HOT Board Meeting June 22, 2021, 13:30 UTC

Attending

Felix Delattre, Kate Chapman, Ben Abelshausen, Tyler Radford, Liz Chamberlain, Bo Percival, Paul Uithol, Miriam Gonzalez

Excused

Rob Baker, Emmanuel (Maning) Sambale, Gertrude (Trudy Hope) Namitala

Absent

N/A

Observing

Arnalie Vicaro, Mohamet Lamine Ndiaye, Russell Deffner, Mary Liwhu Marcellinus, Pete Masters, Bagnoumana Bazo Fofana. Sawan Shariar

Chair

Felix Delattre

Minutes

Inna Nogeste

Call to order

Meeting called to order at 14:01 UTC by Chair Felix Delattre

Quorum

Yes

Approval of Previous Minutes

Approval of the previous minutes (May)

Motion by Ben: Approve the May minutes.

Motion approved.

Previous Action Items

Board policy document - Review the document and raise any concerns during the next week. (Ben) - In agenda
HOT Advisory Group slides from Tyler - after Board review, reach out to GWG around advisory group structure for the board (Ben) - Pending
Adjust and share the HOT-OSMF MOU draft - ask HOT Staff for assistance (who have worked with the MOU for OsGEO) (Ben) - In agenda
Approval of staff contracts - report back at the next Board meeting (Felix) - In agenda
Board to review the draft of the whistleblower process (Felix,Tyler) - WIP
HOT Europe registration - send the draft email to the Board for review - June 4 is the deadline for Board feedback. (Kate) - Done
Review OsGEO MOU (Miriam) - Done
HOT Europe registration - Send email to the membership telling them about this process of incorporation in Europe and ask for their feedback (Miriam) - Done
Put a Strategy Plan together with the Strategy Committee (Rob) - WIP
Complete the group of people in the Code of Conduct Committee (Trudy, Kate) - WIP

Circular resolutions approved since previous meeting

June 14, 2021: Motion by Miriam on Loomio to approve the OSGeo MOU. Motion approved.

Contracts approved since previous meeting

May 19, 2021: Application Development Agreement with risual Ltd (part of the agreement with Microsoft on the ML Tagging for Damage Assessment project).

Agenda

Operations update

Presenting: Tyler

Key points of the HOT Monthly Roundup - June 2021

An interactive annual report will be available online in August and can be shared publicly with HOT partners and OSM communities
HOT is setting up the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for the coming year and a progress report will be shared with the Board before, and discussed during, the July HOT Board meeting
State of the Map Africa will be held this year on 21 November and will be a virtual event

The HOT Summit will be held this year on 22 November and will also be a virtual event
Disaster Services Team and Activation Working Group (AWG)

Board members and Voting Members are requested for assistance with the review of the Activation Protocol. The meeting is held directly after the AWG meeting. Please follow the links in the Monthly Roundup to get involved

Partnerships & Philanthropy

HOT is running its Data Quality Internship program again this year. There will be a fewer number of interns with a total of 20 participants, however, the internship will be slightly more in depth in terms of the training and mentorship. Interns will be getting paid this year which will hopefully assist with more geographic diversity in the program and enable people to attend who were unable to do so in the past

Two new staff have joined in the past month:

Carter Draper - Global Projects Manager

Max Alzaga - Global Human Resources Associate.

Leadership team presentations

The slide presentation is available [The slide presentation is available here.

Tyler Radford - Executive Director (slides 2 - 9)

Liz Chamberlain - Director of Finance & Operations (slides 10 - 17)

Paul Uithol - Director of Humanitarian Data (slides 19 - 31)

Bo Percival - Director of Technology and Innovation (slides 33 - 40)

Q&A from the Board

Questions from Felix to Liz:

Q: You mentioned that the Board’s support is required for the HOT Europe registration, can you please explain what is required from the Board in order for you to be able to proceed?

A: It is good that an email was sent to the Voting Members this week. This is a decision on where to register. We have two options and we need input as soon as possible. It will take a few months to get up and running and we need to try and expedite this as much as possible.

Q: Do you need details about the new Board and Bylaws?

A: Yes, there will definitely be more information needed. That the Board is changing in September/October does present a challenge, so there might be a way to submit a change process and move forward before then. I need to check about the number of Board members required. It would be good to present everything together, but perhaps it will suffice to present what is being planned and done.

Three questions from Miriam:

Q: Are new employees contractors or employees?

A: The nature of HOT has changed dramatically over the last few years as well as the nature of funding. A few years ago HOT only had project funding and people could only be hired for projects. With the core funding it’s been really nice to be able to hire more employees. The goal is to continue hiring appropriately and hire more employees and for new staff to be on an ongoing basis across projects. If we are dictating their time then they are an employee. There are a couple of places where HOT can’t legally hire employees or there is too much risk in doing so and recruitment needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. We have a matrix to assess criteria and make the distinction when necessary when we can’t legally hire. A: We still have some Project Contractors, for example, the DIA project in Zambia, because they are hired for that specific project and are provided slightly more independence in their work.

Q: Is there an internal survey which scores HOT as an employer and a separate survey which also asks contractors?

