[Community] Measures of adherence to Identity Commons Purposeand Principles

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

I've been letting this question just lie there.  

1. First, I think we need to be careful.  The idea is for the WG to propose
how it will demonstrate honoring of the principles in its particular case.
This is not meant to be an open question like what you want to be when you
grow up (or in your career in 5 years or any of that guff).  It is really
about making sure that the WG has its eye on the ball and sees how adherence
will be demonstrable and inspectable.  Or, as a past manager said to me,
"OK, so long as you are worrying about that I am satisfied that I don't have
to."  Maybe there are examples but I would not want to force a template.

2. I will think about this, but not being involved that closely in a WG, I
am not sure what will work.  I'll look around a bit.  Nothing soon though.
Have some other work for a few days.

 - Dennis

PS (long). These items are not applicable here I hope, since I think WGs are
self-limiting in some respects.  Also, we are only talking about adherence
to principles (although I presume a WG has some proposed end state or
objective).  The following items are more about projects and their
deliverables achieving their benefits, rather than honoring some set of
principles.  But it is where my thinking comes from:

3. It is a common human situation to propose activity A because it will be
good for B, without ever indicating a way to tell that B is achieved or even
how it will be achieved.  In most case, justification of A is because actor
C wants to do it, or it is a cool thing that was thought of, or there is
some magical assumption of causality, or there may be some non-obvious
unstated agenda.  This happens in public policy debates all of the time.
("Offshore drilling" -> "energy independence" -> "low gas prices" is an easy
one.)  So it is useful to want to know how success is going to be
demonstrated and what the roadmap is.  Having the actors define and then be
held to their own accountability is meant to dispel magical thinking around
how if we do A we will automatically have B, without any demonstration and
checking of the journey at all.


4. For risk management purposes, one wants to even deal with the progression
from A to B and keep asking if move A.x is en route to B and if not, how to
correct course and, if not that, how/when to declare failure.  Declaring
failure doesn't happen very often, especially as early as it should.  I
know, for me, I can delude myself that I can still get there when an
intervention is called for because I've taken my eye off of the workability
of getting to B.  But I think for things like WGs a little periodic
self-assessment is good enough -- are we still tracking for B, is it soup
yet?  

-----Original Message-----
http://mail.idcommons.net/pipermail/community/2008-June/001420.html
From: ... Eugene Eric Kim
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 12:12
To: Identity Commons
Subject: Re: [Community] Measures of adherence to Identity Commons
Purposeand Principles

On 6/29/08, Joaquin Miller <jm-public at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>>Do you have alternative suggestions?
>
> Dennis has:
>>It would be useful, when a working group is created, especially one
>>with some focused purpose and a tangible work product, that there be
>>some declaration of how adherence to the principles is to be
>>demonstrated and accounted for.  This is under the rubric of
>>creating measures (not necessarily quantitative ones) that can be
>>demonstrated and inspected/audited for.
>
> Dennis' suggestion could be implemented by two practices:
> -- each working group includes in its charter measures of its
> adherence to the Principles;
> -- these measures are actually made and the results posted and seen.

Do me a favor and walk me through a scenario.  What might a measure be
for any of our existing WG?

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