[Osia-members] The future of OSIA [was Re: Call for expressions of interest to serve on the board of OSIA]

[Jack Burton]

[bringing these two back into a single thread]

On Mon, 2018-01-08 at 18:14 +1100, Ryan Cross wrote: 
> Priorities of limited resources is always a struggle, but its the
> right question to ask. Perhaps another piece of the puzzle to consider
> is the time horizon. In its current state, it feels like OSIA is in a
> weak state to effectively deliver much meaningful policy work. Perhaps
> in the short term, and to borrow a sports analogy, we should be
> considering a "rebuilding season" - developing capacity and growing
> the membership base so that we become a stronger organisation who can
> then turn our attention more towards the championship goal of
> meaningfully impacting public policy and broader market impact.

> As always, thanks for stimulating good conversation and continuing to
> push forward. 
> 
On Mon, 2018-01-08 at 18:49 +1100, Ryan Cross wrote:
> On 7 January 2018 at 18:26, Jack Burton <jack at saosce.com.au> wrote:
> 
> >
> > 3. Of the many things we could be (or perhaps even should be) doing,
> > which should be the highest priority (or two at most) for OSIA in
> > 2018?
> 
> ​Following on from my comment in the other thread, I believe the
> highest priority for OSIA in 2018 is
> rebuilding/increasing/strengthening the ​membership base of OSIA. This
> could take several forms of activity (meetups/networking,
> marketing/advertising, press, newsletters/edm, partnerships or
> whatever is the best strategy) but all other objectives are only
> really possible once we've got a stronger base of membership. If not
> obvious, the primary element of a strong membership base is having a
> large enough pool of people who are willing to step up and contribute
> (time and/or money) so that meaningful work can be accomplished on
> behalf of the membership.
> 
> I don't mean to point blame or guilt anyone into anything, its simply
> a matter of volume and capacity to deliver.

Interesting.

I've forced myself to hold off on replying to this for a few days, just
to see what others might say. But there being no other replies since
Ryan's on the list yet, I think now it's time for me to respond.

Please accept my apologies in advance -- this is going to be a rather
long list post -- and if at times you find it a little dismal in tone,
please persevere (as always, the solution lies toward the end -- it is
necessary to define the problem, however painful that may be, before
attempting to solve it).

If Ryan is correct, then we have a catch 22 situation:

Ryan argues that doing substantive public policy work won't be possible
again until we have substantially stronger membership base.

But the converse seems clear to me: it is highly unlikely that many new
members will join unless & until OSIA starts responding in a timely
manner again to all relevant public policy issues, as & when they
arise.

After all, that's where the real value lies.

Anyone can run meet-ups (or other small events), maintain mailing lists,
put out regular newsletters, or even put out the occasional press
release.

None of those things require OSIA to exist as a company in its own
right (as Cameron pointed out last week).

Furthermore, none of those things represent *unique* value that
differentiates OSIA sufficiently from the various community bodies and
professional societies that also exist...

...so even doing all of those things *by themselves* is unlikely to give
anyone who wouldn't otherwise join OSIA a sufficiently compelling reason
to do so.

So, where *can* OSIA generate unique value, to provide a compelling
reason to join?

To me, the answer still lies in the reason OSIA was founded in the
first place (and was confirmed by the VPM project in 2015) -- to
address public policy matters that have the potential either to
threaten or to provide exciting new opportunities for the .au FOSS
industry.

Now it's true that the relevant community bodies (principally LA) and
professional societies (principally ACS, EA & ITPA) do that too (as do
broader computing industry bodies such as AIIA).

But (ignoring OSV & OpenSA which have long since ceased to exist) OSIA
was the sole voice of the .au FOSS industry -- representing businesses
(rather than individuals or professionals) just from the FOSS sector
(not the whole broader computing industry).

That, to me, is where OSIA's true unique value lay, and I believe it
should lie again.

Strictly speaking, anyone can lodge government submissions, appear
before inquiries, etc. too -- and various OSIA members have done just
that independently from time to time over the years -- but those things
carry far less weight when they come from an individual company or from
a loose affiliation of a few companies than they do when they come from
an industry body whose purpose is to represent the .au FOSS industry as
a whole.

