[Grants] Grant request: Securing HealthHack's Digital Future

Linux Australia President president at linux.org.au
Fri Jul 6 19:35:48 AEST 2018


Hi everyone,

This request was considered in two parts at the Linux Australia Council
meeting last night.

HEALTHHACK GRANT FOR SERVICES

We discussed several options related to this Grant Request, specifically
around the issue that most of the services listed are not open source,
and we want to encourage the use of open source technologies. We also
noted that as a small operation, it is harder for HealthHack to use
technologies that are open source - as they often require self-hosting.
On balance we noted that HealthHack outcomes are open-source licensed
and the general societal benefit of Health Hack.

We approved this Grant Request to a value of approximately $2000,
provided that a report on HealthHack outcomes is provided by end of
December 2018.

  *

    MOTION BY Kathy Reid That Linux Australia Accepts the Grant Proposal
    from HealthHack submitted by HealthHack Australia

          +

            Seconded: Cameron

          +

            Motion: unanimously passed

          +

            If there are constraints to the motion passing (eg change in
            conditions, to the value of approximately $2,000, subject to
            HealthHack agreeing to submit a report on how the grant was
            used by 2018-12-31.


HEALTHHACK BECOMING A SUBCOMMITEE OF LINUX AUSTRALIA

Several aspects were discussed in relation to this Grant Request. We
noted that HealthHack does not derive any financial return; that is,
Linux Australia would be taking on the risk of the event without any
return - unlike say Pycon AU or linux.conf.au where Linux Australia
retains profits to provide seed funding and central services. We noted
that the risk exposure of HealthHack will be low, as the event is only
held in a small number of locations, and the financial exposure of the
event is also low.

We have approved this request, subject to the subcommittee being
reviewed at appropriate intervals to ensure that the risk exposure of
the event is not growing beyond what Linux Australia is comfortable with.


          +

            MOTION BY Kathy Read That Linux Australia invite HealthHack
            become subcommittee of LA:

                  *

                    Seconded: Cameron.

                  *

                    Motion passed unanimously

                  *

                    Conditions: HealthHack give us a yearly report after
                    the event is run, and LA will review HeathHack
                    status as a subcommittee, and a list of subcommittee
                    members is received from HealthHack.  This
                    subcommittee is expected to revenue neutral.


NEXT ACTIONS

The next actions to move forward with this piece are;

  * Health Hack to provide a list of their Subcommittee members
  * Kathy and Russell to arrange financial induction for the
    Subcommittee members, after which Xero and Westpac access can be
    provided
  * Kathy and Russell to provide the Grant money into the bank account
    for HealthHack once induction complete
  * Kathy to flag with Admin Team in case there are any services we
    already provide that may be of use
  * HealthHack website footer to include phrasing to the effect
    'HealthHack is run under the auspices of Linux Australia' with a
    link back to Linux Australia web site

