Data Commons Project
The Data Commons Project = documentation project on Solidarity Economics
Description
a collaborative effort between a diverse array of organizations in the U.S. and Canada who share a mission of building and supporting the development of a democratic and cooperative economy. The goal is to collectively develop an accurate, comprehensive, public database of cooperative & solidarity-based economic initiatives in North America as a tool for democratic economic organizing.
The project is working to achieve this goal through two interrelated tasks:
- Creating a shared "data commons" between multiple organizations, built from existing models of open information-sharing, and involving a merger of separate organizational databases into a commonly-shared data pool.
- Launching a free, public web-interface to this data commons, as a tool that can be used by many organizations and individuals working for a cooperative economy. With such an interface, users will be able to run searches by initiative name, geographical location, type of initiative or business, and product/service, as well as to add and update directory listings themselves (thus being a "self-editing directory").
Current collaborators in this project include Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO), the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO), Cooperative Development Institute (CDI), the Regional Index of Cooperation (REGINA), Southern Appalachian Center for Cooperative Ownership (SACCO), and worker-owners from Sligo Computer Services and the Brattleboro Tech Collective.
To learn more about the Data Commons Project, or to find out how you can get involved, please contact Ethan Miller, project coordinator, by phone: (207) 946-4478 or by email: [email protected].
Visit http://dcp.usworker.coop/ for more information.