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Communication Policy

Abstract

This section focuses on the communication policies that define the choice of tools and services for communication, the best practice for good and efficient communication as well as the code of conduct.

Motivation

The consortial communications should be based on established practices for good and efficient communication and established standards for conduct.

Also, the choice of the tools for communication should be guided by a number of principles, such as inclusiveness, efficiency and standardization.

Elaboration

Choice of communication tools

The choice of the tools of communication should be guided by a number of principles, that allow all members to participate in the collaboration of the consortium in the most inclusive, efficient and standardized way:

Inclusion

All members need to be able to use all selected tools of communications. For this reason they need to be: - accessible - affordable (free of costs) - open in such a way that they provide no barriers of entry

Efficiency

All members need to be informed quickly and without efforts to support a good and frictionless collaboration among the members.

Standards

Members should use tools that are established and broadly used as this increases the chance that many users might already be familiar with the tools and that the tools are well documented.

The consortium needs to discuss whether some tools of communication might not be compatible with the corporate communication policies of participating members, privacy or data protection regulations and/or other local regulation.

Best practice for good and efficient communication

For a good and efficient communication among the members and users, the following principles should be respected:

Documentation

All communication should be documented professionally and comprehensively, including all relevant details and metadata like e.g. a date of the communication, the involved communication partners.

Communication should be documented professionally and comprehensively and transparent in such a way, so that all absent members or new members can informed themselves quickly and efficiently about the communication and matter at stake.

All relevant communication should be distributed to all members. All members should be notified, this means that the consortium should establish a way to provide information on updates and communication to all members swiftly.

All members should make sure that relevant communication can – in principle – can be accessed by all employees of the organization. Rules on debriefing of staff within one organization and internal communication may apply.

The members should consequently avoid the that communication and knowledge is dependent on one user (“bus driver problem”) and implement substitute regulations at all times.

Transparency

Transparency in documentation and decision processes can create mutual trust among the members of the consortium as well as external parties.

Reliability

Members should be aware of relevant communication and responsive when they are addressed. This means that members should respond in a timely and competent manner.

Code of Conduct

All members should agree on a code of conduct in their communication that include policies for fair and equal treatment of all members and that allow to resolve potential conflicts efficiently and effectively.

The general principles are: - Respect - Ethical behaviour - Principles of efficient dispute resolution - Purpose on focus and scope of the consortium An escalation process needs to be established. This could result in a voting decision about the topic in dispute or the conflict between the members or users.

Point of contacts

Points of contact for consortial members

The consortium should provide relevant information about the consortium and its members, including the information about the roles within the consortium and their contact information.

This way, the relevant contacts can be found, e.g. in cases of technical problems with the chain, the need for escalation in case of an emergency, to reach out to expert and decision-making bodies, working admins.

Points of contact for external contacts

The consortium should provide relevant information about the consortium and its members, and offer a way for interested third parties to get in touch with the consortium, individual members or individual points of contact. It should be clear to interested third parties, who is the responsible contact person for external questions?

Internal references and dependencies

Lists of internal references and dependencies

References to best practice, examples

List of references to best practice, examples

Bibliography of selected references

List of references and literature

RFC-0611
Contributing authors: Sebastian Posth, David Maas Status of this document: work in progress
Last day modified: 2021-05-05