P2Rx Admin Group Conference Call

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Attendees: Andy Bray and Rachel Colella (NEWMOA); Bob Iverson and Joy Scrogum (GLRPPR); Thomas Vinson-Peng and Lynn Turner (Zero Waste); Rick Yoder (P2 RIC); Mike Vogel and Elizabeth Bird (Peaks to Prairies); Kevin Dick and Ed Gonzalez (WRPPN); and Chris Wiley (PPRC).

Action Items:

• Rick – check in with Prabin re: future plans for P2Rx work & location.
• Andy – review NEIEN budget proposal for Michigan funding and let the group know how much money was budgeted towards Prabin’s salary.
• Andy – forward the QAP (Quality Assurance Plan) Light link to the rest of the group.
• Thomas – send out write-up for how other centers might participate in growing the case studies database

Core Products:  Andy started the call by stating that the centers need to come to a consensus on a core set of National Products/Services that P2Rx will provide.  The group also needs to decide on a clear delineation of roles, including IT staffing and funding needs for each of these core products/services.

Topic Hubs – Andy started the discussion by listing the key tasks/roles which have been discussed related to the Topic Hubs: creation of new Topic Hubs; updating existing Topic Hubs; exploring whether or not to update the Topic Hub platform; exploring whether or not to migrate the Topic Hubs to a Wiki platform; the discussion of creating a derivative product of the Topic Hubs targeted to the end user (i.e. “Best References for Businesses”); and the new, seemingly related product, “Topic Hub Light” or Rapid Response Heavy.” 

Andy polled the group to see if any Centers were planning to create new Topic Hubs in the coming year.  Only NEWMOA and Peaks reported tentative plans of creating new Hubs.

The group revisited the discussion started in the February Admin meeting about having a lead or co-lead centers that would drive the process of updating existing Topic Hubs.  There was discussion of the idea of developing a process for setting priorities for what Hubs to update as well as evaluating whether or not there were Hubs that should be retired.  There was additional discussion of the roles of the leads and the authoring centers.  Chris suggested that the lead centers could make recommendations for which Topic Hubs to prioritize and then work with the authoring centers to update them.  Andy offered that the distinct roles for the lead and authoring centers needs to be spelled out in the proposals and discussed the actual work that was needed to update a topic hub as: reviewing and revising the hub narrative based on any new developments or technologies, performing a QA/QC review of the topic hub, and gathering and adding any new resources to the hub bibliography.

There was broad support for centers continuing to do the work to maintain the hubs that they authored.  Andy reminded the group that there have been challenges to this existing model and that there needed to be a renewed commitment to updating the hubs since they are the highest-valued resource according to intermediary users.  Mike suggested that the group decided on a schedule for updating the Topic Hubs – he suggested that hubs be updated on a 3-year cycle.  Andy acknowledged that this was a good idea, but stated that since there are currently over 60 Topic Hubs, all of the centers would need to commit to updating at least 2 of their own hubs this year to establish a 3-year rotation.  He acknowledged that some hubs may need a lot more updates than others.  NEWMOA, WRPPN, PPRC, and Peaks committed to updating 2 Topic Hubs each in the coming year.

There was discussion of how to select which hubs to focus on in the coming year given that the prioritization criterion does not yet exist.  Kevin suggested that the centers go through their own Topic Hubs and decide on the priorities based on the information available to them on interest, need, and use.  There was agreement among centers to proceed this way for next year, recognizing that in subsequent years there will be a tool for centers to use to uniformly set priorities.

The idea was floated that the lead centers could make recommendations to the authoring centers – the level of action taken would be determined by the authoring center.  NEWMOA and PPRC agreed to further discuss offline this process and the process for setting priorities.

Topic Hub Derivative Products - Thomas stated that ZeroWaste would be interested in working with a couple of other centers to further classify information in the Topic Hubs so that it can be fed into the Case Studies Database and “P2 Options” tool.  Joy was interested in this idea and also offered that GLRPPR maintains a “P2 Projects” page which may also be linked to this information.

Joy also stated that GLRPPR maintains Sector Resources that are geared toward technical assistance providers and that it sounded a lot like what was being discussed for the “Topic Hub Light” product. 

Thomas highlighted his additions to the Google Spreadsheet regarding the level of commitment he was asking of centers for the case studies database.  Andy asked if Thomas had written anything up for others to use in their proposals and if so could he send it out to the group.

Elizabeth suggested creating a new area on the website labeled “Business Resources” which would contain Topic Hubs, Case Studies, and a variety of other resources including “Topic Hub Light” that were geared towards end users.  It would be portion of our collections that are directly relevant to the business audience.  Kevin offered that this repackaging of products/services does not need to be a national project and suggested that a few centers do this as a pilot project.  Thomas recommended that the lead centers for the Topic Hub role take on this project.  Andy offered that another pilot project could be to explore using the Wiki platform for hosting the Topic Hubs, but suggested that centers self-identify as leads for these various pilot projects instead of these tasks being rolled up into the Topic Hub update lead roles.

P2 Results – All of the centers agreed to keep the P2 Results module on their center websites and apply quick patches (i.e. updates) as they are made available.  The group acknowledged that there is an unmet need for the programming support for ongoing modifications and improvements as well as hardware/software node support.  Andy stated that this support was built into the pending Michigan NEIEN proposal and that there have been discussions with Beth about EPA providing funding to PPRC for this role as a contractor. 

