Concise Strategic Plan 2023

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OSMF Concise Strategic Plan - 2023 Cycle of Revisions

N.B. At this stage these documents are in draft and thus do not necessarily reflect official OSMF policy.

The Vision and Mission

Our approach to strategic planning is to set high-level directions across all the efforts and structures of the Foundation, and then to take a phased approached to annually develop lower and more detailed levels of content.

The highest levels of direction are set by the Vision and Mission statements of OSMF. You can read the Mission Statement here. These highest planning levels will seldom be changed.

Below the Vision and Mission, there are four major clusters of work. They are listed here, with their respective strategies.

Strategy Clusters and Strategies

The main body of the Strategic Plan consists of four clusters of strategies that work together to deliver the Mission of OpenStreetMap Foundation - that is, to collect, process, store and deliver free geographic data of the globe. The clusters are then unpacked into 26 strategies and over 100 tasks. This concise document only touches on the strategy level of the plan, providing a short summary of each strategy. Links are provided to allow readers to drill down to the full strategies and the tasks. Any comments on the plan can be emailed to strategy@osmfoundation.org.

Strategy Cluster A: Technical Development and Resilience

Introduction

The technical strategy guides the software, hardware and networks that deliver the technical aspect of the OSMF Mission. The strategy also guides the security, reliability and resilience work done to keep the systems operating.

Strategy A1: Prepare Platform Services Demand Growth Forecast 2023–2028

The strategy is to extend the financial planning horizon for recurring operational costs and capital costs associated with IT equipment to 5 years and to align growth with forecasts of increasing demand. This will help to guarantee the long-term stability of OSMF operations.

Strategy A2: Technical strategy for Hardware

Strategy A02 guides the engineering approach to providing and maintaining IT equipment. The OSMF operates its own hardware infrastructure which is based in two geographically separated data centers. The two main sites are complemented by sponsored machines and global hosting sites.

Strategy A3: Technical strategy for Core Software

The strategy guides the provision and maintenance of software for the OSM Database, API and website. These are core services that the OSMF operates for OpenStreetMap. Similarly, the strategy guides secondary services including the community discussion forums and the Wikis.

Strategy A4: Supporting Software Development

The OSMF supports a large ecosystem of software that is used in the OSM mapping processes. The strategy guides support for map editors, QA tools, analysis tools, software development tools and libraries.

Strategy A5: IT reliability, resilience and security

The strategy provides that the most critical level of OSMF service can rapidly resume operations in a disaster by switching operations to an identical set of systems in another city. Less important systems are frequently backed-up and can be restored. The unreliability of humans is countered by making sure all operating procedures are clearly recorded.

Strategy Cluster B: Community Development for OSM

Introduction

OSM's strength and comparative advantage in providing mapping data lie in its large voluntary community, which provides accurate local geospatial knowledge. Individuals tend to map whatever interests them so the OSM community strategy must seek to grow, diversify and support the community in a number of different ways.

Strategy B1: Volunteer Working Groups

The Strategy is to support voluntary community participation in the OSMF Working Groups. Working Groups, such as the Data WG, Engineering WG, LCC WG are the core resources in the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s operations.

Strategy B2: Community strategy

The strategy aims to grow and support community contributions to the OSM project. One approach is the formation of national OSM local chapters (LCs) of committed mapping enthusiasts who recruit, train and organise more mappers. The plan provides as well for increasing the engagement of LCs in the governance of the OSM Foundation.

Strategy B3: Data centred community campaigns

The strategy plans to investigate if any community centred campaigns for specific data should be implemented by the OSMF.

Strategy B4: Cross-border and cross-cultural collaboration

The strategy includes planning for the annual State of the Map conferences, both global and local, promoting formal and informal communication channels across the worldwide OSM project. The strategy also provides for moderation of community discussion channels.

Strategy B5: Gender diversity

The strategy aims to create conditions for the inclusion of more women into OSM activities by increasing representation and by providing safe spaces for women to participate in mapping and community discussion.

