP at Parkinon’s UK, so I decided to see if I can create a colab notebook for Word Clouds. It was fun to do some coding again, even if it’s been a while and I have to brush some of the things I learned again…

Community calls! On the Data Collective front, we are starting forthnightly community calls! If you are part or the collective, join me on Friday for a rant for bette future call! I love rant for a better future methodology, so if you are intrigued, join me!

And my new hobby….

My new hobby is to ask recruiters who send me emails to my work account is where they got my email from and then report them to the ICO.

This weekend was my birthday, so I allowed myself to have a lazy weekend and write just at the end of it. In general I am not a birthday type of girl, but I felt lucky I spent it with family when most families are apart because of this virus. It was another exhausting week, but this time because of a sick toddler, but she is already much better and we are hopefully due to a more relaxed week.

What I have done this week?

Mapping Work — The team tried to map all the area of work we are going to work on this week so we can have less surprises and more planning ahead. I still have a big spreadsheet I need to work on so it will be useful for us.

Defining Team Responsibilities — Honestly, this part was hard. There are a lot of resources on how to create roles and responsibilities, but not how to create team responsibilities. Why does it matter? So we can communicate to our stakeholders what we do and most importantly what we don’t do. It also helps us to prioritise work. Like most of the things we do in the team, this is an ongoing process we will review next month.

Data Collective User Research Workshop — I participated in the workshop and learned a few things from fellow data people in charities, like that others are working on helpline data and NLP. I also learned that in times of pandemic people need very specific asks and clear communication in a community, so I am working towards there too. See the full summary here.

What I listened to

Freaknomics — How to Fix the Incentives in Cancer Research (with some valuable insights to Parkinson’s too).

And a tweet that made me smile

Tagging @Morchickit because when I saw this photo I thought she was so like you, she must be a relative?! https://t.co/i8npjuxYse

Have a good week everybody!