FOCUS Community

[foh-kuh s] ~ “a central point, as of attraction, attention, or activity”

Fisheries Open sourCe commUnity Solutions

Executive summary

FOCUS is a community dedicated to raise the technological awareness amongst fisheries organisations and as a consequence contribute to the sustainability of the fisheries resource. We believe that sharing information is a pillar of the platform needed to perform efficient fisheries management.   

This paper outlines the governing articles for FOCUS community.

Scope

The scope of FOCUS encapsulates the main functions to manage, maintain open source artefacts and standards, to propose new shared projects, to support its sponsors and to promote and engage the community.

Vison

The FOCUS aspire to the following vision statement.

 “To be the global reference for standards and innovative open source solutions for sustainable fisheries management “

Mission

The FOCUS Mission statement sets the boundaries and scope of the context in which we work, in order to get us where we want to go (vision).

“We facilitate, coordinate and promote the sharing of standards and open source fisheries management solutions as a collaborative community”

Principles

The FOCUS principles is meant to act as guidelines when opposite interests or opinions occurs within the community.

Organisation

FOCUS is organized and managed by a board [The Community Board]. The Community Board are custodians of the Community. The Community Manager is responsible for the day to day management of the FOCUS Community. FOCUS divides its work in different projects/interest groups. Each project/interest group has a different contextual focus and should have a natural separation from other projects/interest groups e.g. standardisation, open source software etc. A project/interest group is managed by a Project/Group Lead.

Election

The general principal for being elected to a specific role within the Community is by merit. In this sense FOCUS promotes a meritocratic philosophy.

Community Board

The Community Board draw nominations from interest countries and organisations to join the Board. Beside showing dedication and commitment to the Community a board member must have extensive experience related to fisheries management. A Community Board member needs to contribute and play an active role.

Community Manager

The Community Manager is elected from and by the Community Board.

Project/Group lead

Project/Group leads are agreed by the Community Board and the Community Manager.

Committer

Committer are appointed by the Project/Group leads and are authorized to commit updates to shared artefacts.

Contributor

Contributors are users of the Community that are recognized for their contributing work.

User/member

Anyone can become a user/member of the Community.

Voting

The community governance is centred on a Community Board elected by the FOCUS Community that is designed to represent the views and decisions of the Community whilst also providing leadership to support the needs and promotion of the Community. The Community Board is comprised as follows:

•       The Community Board is elected by the Community and consists of 10-12 members to serve a three year term.
•       The Community Board manager is selected by the board to serve a 1-year term based on his/her ability to address the current needs of the Community.
•       Community Board members elected by the community are voted upon by organisations contributing to the community or adopters of products developed by the community.
•       Community Board members must provide sufficient notice to the Board when they wish to stand down from their role.  

Actions and activities

This section contains a proposal on activities related the identified actions.

Planning

Govern

Manage

Propose

Evaluate/Govern

Support

Promote/engage