As I see it, Ryan is certainly right about at least one thing though --
OSIA does indeed have a need to attract more members.

If new members *want* to join now (and if lapsed members want to
renew), to contribute to building the OSIA of the future, we'd
certainly welcome them.

But I think that right now is the worst possible time to go out and
sell / market OSIA membership actively.

I'm not saying that selling membership, or anything else for that
matter, is hard. It isn't. But first we must once more *have* something
to sell -- otherwise nobody is going to buy (except perhaps some of us
who were already sold on the idea of OSIA many years ago).

In our own businesses, we all make purchasing decisions on a daily
basis. In making those decisions, it's only natural that we tend to
look for proven, recent results. Making the decision to join an
industry body is no different.

The greatest difficulty that I see in trying to focus on membership
growth in the coming year is that for the last year or so OSIA has
suffered from a clear absence of demonstrated results in general, but
particularly in the key area of public policy.

We have missed a substantial number of key opportunities, including
some that related to what I believe were the three most important
public policy matters in OSIA's history ever (#1, #2 & #4 below).

For example:

1. OSIA spent 5 years opposing TPP. Some great work was done on that by
a good many people. In late 2016 / early 2017, we finally got what we
wanted -- TPP was dead. It should have been a fantastic good news story
for OSIA. But OSIA did nothing whatsoever to capitalise on that
victory. Today, the spectre of a resurrected TPP is rearing its ugly
head again. Would anything further OSIA could have done at the crucial
time have made a difference to that? Who knows! But at the very least
we could (and I firmly believe should) have tried as best we could.

2. In late 2015 & mid 2016, OSIA lodged two submissions to the
Productivity Commission's Inquiry into Intellectual Property
Arrangements, in early 2016 we met with the Commission's economists and
in mid 2016 I testified before one of the Inquiry's public hearings.
The Inquiry's final report (released during the week of Christmas 2016)
followed many (but by no means all) of our recommendations and quoted
OSIA more than any other external report before. This should have been
a really good news story for OSIA, but again nothing was done to
publicise the result (getting back to Mark's poignant comment about
exposure here).

3. In mid to late 2016, OSIA lodged an initial submission to the
Productivity Commission's Inquiry into Data Availability & Access. The
Inquiry's interim report (released just before the 2016 AGM) was very
scary indeed -- dismissing virtually all privacy & security concerns as
almost irrelevant. OSIA could (and I firmly believe should) have lodged
a final submission strongly criticising the interim report. But OSIA
did not lodge a final submission, the Inquiry's final report (released
in May 2017) was just as prejudicial and OSIA said nothing publicly in
response to either report.

4. In late 2016, OSIA engaged with the Department of Prime Minister &
Cabinet's ICT Procurement Task Force. This was a
once-in-a-decade-or-two opportunity to influence Commonwealth IT
procurement policy in a truly transformative way -- something OSIA has
been trying to do since its inception. But OSIA failed to lodge any
formal submission to the Inquiry (closed Jan 2017). Carl & I lodged an
independent submission of our own (which we'd have much rather drafted
for OSIA instead, but were totally discouraged from doing so because
OSIA had already ignored my pleas & contributions offered in relation
to #1, #2 & #3 above, so we weren't willing to risk any more work being
buried), which although it contained some content specific to our
companies was mostly written from a generic FOSS industry perspective.
The Task Force's final report (released Aug 2017) ignored all of our
recommendations. Would that have been any different if that submission
or something similar had been lodged by OSIA instead? Nobody can know
for sure -- but I firmly believe that a submission of equivalent
quality coming from a industry body like OSIA would have carried far
more weight and yielded a far better outcome for the .au FOSS industry.

5. OSIA failed to lodge any response at all to the Department of
Industry's Digital Economy consultation paper (Oct/Nov 2017). In my
opinion, the FOSS industry should take steps to be seen as *leaders* in
the digital economy, rather than ignoring it.

6. OSIA failed to lodge any submission to the consultation paper on the
DTA/ATO's proposed Trusted Digital Identity Framework (last qtr of
2017), which carries the risk of becoming yet another "Australia Card
like" initiative.

