National Dialogue

OpenStreetMap (OSM) National Dialogue is an initiative by Open Mapping Hub - Asia Pacific for various OSM community members or enthusiasts to come together to talk about OpenStreetMap, their experiences, challenges, and future goals through four phases:

1. Connect: Connections are established and groups/individual enthusiasts are encouraged to engage with other national communities
2. Discuss: Open discussions on Community issues, gaps, concerns, partnerships are held.
3. Plan: The groups plan on long-term and short-term objectives for their national communities, and design activities to accomplish their goals.
4. Execute: The Hub provides support to the national groups based on the findings of national dialogues.

Why is there a need for National Dialogue?

The Open Mapping Hub - Asia Pacific aims to encourage these conversations in order to promote unified activities amongst groups so that they can identify gaps and needs, set goals, and plan activities to strengthen Open Street Mapping on a national level. This will also allow the hub to better position itself to assist the countries with their needs.

What are the key goals of the National Dialogue?

• Local groups and the hub learn more about capacities and health of the OSM community.
• Local groups and the hub learn more about the challenges of the communities
• The groups work together to prioritize goals for their national communities.
• The groups identify activities to achieve goals.

What after the National Dialogues?

• Each country discussion results in clearly defined priorities and activities, and the Hub supports them with these priorities.
• The hub identifies and provides network support to the national communities by linking them to networks and partners and providing relevant training and Capacity Building.

Status

The first National Dialogue session was held in May 2021 for the OSM Philippines community. OSM Nepal held its first session in June 2021, and OSM Bangladesh in August 2021 Currently, two sessions each have been organized in Nepal and Bangladesh, whereas three sessions have been organized in the Philippines. All three countries are actively working towards determining their mapping priorities for the next year. To support these priorities, the hub is providing a Booster Grant of $25,000 each to these communities. The OSM communities are now holding internal discussions, and the hub anticipates to disburse the funds by October 2021.

	Current Status	No. of Meetings
Bangladesh	Ongoing	2
Nepal	Ongoing	2
Philippines	Ongoing	3

Bangladesh

	Status	No. of Participants	Activity Summary	Action Items
Meeting 1	Done - August 2, 2021	8	Getting to know the Participants Introduction to the Asia Pacific Hub What are the National Dialogues? Introduced the Key Questions	Schedule Meeting 2 and open discussion for Key Questions
Meeting 2	Done - September 9, 2021	16	Introduced Key Questions If you were to decide your priorities for mapping Nepal as a community for the next six months to one year, what would that look like? What activities are you interested in to develop Nepal's mapping community? How can the Hub help you? Selection of facilitating committee for the Booster Grants	Selection of institution for fund administration

Nepal

	Status	No. of Participants	Activity Summary	Next Steps
Meeting 1	Done - June 28, 2021	13	Getting to know the Participants Introduction to the Asia Pacific Hub What are the National Dialogues?
Meeting 2	Done - August 13, 2021	17	Introduced Key Questions If you were to decide your priorities for mapping Nepal as a community for the next six months to one year, what would that look like? What activities are you interested in to develop Nepal's mapping community? How can the Hub help you? Breakout Room Discussions	Create a Slack channel to further move discussion and coordination Summarize discussion notes and get feedback from wider community Identify organization to receive funding
Meeting 3	TBA

Philippines

	Status	No. of Participants	Activity Summary	Meeting Documentation
Meeting 1	Done - May 15, 2021	8	Getting to know the Participants Introduction to the Asia Pacific Hub What are the National Dialogues?
Meeting 2	Done - August 14, 2021	15	Introduced Key Questions If you were to decide your priorities for mapping the Philippines as a community for the next six months to one year, what would that look like? What activities are you interested in to develop the Philippines' mapping community? How can the Hub help you? Breakout Room Discussions	Summarize discussion notes and get feedback from wider community Identify backlog Tasking Manager Projects Identify organization to receive funding
Meeting 3	TBA

How can you join?

If you are a member of any of the ongoing countries, please feel free to reach out to openmappinghub.ap@hotosm.org so that we can coordinate it to the respective local OSM communities.