WMF's latest strategy document shows successes, vagueness, and the need for better data
The Wikimedia Foundation this week released a State of the WMF report, a 53-page "snapshot" of where it is and where it wants to go in the future. The Signpost was provided an advance copy of the report, which senior communications manager Juliet Barbara told us "is primarily a retrospective document, with some foreshadowing for only the 2015 calendar year ... the primary audience was internal, but we planned to make it public from the very beginning". By contrast, the 2015–16 annual plan, in preparation, will be a detailed look at the WMF's goals, budget, and staffing plan. State of the WMF, the subject of a just-released Wikimedia blog, is billed as part of a strategic process—"not as a set of goals or objectives," it says, "but rather as a direction that will guide the decisions for the organization".
This less tangible goal is reflected in the text. It shares much with the tenor of corporate strategic statements, which have evolved to favour positive, general information over specific commentary and self-analysis. This is not to say that the 53 pages lack specifics, but rather that the message is often expressed in relatively vague terms (Product will be "working with community champions in various projects"), compared with its promise to offer "data-based results, project impact, challenges, and how our work ties back to our mission." Rather than "a transparent and candid reflection on our accomplishments, opportunities, and challenges", parts of the document are surprisingly evasive when it comes to detail, and in many places hard for outsiders to test against the facts. While there was explicit information, there were also coded messages ("a shift in focus from money and process to impact and non-monetary support").
This was all to be expected in a document that is an assemblage of submissions by each of the WMF's eight departments. Whether intended or not, this has resulted in a mild sense of defensive competition among departments to present their best face rather than exposing themselves at an early stage by announcing solid initiatives in what appears to be a pre-annual-report think-tank.
Whether explicit or implied, the theme of inadequate data is lurking in a number of places throughout the document, to the extent that in some respects the organization seems hamstrung by it ("An overwhelming percentage of project knowledge is not available as structured data"; "The Wikipedia Zero team needs to understanding [sic] potential alternative metrics"). Barbara responded to this proposition: "the need to collect and use data to make decisions is a major theme of the report [and] we are formalizing that commitment as an organization." We asked the Foundation's chief communications officer, Katherine Maher, what steps the WMF will be taking to resource and guide its data acquisition, given the apparent importance in the document of better baseline and ongoing data:
| “ | Our new COO Terry Gilbey will play a major role in helping us identify and adhere to metrics-based decisionmaking. This week, Terry announced over the next few weeks the WMF will begin a structured implementation process for the Call to Action 2015 objectives, including the commitment to data-based decisionmaking. This will include defining clear goals and success criteria for each initiative, a C-level sponsor for each initiative, and team leads to help manage the process. | ” |