Total to date

Overview

Catalyst community members have been coming together and looking at how we can collaborate to improve the auditing process within Catalyst. Along with those conversations some of those community members have begun designing out a community owned tool for progress and KPI reporting.

Current auditing process

As part of designing a new tool the current auditing process https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-auditing/ has been analysed to look for areas where it can be improved or reporting data be removed from the process.

General purpose reporting tool

The data model for a new reporting tool has now been started https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-auditing/analysis/auditing-data-model which has a number of design decisions that have been considered so far https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-auditing/analysis/auditing-data-model/data-model-design-decisions

Funding is needed for more collaboration to continue finalising this data model and then implementing the tool.

In terms of adoption the plan will be to trial with trusted community members to minimise risks. Once the community is comfortable that the tool is sufficient the intention will be to roll it out to more funded proposals and continue to iterate on the tool.

Previous relevant proposals

In fund 6 a PACE proposal got funded for Proposal progress updates https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/PACE-Proposal-progress-updates/367266-48088 This proposal is a follow on from that proposal and will use the funds rewarded in that proposal for this tool. 

It became clear after more community discussion that the reporting process is the perfect starting point for the community to start taking over parts of the Catalyst ecosystem. As part of this the plan has changed to not just look to copy just the progress reporting process as per the fund 6 funded proposal but instead analyse the entire process and include KPI reporting, collaborate with the community on defining a better solution, execute a first version of that new reporting process and slowly onboard funded proposers to a news system. 

Development steps

• Complete data model with discussions in the community on what information should be present for all proposals
• Identify existing tools that may be suitable to use in an initial implementation
• Integrate any existing tools and develop new solutions to record proposers progress and KPI updates
• Output the data either through an open API or a open repository for the community to easily use the full reporting data

Roadmap

Creating a new tool to use for trusted community members fortunately has no blockers so has already been started and the community will continue to develop this tool.

• 3 months - Development of the proposal, launch with trusted members of the community to trial and solidify the initial implementation
• 6 months - Iterate on implementation and continue roll out to more proposers. Start to integrate pre-existing historical reports providing we have the correct access to the data and can verify ownership of given previous proposals.
• 12 months - Continue rollout to entire funded proposer cohort - proposal should be already completed

Team

• PACE team - The PACE team will be highly involved in the implementation of this proposal. George from PACE has already analysed the existing reporting process, looked for what data can be removed and started the data model for the new system.
• Catalyst Auditing circle - The audit circle is a community initiative to bring governance oversight into how Project Catalyst deals with auditing. PACE and any contributors will report to the auditing circle on problems, design decisions, usage and any analysis on the tools that get created and start being used within the community.
• Community contributors - Other contributors will be welcomed to join, participate and be paid from funding for helping develop the new reporting tools whether that's development or just providing feedback.

Impact

• Increase reporting exposure - Public exposure of the proposal reporting will benefit the community in auditing any proposals progress and also opens up more opportunity for feedback and support where it's needed. If a team is blocked on a problem the community may collectively have an answer to support proposers execution.
• Inform future voting - Current progress reports from existing funded proposals makes for valuable information to guide future funding decisions. If progress is slow with a well funded team then the progress updates will help provide a way to audit that progress and adjust voters preferences.
• Data usage in other tools - Public data access allows different types of tooling to emerge such as analytic dashboards or more in depth reports and reviews on different proposals in the ecosystem. The better the data quality with easier access the more auditing tools that can be created.

Auditability

• Open source code - The code developed for this proposal will be open source and free to use for the community making it easy to audit both its progress and final result.
• Open data - All the reporting data will be open. This is important as it leads to other tools not being blocked by access and can use the data in anyway they see fit to benefit the ecosystem
• Open meetings - The community are starting regular auditing focussed meetings that are open for anyone to join and get recorded
• Catalyst Auditing circle - The auditing circle will have oversight into the implementation of this tooling and be able to audit its progress and execution on a regular basis

Success metrics

• Number of proposers using the new reporting tool - Initially this will be a small selected number of proposers however as this is expanded the number can be tracked to show the adoption amongst the community
• Increasing the number of people viewing reports - When the data is fully open to the community any tool that shows the different reporting can track the number of people viewing the reports. The more the community views these reports the better as it better informs community decision making.

Budget

• Finish initial implementation research, feedback and finalisation - 30 hours
• Initial implementation development / integrations - 120 hours
• Onboarding coordination (meetings, documentation etc) - 25 hours
• Iteration on implementation based off feedback - 45 hours
• Reporting and governance to Catalyst Auditing Circle - 10 hours
• Total time required: 230 hours
• Budget (time * rate): 230 * $70 = $16,100