Kind regards,

Kathy


On 20/06/18 17:51, HealthHack Australia wrote:
>
> *Project name*
>
>
> Securing HealthHack's Digital Future
>
>
> *Aim of the project, including any key stages or milestones of the
> project*
>
>
> The one sentence summary of this project is: We need to start paying
> for the things we rely on. The slightly longer description is as follows.
>
>
> Who we are:
>
>
> HealthHack brings motivated people from diverse research, technology,
> business and educational backgrounds together to solve important
> problems in health care and medical research. Since 2013 we have
> successfully run 13 hackathons in five cities, helping to solve more
> than 75 problems.
>
>
> At the center of our work are our “problem owners”; experts from the
> health and medical research community who are searching for solutions
> to technical challenges. Before each event, we work with the problem
> owners to help them to refine one challenge into a well defined
>  “problem” that can be worked on in a hackathon format. Each problem
> owner introduces their problem at the start of the event while hackers
> form teams to solve them based on their interests, passions or the
> skills they can offer. For the remaining time, each problem owner
> works closely with their group, combining their experience with the
> team’s expertise to develop inspiring solutions to important problems.
>
>
> HealthHack is free to attend and we welcome everyone to participate,
> especially those who genuinely want to use technology to help improve
> health and medical research outcomes. We’re strictly not-for-profit,
> volunteer-run and 100% open source. All solutions are shared openly
> and freely (as in speech AND beer). We ensure all code is released
> under an OSI approved licence after each hack. More information about
> who we are and what we do is available at healthhack.com.au
> <http://healthhack.com.au>.
>
>
> Our Challenges:
>
>
> We’re a 100% volunteer run, digital first organisation. We rely
> heavily on online tools and systems to run the event and to share
> knowledge and lessons learned in the past. We always try to use tools
> that have free versions but over time we’ve started moving to paid
> subscriptions as we’ve outgrown the freely available functionality.
> We’ve experimented with self hosting services using several open
> source systems but our dependence on volunteers means that we’ve
> periodically lost access to the skills needed to continue managing our
> digital castle. We've had more success subscribing to externally
> managed systems that require less technical expertise to maintain. The
> lack of  funding for paid services (our current subscriptions are
> being paid out-of-pocket by our dedicated volunteers) means we aren’t
> able to access all the services we require.
>
>
> HealthHack has always been held as under the Open Knowledge Australia
> banner and so OKAU have graciously provided a bank account for
> sponsorship deposits and read only access to their Xero instance so we
> can track our state. We are extremely grateful to OKAU for their
> support in this area but we are also constrained by the limitations of
> the current setup. Specifically, we cannot raise or pay invoices or
> reimburse volunteers for event related expenses ourselves. Instead we
> must communicate via email with a third party who has the ability to
> do this for us.
>
>
> We aim to:
>
>
> - take over payment of any critical services currently carried by our
> wonderful volunteers (such as domain name registration fees).
>
>
> - move and centralise all of our documentation including standard
> operating practices, tools / templates, marketing / branding / website
> assets into one place on Google Drive with appropriate permissions for
> organisers. We want to make as much information publicly accessible as
> possible, while still respecting and protecting personal and sensitive
> information and data.
>
>
> - implement a reliable and secure email service for HealthHack
> organisers so that communication history is not lost as volunteers
> come and go.
>
>
> - improve the way we manage our website. We need to make it easier for
> our volunteers to keep it up to date with relevant content.
>
>
> - start using an online, teams-based password management service.
>
>
> - improve our ability to communicate with our audience by moving to a
> paid version of Mailchimp with SurveyMonkey integration.
>
>
> - better manage our own presence in Xero and have the ability to
> generate invoices and pay expenses.
>
>
> *How the success of the project will be measured*
>
>
> If the grant is funded we’ll create a more detailed list of technical
> goals and accompanying delivery dates and post it on the LA mailing
> list. We’ll use this document to assess our position throughout the
> project.
>
>
> *Estimated cost breakdown of the project, including any materials,
> projects or online services that are required to deliver the project.
> The cost breakdown should include estimates of labour costs and/or
> professional services*
>
>
> The event itself usually costs around $10K per site which we’ve always
> been able to fund using sponsorship but we’ve never had funding to pay
> for the infrastructure that runs year round. Our long term plan is to
> support all ongoing infrastructure costs by seeking increased
> investment from our pool of sponsors. However, we also have an
> immediate need to fund improvements to digital infrastructure as soon
> as possible so that we can concentrate on delivering a successful
