Working Open

Hypha operates with democratic organizing principles informed by our values. As part of that, we've developed a set of guidelines for how (and exactly what) and why we work in the open.

Why?

• In order to share and provide opportunities for self- and collective- learning as we work in solidarity with others seeking to create meaningful livelihoods.
• Not because "default to open" is an ideal in itself, but because it orients us toward negotiating a set of practices around our shared intentions.
• Yet we recognize openly sharing might prevent frank and necessary discussion beneficial to our members, and so we want to clearly lay out our practices of consent and privacy.

How and what?

• We currently accommodate redactions and going off-the-record for meeting notes. Participants can request to stop taking notes, or redact and correct notes after they have been taken.
• We recognize that some information should be treated as sensitive and confidential for the benefit of Hypha and its clients and collaborators. Anyone with access to confidential information is responsible for doing their best to keep that information secret and are expected to adhere to these guidelines.

Legend

👀 view only

📝 view and participate

Default open to public:

• Scope: Organization
  • Meeting notes (all hands, working groups) and final documents (handbook) 👀
  • Task tracking 👀
  • Aggregated financial statements 👀
• Scope: Project
  • Project deliverables*, task tracking, meeting notes, and aggregated financial statements 👀

*This would include source repositories and code (e.g., on GitHub) and other process materials based on consensus on licensing and usage constraints.

Default open to members:

• Scope: Organization
  • Meeting notes and documents 📝
  • Task tracking, project management (PM), and decision making (DM) tools 📝
  • Finances (budget, expenses, and cash flow projections) and audit records 👀
  • Potential opportunities and leads 📝
• Scope: Project
  • Project proposal(s), statement(s) of work (in-progress/signed), in-progress deliverables, and finances (budget, expenses, and cash flow projections) 👀

Default closed to specific working groups and project members:

• Scope: Organization
  • Full financial and personal information of members (e.g., home addresses, banking information, and social insurance numbers) 📝
  • Personal/financial information involving external parties 📝
  • Administration privileges including financial for services and infrastructure 📝
• Scope: Project
  • Project sensitive data sets (especially all non-anonymized/identifiable) and critical infrastructure 📝

Require consent before releasing:

• Audio, visual, and video recordings (e.g., photographs or recorded interviews)
• Chat transcripts
• Notes involving external parties and collaborators
• Materials from project retrospectives

Sensitive and confidential:

• Passwords, credentials, and sensitive personal information
• Data sets, software, and other content in project work that we don't have consent to share
• Financial or other business information of our clients and collaborators that we don't have consent to share
• Data collected through our digital infrastructure, which may contain user account information or personal information