OpenGov Accountability Checklists

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OpenGov has been criticized for enforcing little accountability for proposers.

To counteract this trend, we have developed a set of “Accountability Checklists” that we suggest to be applied for all proposals of the spender tracks. That is, above 10k DOT (currently 70k USD).

You can find the checklists here: OpenGov.Watch - Accountability

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YOU create accountability

The idea of these checklists is that anyone (yes, YOU!) can use them to check if OpenGov proposals “check out” on those criteria and if you, to follow up with proposers and make them fulfill the criteria.

OpenGov is only as good as you make it, and this is your handy guide to make it happen by asking proposers simple questions, e.g. “So where will you provide project updates and how often?”

The checklists

Currently, there are 4 checklists in the document:

  • Basic Accountability Checklist - You can apply this checklist for any proposal
  • Bounty Checklist - An additional checklist for bounties. Currently focused on curators
  • Software Development checklist - Some basic questions to ensure we get good, reusable, cost-efficient software products
  • Marketing Checklist - targeted to create transparency around content proposals

Moving forward

These checklists are only the beginning. From here on out, we can start to improve them and add additional checklists for other categories (e.g. for incentives/loans, BD, educational initiatives, etc). The checklists strive to be aligned with the Treasury Reporting Standards (Website, Forum Thread) and the Strategy (Website, Forum Thread).

These checklists are only as good as their usage. So we will work with stakeholders like Governance Forums (like AAG, Subsquare, and Polkassembly) to make them available and visible.

Any feedback in this thread is welcome and will be integrated.

Cross-Posts:

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Wouldn’t it be better if those guides were hosted on decentralised storage where proposals could be made through a decentralised collaboration tool to improve them?

I think it would be better to use empty checkboxes, and identify the dependencies between each checklist item, where each checklist item could be ticked synchronously to a degree and linked to a proof that would map to reality that would subscribe to asynchronous dynamic updates, where separate checklists are tailored to a specific collectives (e.g. defi, gaming, marketing, etc) and customised depending on importance/urgency/impact.

Shouldn’t accountability include auditing their software tooling to be similar to what @dod_berlin uses such as:

  • decentralisation of authority extent
  • self-hosting / non-custodial / trust minimisation extent
  • open-source / accessibility / permissionless / interoperability extent
  • encryption / privacy / observability extent
  • federated community extent
  • decentralisation / censorship resistance / shut down ability extent
  • data / metadata obscurity patterns protection / collection / storage purpose limitation / selective disclosure extent / access points of control protection
  • anti-bias / discrimination extent
  • threat model (including common perceptions and misconceptions) extent / adversary identification extent / forced testimony risk / limitations and incentives risks / power imbalance / marginalisation risk extent
  • externalities defense (bribery, collusion, anti-scam)
  • surveillance / cloud artificial intelligence dependency extent
  • human rights protection extent
  • atomic swap counterparty risk
  • duplicated effort risk
  • composable modularity extent
  • equal voting representation extent
  • regulatory arbitrage (legal and ethical) to reduce oppression extent
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You sure can make a PR but I don’t think it will improve the process significantly.

GitHub

I think the product is too small to focus development around an issue tracker. The forum seems like a good local optimum to me.

Thank you for the suggested checks! I will take a look at the suggested checks today

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Under Declarations, it could be good to include something along the lines of “If a contract is required, who will be signing it and are they legally able to enter into the contract?”

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Hello All

It would be great to have smart or dynamic forms as suggested by @itfschoen - which will be a much better user experience with minimal confusion or mistakes by inputting information not applicable to the project. Is there a program or app that will allow the collab and functionality? I used Notion for the Marketing Checklist.

It would be great to hear feedback from the other OG Tracker and Watchdog project (@SAXEMBERG team - if not mistaken) for any other items to include from their post-distribution experiences, like duration.

I tried to include for as many scenarios, and can organize or have the list with dependencies once that is confirmed and needed. I listed as much as possible and hopefully others can add or update to move this forward. Let me know an email address to share the editable page - and any feedback or changes if this can be of use.

Cheers!

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TinyMCE professional edition as i mentioned in the HackMD document report attached to this tweet x.com

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We need a line item in the budget for professional consulting, especially in our economic proposals. If someone proposes inflation at 8% we can compare that to a professional interpretation of what an appropriate inflation rate should be for our models. Letting no professionals guess on factors that are crucial need to have professional or responsible backing