Humanitarian OSM Team/Working groups/Data Quality Control and Assurance/Tasking Manager Project Gardening

This document defines the workflow for the administration of the Tasking Manager, specifically the oversight of projects.

HOT Quality Control and Assurance Working Group - First Drafted June 17, 2021

Last Update: February 21, 2022

Phase 1

In this phase, we will look at archiving projects that no longer have a reason to remain active on the Tasking Manager.

The criteria for archiving in Phase 1 is…

• 100% mapped and 100% validated
• And, was created 12 months ago or more
  • Or, has old or outdated instructions or imagery
• Or, any project created in Tasking Manager Version 2

Steps to take for archiving:

• If no Organization is included, or the Organization is “Other” - message the project owner via the Tasking Manager
  • If the Project owner does not respond within 30 days, the Quality Control and Assurance Working Group (QC/A WG) and HOT reserve the right to decide if the Project should be archived or not
• If the Organization is listed as a specific organization (not “Other”) - message the project owner and at least one Organization Administrator (if the owner is not also an organization admin)

Concluded

• 924 Projects Fitting Phase 1 Criteria Were Archived October 2021

Phase 2

In this phase, we will archive projects that may have a reason to remain (i.e., they are not complete) but are not being managed.

The criteria for archiving in Phase 2 are:

• Projects older than January 1, 2020
  • Check priority of the projects; “Urgent” projects should be addressed first as they will go stale more rapidly than lower priorities
  • If necessary, check imagery and instructions to see if they are up-to-date

Steps to take for archiving:

• Prior to archiving: message the community to reply if they have project(s) older than 2020 that they still need, to inform the working group
  • Message sent to HOT Mailing List as priority
  • Message sent to general channel on HOT Slack
  • Banner placed on Tasking Manager
  • Note in project #authors
• Post-archiving: email all project owners whose projects were archived

Concluded

• 1758 Projects Fitting Phase 2 Criteria Were Archived February 2022

Continuous Phase

Once the initial phases are complete, the Quality Control and Assurance Working Group will continue to monitor and evaluate projects in order to successfully promote projects to completion.

A spreadsheet will be set up for tracking and reporting on projects that need review. Basic project issues will be addressed asynchronously by the Working Group members (such as typos, broken links, improper settings, etc. that retain original project intent without risk to data quality). If projects are particularly troublesome and may need to be taken down/archived, a time in the Data Quality Control and Assurance Working Group meetings will be set for Working Group members to request a review of the specific project(s), and if necessary, vote(s) for a decision on taking the project(s) down.

Steps to take before taking down/archiving an active project:

• Attempt to contact the project owner/creator
• If not successful, contact an Organization Administrator (if different)
• Bring to the attention of QC/A Working Group members
• If the problems cannot be resolved asynchronously, bring the matter to the next meeting

Criteria for taking down/archiving a project could vary. Examples include:

• Project with outdated instructions or imagery, causing poor mapping
• Project complete except for one/few cell(s) that the task manager is having difficulty with, ensuring the area is mapped manually
• Project manager(s) unresponsive to communications from mappers and validators (for more than 1 week if the question(s) are necessary to ensure completion and/or quality)