2022-09-06 15:00 UTC: Contracting (proto) WG meeting
Attendees
• Ram Chandra Thapa
• John Gershenson
• Anna Sera Lowe
• Sarah Hutton
• Max Wardeh
• Barbara Schack
Apologies:
• Tiberius Brastaviceanu
• Andrew Lamb
• James Butler
• Antonio Anaya
• Ben Oldfrey
• Nathan Parker
• Raisa Ismaily
Agenda
• Recap (10 mins)
o Update
o Review of context of mAkE project and timelines
• Continued scoping discussion for Contracts ( 30 mins )
• Process (10)
• Next Steps ( 5 mins )
• Confirm next date of meeting ( 5 mins )
Recap of action points
• Barbara: create thread on forum to guide a “can you put some notes together on” request to a number of experts.
• Max - check with Helpful Engineering on joining the conversation.
• Create thread on forum to collate a list of “desirable system” to be inspired by / leverage.
• Create thread on forum on the question of exploring quality assurance (Post meeting remark for synergies: OSMS and Public Invention are convening a workshop on this topic in Oct. 22)
Minutes
1 Recap
o Update
Very open discussion on contracts - what are the issues or challenges when we discuss contracting w/ the IOPA? What questions do we need to ask ourselves - legal, payment? What additional stakeholders are needed (lawyers, etc). Explored the difference between different business models; goal was not consensus, rather, brainstorming.
Action Items Resulting from Preliminary/Previous Discussions
*• Done - Term of references to come as community engagement lead on this discussion. There are currently a few good candidates - encourage more apply. *
• Tiberius will be making an introduction to Value Flows
• Would like to get more folks from Helpful Engineering in the conversation, discussing work arounds for disruption of supply chain(s).
o Review of context of mAkE project and timelines:
Develop a prototype of contracting across the ecosystem – distributed contracting will be tested (this is a deliverable the IOPA has committed to).
Not developing a standard, rather, a catalog of business models. ETA for completed catalog: March 2023.
Webinar Series Under Development
• Business Model Possibilities for Africa (OSH)
2 Continued scoping discussion for Contracts
2.1 Content
o Use cases
Kijenzi use case on distributed contracting described (fill out notes); orthoses for hospitals, testing capability for response to individual orders. No standard format is being used, currently - always open for testing; testing will be starting up Oct/Nov 2022.
• Likely would be only many one to ones (see below for note on one-to-many).
Field Ready’s need for a One-to-Many ordering system
• Is one to many possible (legally)? Could contracts be distributed to multiple orgs (making it seem like one-to-many)?
Helpful engineering: SCIS - Use case of disruption to supply chains
o What are we trying to figure out?
What scenarios, what players.
how does money circulate? and where are the existing answers to this question seeing the variety of payment solutions that exist
Possible scenarios - Use cases (Ram)
• One-to-One (consumer contracts one maker)
• Maker Contracting (one maker sub-contracts to many makers)
• Contract is Project based (public contract/dev agency.) => 1:1:many
Kijenzi Use Case
• Currently reviewing 1:1:many
• Where end user/customer (in need of many parts made in a few places by several sub-contractors) is blind to the complexity and contracts - all is handled by a supply chain company like Kijenzi. Then, supply chain company contracts individually with each necessary sub in each place and takes over responsibility for quality, delivery, payments, etc. All of the details are worked out by third party contractor - customer receives product.
o For potential contracting systems, what is needed?
Legal coverage for specific jurisdictions - how do we obtain the legal device? Possible to establish a network of contract discussion and support amongst legal advisors? Look to model of CC legal advice from JD network (Sarah can investigate).
Incoterms (International Chamber of Commerce/ICC - published set of terms) is a desirable system for liability - you are advised at every step; we could start by defining a set of terms. Incoterms® 2020 - ICC - International Chamber of Commerce
• Do we have additional systems to offer up? If we were to compile a list, we could then have community members review and provide feedback.
Outstanding questions:
• How much of the product quality assurance falls within this process? This would be included in the ‘behind the scenes’ work/support provided by the third party company; John G sees Kijenzi as becoming an engineering and quality assurance company.
• Beyond ensuring the quality of the final product, how do we ensure the quality of raw/input materials?
2.2 Process
Additional brainstorming session
What does scoping mean?
• There needs to be rigor for quality control.
• Discussion not concluded
What does the output look like?
• A reasonably short report presenting the results of a scoping research, informing next phases (whether projects like make that want to create contracting prototypes, or further research towards developing specification(s)…). It could include: interesting use cases to explore, notes put together by a number of experts (we can use some of the technical authoring budget for this), lists of stakeholders, or of that are relevant to explore…
How do we get there?
• Coming up with questions that we will ask a series of expert
• have to identify the use cases that would provide parameters for what we need in the review
• We need to collect use cases and look at commonalities - select those with greatest overlap.
o Action point: create thread for use cases, systems, questions to guide a “can you put some notes together on” request.
• Come up with suggestions for systems (see previous RE: Incoterms) for compiling lists to send to the community for feedback.
3 Next Steps
o Recruitment of an individual to establish/develop and then manage the process
o Moving from brain dumping/discovery phase towards concrete outputs
4 Confirm next date of meeting
o How often do we want to meet? Monthly? Next meeting should be once the community engagement lead has been recruited. Date pending, tentative: Oct. 4th 13UTC.