> event in September. To make this happen we’re asking Linux Australia
> to support us by providing $1,517.40 to pay for the following services
> for the next two years:
>
>
> Mailchimp:          $200 (2 @ $100/yr)
>
> SurveyMonkey       $116 (4 @ $29/mth)
>
> Squarespace:        $686.40 (24 @ $28.60/mth)
>
> Lastpass for teams: $232 (2 * 4 @ $29/user/yr)
>
> Gsuite:             $240 (1 * 24 @ $10/user/mth)
>
> Domain hosting:     $43 (2 @ $21.50/yr)
>
>
> We would also like to become an official sub-committee of LA which
> would give us the level of control over our bookkeeping we require.
>
>
> We understand how scarce and valuable grant money is so we would like
> to ask now that if LA is only able to fund part of the request we
> would very much appreciate it if funding the entire suite of services
> but for a shorter time could be considered.
>
>
> * The project team, their credentials and professional capabilities,
> especially their history of open source, open data, open hardware or
> open culture contributions *
>
>
> HealthHack has been around in various forms since 2013 and we have a
> fairly large and diverse alumni scattered around Australia, however
> there are four of us who have been involved with HealthHack for
> several years and oversee the long-lived aspects of the group as a whole.
>
>
> Dr Roisin McMahon
>
>
> Roisin has a PhD in biochemistry, a passion for science, and more than
> a decade of experience in biomedical research. She is a university
> based research scientist who studies how bacteria cause disease and
> searches for new drugs to treat them. Roisin is a versatile science
> communicator and committed to championing better equity and diversity
> in STEM. As a result,she was selected as a 2017 Science & Technology
> Australia Superstar of STEM. She enjoys building and supporting
> diverse and connected communities of scientists via roles as Deputy
> Chair of the Australian Academy of Science’s Early and mid-Career
> Researcher Forum Executive, convenor of the Brisbane node of the
> STEMMinist Book Club and as an organiser for HealthHack. Roisin first
> attended HealthHack in 2015; booked as a mentor for 4 hours, she
> stayed for the whole weekend and has never looked back. In 2016-17,
> she worked with problem owners to refine their projects. She co-led
> the 2017 Brisbane event.                        
>
>
> Andrew Saul
>
>
> Andrew is a data analyst for a large technology company that
> specialises in machine monitoring. He has previously worked as a data
> analyst in the video games and in digital advertising and app
> development. Andrew has a passion for analytics and open data. As a
> result he loves a good data heavy hackathon; the more open the better.
> Andrew has led and participated in teams at previous GovHack and
> HealthHack events. Andrew became an organiser of HealthHack Brisbane
> in 2017 and is back again in 2018. He is an active member of data
> community in Brisbane and has presented at a number of Meetups both
> about his work and projects from hackathons his teams attended.  
>
>
> Dr Mike Imelfort
>
>
> Mike has a PhD in Bioinformatics and works as a data scientist for a
> biotech startup in the genome sequencing space. He's an open data and
> Hackathon enthusiast and active member of the Brisbane tech community.
> Mike is passionate about making technology available to diverse groups
> of people. He’s produced a number of open source bioinformatics tools
> (mainly GPL) which are available on github:
> https://github.com/minillinim and https://github.com/ecogenomics. Mike
> has been a local and national organiser for HealthHack
> (http://healthhack.com.au) and served as the lead national organiser
> for HealthHack 2016 which was held in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne,
> Perth and Canberra. Mike also contributes to the IWS-Hackathon
> project, a sub-committee of Linux Australia, which is dedicated to
> building open source STEM teaching resources based around an automated
> garden watering platform. Mike recently stepped down as the President
> of the the Kimberley Park P&C Association but is still managing the
> digital services used by that organisation.
>
>
> Gareth Moores
>
>
> Gareth has been volunteering with HealthHack since 2015. Gareth become
> technical lead for HealthHack in 2017 and has returned for 2018.
> Gareth has worked as system administrator and lead developer for a
> national radio station. Gareth has participated in teams at previous
> HealthHack and GovHack events. Gareth also volunteers with the
> Developers, Developers, Developersconference and with Rosies: Friends
> on the Street.
>
>
> Gareth Moores will be responsible for this project and will be
> providing a detailed report on the outcomes of our infrastructure
> regeneration project as well as how it helped (or hindered) us in
> running the actual event this year.
>
>
> We thank the committee and greater community for the opportunity to
> make this request and we welcome anyand all feedback.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> The HealthHack org team.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grants mailing list
> Grants at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/grants

-- 
Kathy Reid
President
Linux Australia

0418 130 636

president at linux.org.au
http://linux.org.au

Linux Australia Inc
GPO Box 4788
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia

ABN 56 987 117 479 

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