A: Liz will look into this and see if a disaggregation can be done to show the difference between employees and contractors. It would be an interesting question to see the difference between contractors and employees. My sense is that it depends, that some employees and contractors are very happy and a couple in both sets are not quite as happy.

There have been growing pains with recruitment, processes weren’t as quick and straightforward, but now we have great team leads in HR, finance and Operations. The challenges are from a wider organisational standpoint and staff wellbeing and ways of working are reflective of HOT's values. There is an exit interview in place, systems identify why things are happening the way they do.

Q: What are the challenges for Liz and Paul and what are you doing to be able to achieve the OKRs?

A: Paul replied - Yes, there are a couple listed on slide 27 - I think I went through those pretty rapidly due to time concerns. There's a couple of points there around staffing of the Responsible Data Team - that's not gone as planned. There's a request there for assistance on reviewing the JD & identifying suitable candidates. There's of course a lot of wider changes/challenges - a lot of those we've been addressing as part of the Navigation Guide - for example, on how different teams work together, on how we support the Hubs, and how we collaborate both internally and externally in support of OSM communities. There's a lot of unresolved questions there. If I'm just looking within my current teams though - the main challenge is around getting the responsible data team to an operational state. Along with working in a very unpredictable landscape with Covid. So those are the major ones - please see slide 27 in the presentation.

A: Liz replied - We had some growing pains over the last year and there were some challenges with recruitment and hiring. We had a few instances where the processes weren’t as quick or straightforward as they could have been. Growing the team has been a challenge but from a team perspective we’re fully staffed and have some really great team leads who have alot of competency in their specific areas in HR, Finance and Operations.

The challenges I’m seeing now are from the wider organisation around staff wellbeing, the culture and making sure that we’re working together and the ways of working are reflective of our values. Where we can shift power dynamics and shifting control and working with our managers and setting up policies and systems to ensure that that happens. This is a big but good challenge that needs to happen.

From a day-to-day perspective everything is going fairly smoothly. Losing staff is always hard. There is now an exit interview process in place and more systems identifying why things are happening and identifying trends such as HR or staff wellbeing or financial. We have more in place to track all that.

Comment from Miriam: It’s great to have goals and OKRs to map the 1 billion people in 94 countries but sometimes we need to take a break and look at what is happening within the organisation and how to keep teams happy, motivated and how to achieve goals without forgetting the staff.

A: Liz - agrees with Miriam and how to work together to get there.

A: Tyler - is really appreciative that the Board is concerned about that because it is not the case in every organisation. It means that the staff feel that and it means alot for staff members that they know that the Board is concerned about their wellbeing. We’ve put in place a great foundation in place over the past year now and now in a place to execute . The theme of the upcoming year is to provide outstanding value to our humanitarian partners and OSM communities. We want them to know that we are providing a high level of value, financial and technical support and new ways of collaborating with our communities.

Comment from Kate: With regard to staff wellbeing, I would be very supportive of anything you might decide to do to increase this. The entire Wikimedia Foundation is off for a week. I know that this isn’t possible in humanitarian work. We’ve been doing different things to ensure that people can also step away from work and feel more free to do that, especially now that it seems that alot of the pandemic is catching up with people having gone through an emergency mode for a long time.

A: Tyler - Thank you Kate, that means alot.

A: Liz - We can’t do a whole week off but HOT has quarterly HOTlidays which is the last Friday of each quarter when HOT is closed. We’ve Introduced counselling opportunities for staff if they need it and professional development opportunities with the humanitarian development network. We’re currently training approximately 15 staff to be well-being focal points who want to be trained in this and receive some counselling training.

We’re also doing psychological first aid training which is for anybody in HOT and is being held next week to learn how to address situations especially when people can start travelling again and COVID is still present.

We’re really sensitive about staff and doing some surveys to make sure that staff have what they need. This was done a few months ago to ask staff how we can support them with their work/life balance.

We’ve implemented a home-office reimbursement for staff who are now working permanently from home, for example, staff can have a laptop stand and new monitor.

We’re trying to be really flexible with working hours and being busy this continues to be a struggle for our organisation Rachel is working on a framework on all this which can be shared with the Board.

Comment from Kate: Thanks for the thoughtful answer. I am definitely interested in seeing the framework when it is ready and am interested in the psychological training if the Board is welcome to that information.

Question from Ben:

Q: A question about Bo’s slide “Challenges and suggestions” - what was the problem with integrating RAPID and why didn’t it succeed? Can you please explain what the cultural challenges are and provide details about that?

A: We are still working with our partners to integrate AI-assisted mapping tools into Tasking Manager (TM). We will be reviewing the recent GitHub release of TM with a RapID integration to identify how we may be able to replicate this in mainline TM.

Culturally - This is about a change in culture. We’re introducing alot of new people into HOT and the OSM communities. Some members of the OSM community who have been involved for a longer period of time might be feeling out of place now and there is a clash of cultures. It is important to recognise where the current state of play is in society and how to improve diversity and people feel safe bringing their whole self to work.

Comment from Kate to Bo: If you want someone to talk through some of cultural aspect at the strategic management level, I have experience with this from my day job and am happy to talk about this with you.

A: Bo thanked Kate for her interest and will contact her.