Embargoed until March 3, 2021

Digital Infrastructure Research RFP

Recipient: M ​ egan Finn (University of Washington, University of Texas, Northeastern University)

Headline:​ ​How are COVID data infrastructures created and transformed by builders and maintainers from
the open source community?
Description: ​Open source data projects shape and define public knowledge about COVID-19. The
COVID Data Infrastructure Builders Project uncovers the challenges in producing and maintaining these
vital critical data infrastructures by focusing on the experts that design and maintain data trackers, portals,
and dashboards for the public. The research team will investigate how community membership, work
practices, and technical tools serve to support knowledge production about the COVID crisis. The project
concentrates on how COVID data infrastructures can obscure or draw attention to the disparate impacts of
the coronavirus amongst different communities.

Recipient: N ​ arrira Lemos de Souza

Headline: ​How is digital infrastructure a critical response to fight climate change?
Description: ​ ​The illegal and unsustainable use of logging, agriculture, and cattle raising is directly
related to climate change. In view of this, we aim to understand how digital infrastructure can support the
local communities affected by these activities. We believe that a collaborative implementation of FOSS
projects related to territory mapping and to access to information and communication can constitute a
critical step in the defense of the territories of these communities, thus preserving them from activities
associated with the increase of global warming. Besides analysing the challenges faced by already
existing FOSS projects that work in this direction, we will investigate - by means of a qualitative
methodology - the collaborative relationship that can exist between (and inside) the FOSS communities
themselves, and between the local communities (mainly environmental defenders) and the FOSS
communities. In our vision of success, we hope to create a guideline that serves as a reference for those
who want to support FOSS projects that deal with the problems we will investigate.

Recipient: ​Atul Pokharel (NYU)

Headline: ​How do perceptions of unfairness when contributing to an open source project affect the
sustainability of critical open source digital infrastructure projects?
Description: P​ erceptions of unfairness impact the cooperative maintenance of critical open source digital
infrastructure projects. We seek to improve diversity, inclusion, community efficacy, and the software
products themselves by changing how contributors engage in open source projects and how project
organizers address perceived unfairness. First, we aim to identify concepts and actions for project
maintainers to detect and address perceptions of unfairness in their projects before the projects are
affected. Second, we aim to develop fairness metrics to be integrated with the CHAOSS badging
program. Finally, we aim to improve our understanding of the community maintenance of shared
resources more generally.

Recipient: ​Danielle Robinson (Code for Science & Society)

Headline: ​Supporting projects to implement research-informed best practices at the time of need on
governance, sustainability, and inclusion.
Embargoed until March 3, 2021

Description: C​ ode for Science & Society will build an expert-advised cohort program for open digital
infrastructure projects who wish to implement research-based recommendations relating to three common
challenges faced by digital infrastructure projects: governance, sustainability, and community health.
While research-based recommendations exist for nearly every challenge project teams face, it is not
practical to expect teams to dive into research and connect with experts when facing a challenge that
needs to be quickly resolved. Projects need guidance and feedback in real-time that is informed by
research and sensitive to their project’s unique context. By creating a peer cohort, linking projects to
experts, and providing support for implementation plans, we will be able to road-test research in real
world situations and report on the successes and challenges, generating insights for other digital
infrastructure projects.

Recipient:​ ​Anthony Townsend (Cornell Tech)

Headline: ​Assessing Partnerships for Municipal Digital Infrastructure
Description:​ C​ ity governments ensure public health and safety, provide education and transportation, and
support businesses and livelihoods. Software is an indispensable tool in this vital work. In fact, ​cities’
software needs are expanding exponentially, as everything is instrumented and automated. It is also a way
to address longstanding challenges to governance through better ​transparency and accountability. But the
way cities build and buy software is broken. ​Vendors are moving into positions as data intermediaries that
may prove impossible to undo. Cities are finding key decisions about technology frameworks, data
governance, and market structure are swept under the table. To overcome these challenges, cities have
formed coalitions to collaborate and co-develop municipal digital infrastructure. There are some
promising success stories. But cities have not yet fully cracked the code of how to scale these models or
the solutions they produce. This project will explore how city governments collaborate with peers to
create digital infrastructure; what makes these joint efforts succeed or fail; and the kinds of institutional
capacity that could improve outcomes.

Recipient:​ ​Eileen Wagner, Molly Wilson, Julia Kloiber, Elisa Lindinger, and Georgia Bullen (Simply
Secure & Superrr)
Headline:​ ​Implement recommendations for funders of open source infrastructure with guides,
programming, and models.
Description: T ​ he Infrastructure Funder's Toolkit is a comprehensive resource activating the insights and
recommendations from Roadwork Ahead to provide funders guidance and support around the digital
infrastructure community of practice. The project will take an approach rooted in human-centered design
(HCD) in order to generate actionable insights based on research and active experimentation. Through
interviews, focus groups, and testing the toolkit will be iteratively designed and implemented with funder
and grantee stakeholders. As part of the development of the toolkit the research team will work with field
researchers to localize the work and the content, engaging regional expertise and ensuring that the toolkit
reflects local nuance and global understanding of digital infrastructure. The Infrastructure Funder's
Toolkit will offer a means to equip more funders with the tools to understand and actualize the relevance
of digital infrastructure within their respective causes and express their interest in support of and funding
to projects, teams, and organizations within the ecosystem.

