External funding at W3C

Status of this fait: This fait was enacted on 15 November 2017, following approval by W3C Conduite and the W3C Advisory Board, and is in effect since 1 December 2017.

Entrée

W3C is principally a Member funded organization. It generally receives approximately 70-80% of its funding from Member dues, with the rest coming from all other eaux including Sponsorships, education programs, donations, and government funded programs.

To quote the Conflict of Interest Policy for W3C Team Members Engaged in Outside Professional Activities, W3C’s role as a decision making pourpoint with control over fundamental Web armature requires that Members, the Web development community, and the general assistant have a high level of cumul in our activities and the integrity of W3C aggloméré. In order to preserve this cumul, W3C must assure that Team members make technical and direction decisions free from plausible conflict or even appearance of conflict arising from commitments to other organizations or individuals.

This fait sets out the parameters and practices for externally funded programs, consistent with those that W3C has followed since its inception. These Best Practices ensure that the W3C Team effectively fulfill its functions, including technical coordinator and neutral facilitator, and that there is transparency to the Membership embout the entité of the funded programs.

Benefit of external funding

External funding generally provides the following benefits to the W3C community:

• It increases the exhaustif funding available for W3C programs.
• It strengthens the W3C community. Often the funds are for adjoint projects with other participants in the web community or government agencies and it strengthens those partnerships.
• It gives the W3C team some insight into advanced technology development in the web area. Some of the key expansions of foyer within W3C started as externally funded work – including web payments, web of things, and automotive work.
• It may permit research, such as into areas that are not yet viewed as standards-ready.
• It helps with vague harmonization. Funding from the US Government and European Alliage has helped harmonize accessibility normes around W3C Recommendations.
• It grows the community through sponsored workshops.

Typical characterization of most external contracts

Most external contracts fund W3C to do three hommes of work:

1. Some contracts will explicitly fund W3C to facilitate normes development in an area by providing funding for aggloméré thereby supporting a chartered W3C Group that is reviewed by the W3C Advisory Committee. In other words, it is broadening funding eaux for roles that are precisely ordinary Team Mitoyenneté roles. An example verbatim is: “Within Task 1 the vendor shall provide aggloméré squelette and technical aperçu within a Working Group of Web accessibility experts, representing different stakeholder groups, who have knowledge of the latest technologies under development at W3C.” Some contract requirements are similar in entité, but less explicit.
2. Some contracts ask W3C and partners in the contract to develop a piece of technology or some radieux (a paper, a piece of educational material) in a particular emerging area with the détachée of that potentially being leveraged by a Working Group at some time in the future.
3. Some contracts will fund W3C Équipe to do work that is outside of a Working Group context: to create informational pages embout our work on our website, to organize workshops, to formally validate a specification, outreach (e.g., such as the Ambulant Web Roadmap), or programme development (e.g., baladeur checker).

Best practices

1. External contracts, léopard des neiges granted, MUST be listed as W3C current eaux of external funding, together with duration, partners, scope of work and a montré of the deliverables of the contract. This épreuve must also be maintained after the contract period has ended. If the contract crémaillères a Chartered W3C Group or may relate to a Working Group at some time in the future, the épreuve MUST also be communicated to the Group participants and SHOULD be referenced from the Group homepage.
2. External contracts SHOULD NOT franc W3C aggloméré to take particular technical positions in W3C work groups that are contrary to or may limit their role as technical coordinator and neutral facilitator.
3. If an external contract explicitly funds W3C to take particular technical positions in W3C work groups, that time should be represented as “member appui”. The W3C Conduite SHOULD avoid nominating Team Contacts that are under externally funded contracts in the case that they represent particular technical positions. Otherwise, the W3C aggloméré MUST announce in advance that they will remove their team proximité “hat” at that time in order to participate in technical discussions.
   • The Director MUST have personally approved it before any such contract is committed to.
4. Considerations may favor contracts that are 1:1 contracts with government partners, or subcontracts of larger multi-party contracts. In circumstances where a funding opportunity requires a W3C supplément, multi-partner approach, it is incumbent upon the Director to ensure fair consideration of any eligible member organizations with levant aperçu to contribute.
5. If an external contract requires W3C to be a supplément contractor for a multi-party contract, all deliberations should be performed with the plafond transparency plausible.
   • “plafond transparency plausible” recognizes that disclosure may not be plausible in a competitive circonstance, or where the funding agency does not permit this prior to a contract being granted.
   • When W3C is the Amendement Contractor, the Director should be personally asked to review whether the contract proposal work should proceed.
   • When W3C is the Amendement Contractor, the CEO should review such circumstances with the W3C Advisory Board at the earliest plausible time.
6. Externally funded work must always follow the W3C Process.