WP6. Sustainability

The DIGIWHIST consortium considers the initial Horizon2020 funding as a catalyst for change which becomes self-sustaining over time. Apart from our own commitment, long-term sustainability depends on the creation of a clear and effective institutional backing with a critical mass of engaged partners. We do count on key stakeholders making use of DIGIWHIST’s outcomes, upholding and renewing the project’s results.

This is crucial, since our endeavour can only be efficient if we plan for the long run and keep on engaging new stakeholders. The open data and indicators provided by DIGIWHIST have to remain up-to-date and adapt to changing circumstances in order to reach the goals we had in mind when creating the project. These were: to contribute to transparency, to increase trust in public administrations, to continue the fight against corruption and improve efficiency in public spending.

In particular, this work package ensures:

• A collaboration agreement among consortium partners detailing their commitments

The consortium partners’ commitment to maintaining data collection and indicator generation for at least three years after the project’s end is made feasible by the relatively low running costs of servers and data generation algorithms.

The Hertie School of Governance will be responsible for annually updating the database and web-based dissemination tools for the legal and regulatory mapping at least throughout the first three years after project completion.

The Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge will test the data collection, cleaning, the database infrastructure, and indicator generation throughout the last year of the project as more and more dissemination work, hence user queries, will take place – in order to guaranty smooth operation.

Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland will place the whole data infrastructure in the cloud for long-term management and keep the data collection and cleaning, the database infrastructure, and indicator generation running for three years after project completion. During this period, OKFDE will also manage the national procurement web portals until they are handed over to third parties.

• Collaboration agreements with third parties

We envisage a structured process of recruiting national partners sustaining project results. This process is to be managed by the Hertie School of Governance. The recruitment process is open to every stakeholder who can demonstrate their suitability for long-term management in terms of IT capacities, organisational stability, sufficient funding, commitment to open data, and supporting government accountability. As a result of this recruitment process, we expect the creation of a network of local NGOs committed to open data, connected by a set of collaboration agreements.