Recipient:​ ​Mehdi Medjaoui (APIdays, LesMainteneurs, Inno3)

Embargoed until March 3, 2021

Headline: ​How we can build a “Creative Commons” for API terms of Service, as a contract to
automatically read, control and enforce APIs Terms of service between infrastructure and applications?
Description:​ I​ n order to scale technical, business and legal interoperability between digital infrastructures,
APItos-CC project aims to build a “Creative Commons” framework for API terms of Service, as a
contract to automatically read, control and enforce APIs Terms of service between digital infrastructure
and applications. The terms of service for APIs represent a boundary object whose identification of
specific clauses and degree of "openness" (on the model of Creative Commons licenses with different
degrees of conditions of use) can work towards a better understanding and vigilance regarding the
constitution of open, secure, safe and sustainable digital infrastructure ecosystems.

Recipient:​ ​Digital Asia Hub

Headline:​ ​Indian case study of governance, implementation, and private sector role of open source
infrastructure projects.
Description: I​ ndia is on the path of rapid digitisation of its public service delivery infrastructure,
ostensibly building on the country’s history of encouraging OSS use by the government. If built in a
sustainable, rights respecting manner, on principles of openness, transparency, and accountability, digital
public infrastructure can be immensely useful, and help reduce inequality in access to government
services. This project seeks to analyse the extent to which OSS principles are being incorporated into the
development of public digital infrastructure for provision of government services in India, the challenges
being faced in implementation, and the potential best practices that can be adopted by the Indian
government.

Recipient:​ ​Duane O'Brien

Headline: ​Will cross-company visibility into shared free and open source dependencies lead to
cross-company collaboration and efforts to sustain shared dependencies?
Description:​ O​ rganizations that contribute to their free and open source dependencies often do so in
isolation, looking only at their own dependencies and how important they are to the organization. By
executing a common dependency analysis framework, organizations can easily share dependency
information with consistency, opening up conversations about the importance of shared dependencies
across organizational boundaries and across the wider open source ecosystem. Will cross-organizational
visibility into these shared dependencies lead to cross-organizational collaboration, contribution and
investment in dependency maintenance?

Recipient:​ ​Anushah Hossain (UC Berkeley)

Headline:​ ​How do open source tools contribute towards creating a multilingual internet?
Description: T​ his project investigates how open source tools contribute towards creating a multilingual
internet. Open source software has been a common element and aspiration in the multilingual computing
stack. This is in part because many minority language users were unsupported by, and thus opted to work
outside of, proprietary systems. By exploring the use and value of open source software within
multilingual computing, we can understand how current initiatives function and what challenges exist,
whether they be in funding, expertise, interoperability, or otherwise.

Recipient:​ ​Jorge Benet (Cooperativa Tierra Común)

Headline: ​How digital infrastructure projects could embrace cooperatives
Embargoed until March 3, 2021

as a sustainable model for working?

Description:​ O
​ ur research will inquire into cooperative organizations working on digital infrastructure in
order to obtain a cooperative-specific model for working on digital infrastructure. Cooperatives are
essential components of the social economy. As economic and social organizations they may contribute in
a unique way to sustain the decentralized development of free and open source software and at the same
time, enable close relationships with users and communities. The research results will provide clear and
accurate guidelines based on the advantages that cooperatives offer and show how digital infrastructure
projects can embrace the proposed model.

Recipient:​ ​Divyank Katira (Centre for Internet & Society in Bangalore)

Headline:​ ​How do technical decision-makers assess the security ramifications of open source software
components before adopting them in their projects and where can systemic interventions to the FOSS
ecosystem be targeted to collectively improve its security?
Description: S ​ ecurity is a critical part of the often overlooked area of open source software maintenance.
While the benefits of FOSS are well recognized, there is no widespread understanding of the security
tradeoffs of pervasive software reuse. This project will use a mix of qualitative research to examine
attitudes of technical decision-makers towards the security of FOSS components, and empirical analysis
to study their security failures at an infrastructural level to identify and proactively respond to systemic
issues in the FOSS ecosystem that underpin these failures.

Recipient:​ ​Alex Comninos (Research ICT Africa (RIA) and the University of Cape Town)
Headline: ​How can African participation in the development, maintenance, and application of the global
open source digital infrastructure be enhanced?
Description: “​ African digital infrastructures: Evaluating the landscape,” will create a better
understanding of African participation in open source development - an area in which there is relatively
little existing research - and how African leadership and participation in open source projects could be
enhanced. The interdisciplinary team will investigate the extent of African contributions to open source
digital infrastructures, identify and understand catalysts of as well as barriers to the uptake and production
of open source in Africa, document lessons from successful African-led open source projects, and reveal
how digital infrastructures are different in the African context.