7. In mid 2017, Cameron raised on-list once again the key issues with
the NSW ProcureIT Framework v3.2 (which actively discriminates against
FOSS suppliers). This is something that OSIA had worked on in 2015 &
2016 and indeed *some* of our recommendations had been followed, but
the two most important ones had not. OSIA's 2017 response to the
continuing issue that Cameron raised was virtually non-existent.

Of course there are more, but I'm sure that those 7 examples will
suffice to prove my point.

But that was the past -- what we're concerned with now is the future --
and I suggest that it makes most sense now to break the deadlock by
generating value *before* trying to sell it.

If OSIA's primary purpose is to represent the .au FOSS industry (as I
firmly believe it always should be), then we must *actually* represent
the .au FOSS industry and do so *consistently*, and we must *tell* the
world both about what we've said every time we lodge a submission and
about what we think of the final results (commending or condemning them
on their individual merits), if we want potential new members to see
OSIA membership as a worthwhile investment.

If we can get back to (or better still beyond) the level of results
OSIA was delivering on the public policy front in 2016, and add to that
some decent exposure, it should then be very easy to go out and sell
membership (and indeed sponsorship) -- as then it will once more be
something well worth paying for.

But if we don't -- if instead we have a *further* year of not
responding in a timely manner to all public policy matters directly
relevant to the .au FOSS industry (or at the very least all those at
Commonwealth level: I think most members would forgive OSIA for
neglecting the states & territories a bit at times when there's so much
going on in Canberra)...

...then to be frank, I think that would be *more* damaging to the .au
FOSS industry than not having an OSIA at all.

Here's why.

Put yourself in the government's shoes -- imagine you're reviewing
submissions to, let's say the "Commonwealth Inquiry into Foo"; and
imagine (hard as that may be) that you don't know anything about FOSS
when you start reading submissions. Let's consider three scenarios:

1. You get two independent submissions from Australian FOSS businesses.
Both high quality, but each only representing one company. They
interest you, so you look up the industry and discover that there *is*
an industry body (OSIA), but it was completely silent ... and naturally
you interpret that silence as meaning that the issues raised are not of
sufficient importance to the *majority* of the .au FOSS industry, so
you don't place much weight if any on those two independent
submissions.

2. Now imagine you get three high quality submissions from the
Australian FOSS sector: a very comprehensive one from OSIA, with at
least 3 or 4 authors, speaking for the industry as a whole; plus two
very short ones from those same two individual companies as in the
first scenario, that say something like "we have read and completely
support OSIA's submission on all points except X & Y; on those two
points we agree with OSIA's assessment of the problem, but offer our
own alternative solutions...".

All of a sudden those exact same arguments start to carry a lot more
weight -- now they represent an entire industry sector that's united in
purpose yet mature & substantial enough to support a diversity of
proposed policy solutions when necessary.

3. Lastly, think back to the first scenario again (2 independent
submissions only), but this time imagine that when looking up the
industry, you discover that there is *no* industry body. Why are those
two companies speaking out? This time it's *not* because they're
dissenting voices; it's clearly because there's no industry body to
speak *for* them -- so they may well be worth considering after all.

Clearly scenario #2 is the best -- I'm sure we can all agree on that.

But if for whatever reason we can't have scenario #2, I suggest that
scenario #3 is nowhere near as bad for our industry as scenario #1.

Now I'm *not* arguing to wind up OSIA -- I very much want to see OSIA
survive, rebuild and in time grow to far *exceed* it's past
achievements.

But (as Alexar quite rightly said in Melbourne after the AGM), it is
not enough for OSIA merely to survive -- it is only worth having an
OSIA if OSIA actually serves a useful purpose.

That's the unique value I was talking about -- and I'd add to that the
need for far greater exposure that Mark called for.


Last week Simran urged us to look to solutions -- not just to problems
-- and on that particular point he too was right.