Elizabeth asked if the centers should use the P2 Results System to report on their own center outcomes.  Chris replied yes.  Andy stated that it makes sense for centers to use the system since they are already familiar with the system and are encouraging the states and others to use it.

News – GLRPPR will be the lead center for collecting and posting P2 News.  The other centers agreed to keep the P2 News Box on their websites.  A few of the centers wanted a regional focus on their news in addition to the National P2 News.  Joy stated that she could add a “check box” to GLRPPR’s system to indicate news stories related to a specific region.  P2Rx has already done this built-in categorization with “Tribal”, “Funding”, and “Mercury” news, so it seems like it would be easy to add categories for different regions “e.g. Region 7.”

Andy stated that NEWMOA was still evaluating whether or not to continue to collect and publish news.  Rick stated that the News feature is a valuable resource and P2 RIC will continue to collect news items, but would like to be able to forward them to GLRPPR for data entry.  Joy stated that as the lead GLRPPR could do the data entry for any centers that submit regional news.  Andy noted that the IT portion of the news box would need to be tweaked to function with the changing roles and this work will need to be planned for by someone.  It was suggested that this would be an appropriate task for the centralized IT function (see below).

IT/Webmaster Functions – Andy opened the discussion of a centralized IT function by reviewing previous discussions on the topic, including: the difference between the webmaster and IT functions; the recognition of the unique identities of the eight regional centers the role the centers’ websites play in that identity and the delivery of local service; the ongoing need to staff centers’ websites with some webmaster function to handle ongoing updates; the historic role that Prabin has played, acting as mentor and, in some cases, implementer for other centers.  Andy highlighted previous and side conversations about retaining someone like Prabin to fill a centralized, shared IT role.

There was recognition that Prabin has been a clear asset to P2Rx over the years and that given his institutional knowledge, his dedication to P2Rx, and his IT competency, that he would be great fit for the centralized IT role. 

There was recognition that NEWMOA, WRRC, and GLRPPR all employee full-time IT staff that work on P2Rx and a variety of other projects for those centers and that staffing will not be changing.

The group talked about ways to fund a central IT function/staff.  Chris stated that if each center reserved $8,000 for centralized IT coordination, it would cover a full-time salary for Prabin or some equivalent.  Andy noted that support for a central IT person is part of the pending MI NEIEN proposal and that if this funding is approved it would help partially fund this position.  Andy will check on the proposed funding already reserved for Prabin in the NEIEN grant and see how much needs to be made up. 

Andy suggested that if this idea moves forward that a lead center build the IT role into their proposal in stead of every center doing so and then needing to contract for that service.  Mike agreed that it would be better for a designated center to hire Prabin and build him into their budget proposal and the centers could then just apply for less funding.  Rick will talk with Prabin on his future plans and report back to the group.  He noted that if Prabin decides to no longer work with P2Rx, there are capabilities at the University of Omaha that could be accessed.  Bob stated that Tyler might also fill this role.

There was discussion about centers’ IT and webmaster needs for the coming year.  Centers reported the following: 

• Chris reported needing to figure out how he was going to staff this given Crispin’s departure. 
• Andy offered that although NEWMOA has Nate on staff to handle webmaster and IT development, they have unmet need and could define a discrete task such as version 3.1 of the NEWMOA desktop system as a project that a central IT staff person could work on. 
• Rick mentioned having access to a pool of students lead by some faculty at the university, but that he was open to the discussion of a central role. 
• Bob stated that even though GLRPPR has a full time web person, there is still a need for extra help and that if programmatically it made more sense they could look at shifting Tyler out of P2Rx and fund him from other sources. 
• Kevin stated that his program has other websites that they maintain and that need to be staffed.  Therefore he wasn’t sure how much he would use a central IT function and how much money he could set aside for this role.  He stated that if WRPPN were to contract out its P2Rx web work that their overall pot of money available to fund a student would become too small to support a position. 
• Thomas reported that ZeroWaste has many IT needs other than P2Rx that require in-house staffing and that he would not be able to contribute funding to support a centralized IT role.  He also reported that Prabin would be doing some contracting work for him in the near-term on the case studies database and that he doesn’t anticipate that system needing many additional updates in the coming year.
• Mike reported that Peaks manages two additional sites and that they have historically contracted out work on those sites (Tribal P2 and Homes Across America).  He stated that he did not anticipate having a large need for IT support in the coming year, enough to justify 1/8^th of an   Andy offered that work on those sites could be considered under the shared IT staffing plan.

Elizabeth suggested that any new application that requires web expertise be completed by the centralized IT role.  Mike added that the centralized IT person could also mentor the centers’ individual webmasters as well as be the “point person” for training and trouble-shooting needs.  Andy highlighted the expressed perception by EPA that the mentoring approach has historically led to inefficiencies.

The group agreed to eliminate the annual P2Rx Web Group face-face meeting and to reduce the monthly web group conference calls to quarterly calls, with smaller “working group” calls on an as-needed basis.

Budget:  The grouped discussed different potential funding scenarios and the implications of each.  There was broad recognition of two things: 1) that to continue to have an effective network there would be components of every Center’s work plan that will be similar, and 2) this is a competitive grant-making environment that is not conducive to sharing all elements of our work plans.  There was further discussion of individual center’s intentions but there was no agreement on the amount of money centers will be applying for.

Next Steps:  Centers will continue to draft their proposals in response to the RFP and will share information, when appropriate, as to their center’s role in shared resources using the Google spreadsheet.