Strategy B6: Community relations

The strategy counters problems in relationship management by aiming to build better relationships between the OSM community, the OSMF Board and WGs, Local Chapters and the Corporate members and OSM adjacent organisations like YouthMappers, HOT and GeoChicas.

Strategy B7: Empowering volunteers

The strategy puts in place mechanisms for moderation of community discussion channels with the aim of eliminating aggression, abuse and intimidation from community discussions.

Strategy B8: Undertake OSMF strategic planning process

This plans for the plan. The strategy sets out the work required to put in place a strategic plan for the foundation.

Strategy B9: Regular OSM Community Surveys

A strategy to systematically make contact with the OSM mapping community to determine their opinions and wishes for the project

Strategy B10: Humanitarian Mapping

THis plan specifically addresses the improvement of relations and co-operation between the OSMF and the community who work with and for the NGO "Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team" with specific reference to the importing of data necessary for humanitarian projects.

Strategy Cluster C: Institutional Development of OSMF

Introduction

The OpenStreetMap Foundation supports but does not control the OSM project. The project has grown rapidly over the last decade and a great deal of diverse support (but not control) is needed to accommodate that growth. This cluster of strategies looks inwards to provide for the planning and internal organisation of the foundation itself.

Strategy C1: Institutional strategy

This strategy plans for a project that will clearly define, and if necessary, update and re-define, the scope of work of the OSMF as set out in the founding documents.

Strategy C2: Responding to Brexit

In response Brexit the UK based Foundation is planning to move to a location in the European Union. Brexit. This strategy sets out the plans for relocating the formal office address, the intellectual property and the legal basis of the foundation to Europe.

Strategy C3: OSMF Fortification

In response to a perception of threats the OSMF has put in place and regularly reviews plans to resist any attempt to take over control of the Foundation by an aggressive and hostile third party.

Strategy C4: The Foundation at OpenStreetMap’s core

The plan relates to the role of OSMF in supporting external developers to develop and maintain a FOSS application chain to implement the OpenStreetMap mapping process.

Strategy C5: Foundation Management

The strategy plans for measures to improve the work output of the Foundation by adding resources to address the work back-log, and to reduce reliance on the voluntary work of Board members and WG members.

Strategy C6: Public Relations Programme

The strategy provides for the OSMF to initiate a public relations campaign to raise the profile of OSM and to a lesser extent the OSMF outside of geospatial professional circles.

Strategy Cluster D: Financial Management and Fundraising

Introduction

Voluntary work and donated funding are the key resources that make the work of the OSM Foundation possible. Voluntary work is covered by strategy cluster B. Strategy cluster D sets out a number of strategies for raising, managing and spending funds to achieve the Mission of the OSM Foundation.

Strategy D1: Financial Expenditure Matters

The strategy sets out a plan to develop policy to guide the Board in planning and approving operational and project expenditure.

Strategy D2: Maintain and Improve the Financial Viability of OSMF

The strategy is aimed at developing a plan for sustainable and resilient funding for the project, including such features as a pool of committed repeat donors and a reserve fund.

Strategy D3: Maintain and Develop Corporate Relationships

The plan addresses the need to fund OSMF by donations from corporations, thus it contains plans for recruiting and maintaing support from corporate sponsors.

Strategy D5: Prepare Contingency Plans for Financial Emergencies

The strategy plans for the OSM project surviving a possible sudden massive loss of funding. It provides for use of the reserve fund and for the radical pruning of operations and project expenditure to a bare minimum.

Strategy D6: Set up functional financial infrastructure

The strategy relates to the change in banking due to Brexit and the need for improvements to the financial accounting system that align with longer term budgetary planning and fundraising.

Strategy D7: Fundraising for OSMF

This strategy addresses the planning for fundraising by having the organisation learn and practice better donor relations and by making improvements to the way that OSMF seeks funding.