Whilst we may have missed the most important boat on each of the
various examples above, there is still scope for OSIA to do substantial
good work on the issues raised above in examples #1 (TPP), #4 (ICT
Procurement) & #6 (TDIF) at least (and perhaps also #7, NSW ProcureIT):

* On a revived TPP, we need to educate the public on the dangers of
merely suspending (as opposed to completely removing) the various
provisions of the IP Chapter; and we need to reiterate our earlier
calls for Australia to negotiate *genuine* free trade agreements (i.e.
abolish tariffs & quotas, but leave out the other 28 Chapters of TPP
that sought to *restrict* trade); and we need to renew our calls for
genuine transparency in treaty negotiation (even more loudly this time
-- now that the US is no longer involved there can be no conceivable
excuse for secrecy).

* On ICT Procurement, there is still scope to engage with DTA regarding
the *implementation* of the Task Force's recommendations (despite them
not being the recommendations we might have wanted).

* On TDIF, I have a feeling that there may be further rounds of
consultation to come.

Of course there are always *new* public policy matters arising across
government and I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunity in 2018 and
beyond for OSIA to represent our great industry to government on those
matters.

I also think that instituting a more open source set of processes for
drafting government submissions (as I raised at the 2016 AGM and as
discussed with Cameron earlier in this thread) would go a long way
towards facilitating all that, even with a relatively small board --
because after all, OSIA is here to "amplify" our industry's voice (not
to "replace" it) ... that's right there in our tag line.


So to me the only real questions that remain are these:

1. Am I just dreaming? I hope not. Surely I'm not the only member who
wants to see OSIA return to the fray of public policy with gusto, to
see OSIA exceed its past achievements and to see OSIA become recognised
as the leading Australian voice on all such matters?

2. Who will step up to lead OSIA through its second resurrection, by
serving on the 2018 board?

and

3. How many of us in the .au FOSS industry (regardless of whether OSIA
members or not) will help make that possible, by contributing to the
drafting of one or more submissions from time to time during the year?


If those questions can elicit positive responses then, after a year or
so of OSIA delivering solid results again, I'm confident that the
membership drive that Ryan called for (and that I agree we will need)
will almost run itself.


In short, my vision for a rejuvenated OSIA would look something like
this:

2018 -- start influencing government again (as I've said all along);
build credibility from that; gain greater exposure for OSIA (as Mark
called for) in the media and in the community at large; involve the
broader membership (everyone on this list) in policy development using
an open source development model; organic membership growth only (some
new members will join; more lapsed members will renew); start building
relationships with kindred organisations; a small (4 to 8 member) but
highly focussed board.

2019 -- continue & accelerate growth in public policy and in exposure;
continue building relationships with kindred organisations; run the
membership drive (that Ryan called for) and return to historic levels
of financial membership; sign two major sponsors; deploy a
*production-ready* replacement for MRS/AOSD; start planning for some of
the more ambitious extra initiatives (proposed by Grant & Mark); board
grows slightly to 5 to 9 members. 

2020 -- OSIA recognised as leading industry voice on public policy
matters relating to computing in Australia; regularly quoted by major
national mainstream media outlets; routinely approached for advice on
relevant matters by key senior public servants & political leaders;
recommendations often followed; new record set for financial membership
levels; sign 4 more major sponsors; start work on rolling out some of
the more ambitious extra initiatives (proposed by Grant & Mark); board
size levels out at 9 or 10 directors plus a company secretary, annual
elections hotly contested.


The Communists used to have "5 year plans", almost all of which failed
-- but as business owners and as FOSS devotees I'm sure we're far more
efficient, far more productive and far more motivated than they ever
were, so I'm convinced that OSIA members could achieve the success we
need in just 3 years, if only we can unite behind a common purpose and
consistently work together to do what is needed to get things done.


I'll stop there, as I've probably written far too much already.

But as always, I'm keen to hear the thoughts of everyone on this list
re any of the above.

Regards,


--
Jack Burton FACS CP <jack at saosce.com.au>
Director, Saosce Pty Ltd (OSIA member #50)
Company Secretary, Safecoms Cyber Security Pty Ltd
Company Secretary, Open Source Industry Australia Ltd

The above are my own views and in some places might not necessarily
represent the views of the interim OSIA board.