Join the Open Data Services Co-operative team…

Open_Data_Services_logos_1

[Summary: Developer and analysts jobs with a workers co-operative committed to using open data for social change]

Over the last year I’ve had the immense pleasure of getting to work with a fantastic group of colleagues creating ‘Open Data Services Co-operative‘. It was created in recognition of the fact that creating and using distributed open data requires ongoing labour to develop robust platforms, support publishers to create quality data, and help users access data in the forms they need.

Over the last year we’ve set up ongoing support systems for the Open Contracting Data Standard and 360Giving, and have worked on projects with NCVO, NRGI and the Financial Transparency Coalition, amongst others – focussing on places where open data can make a real difference to governance, accountability and participation. We’ve been doing that with a multidisciplinary team, combining the capacity to build and maintain technical tools, such as CoVE, which drives an accessible validation and data conversion tool, with a responsive analysis team – able to give bespoke support to data publishers and users.

And we’ve done this as a workers co-operative, meaning that staff who joined the team back in October last year are now co-owners of the company, sharing in setting it’s direction and decision making over how we use co-op resources to provide a good working environment, and further our social goals. A few weeks back we were able to vote on our first profit distributions, committing to become corporate sponsors of a number of software projects and social causes we support.

The difference that being organised as co-op makes was particularly brought home to me at a recent re-union of my MSc course: where it seemed many others have graduated into a start-up economy which is all about burning through staff, with people spending months rather than years in jobs, and constantly having dealing with stressful workloads. Operating as a workers co-op challenges us to create good and sustainable jobs.

Any that’s what we’re trying to do again now: recruiting for two new people to join the team.

We’re looking for a developer to join us, particularly someone with experience of managing technical roadmaps for projects; and we’re looking for someone to work with us as an analyst – combining a focus on policy and technology, and ready to work on outreach and engagement with potential users of the open data standards we support.

You can find more details of both roles over on the Open Data Services website, and applications are open until 14th March.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.