Roles, Committees, & Responsibilities

Roles & Responsiblities

Individuals

User

Any person who uses CiviForm. Users may include residents applying for services, government employees managing benefit programs, government IT teams, or community-based organizations supporting applicants.

Contributor

Any person who contributes to CiviForm’s development, whether through code, documentation, ideation, or other means.

Maintainer

Any person whose primary work responsibility is the ongoing development and maintenance of the CiviForm software project. This role is distinct from someone responsible for managing their government’s instance of CiviForm, which does not necessitate contributing to the core CiviForm software project. Maintainers are dedicated to developing CiviForm in a significant part-time or full-time capacity, whether they are from a Member Organization, the Stewarding Organization, or another organization.

Organizations

Member Organization

Any government using CiviForm in a pilot or production capacity to expand residents’ access to services and benefits. Individuals from Member Organizations may be responsible for managing their individual government’s instance of CiviForm, but they bear no responsibility to the broader CiviForm software project unless they choose to act as project Contributors or Maintainers.

Stewarding Organization

A central organization responsible for the cross-organizational coordination and stewardship of CiviForm’s development and maintenance. They facilitate many of the processes described in this document in order to consolidate the needs, plans, and development efforts of different Member Organizations into one unified project. Exygy is currently managing these responsibilities.

Committees

Committees are groups of Contributors and Maintainers from Member Organizations and the Stewarding Organization who collaborate to make decisions and provide expertise on project planning and development. The responsibilities and membership of each committee are as follows:

Governance Committee

The Governance Committee approves product feature prioritization, plans long-term project development, and shares best practices. The Stewarding Organization facilitates decision-making and planning processes on behalf of the Governance Committee. Member Organizations may (but are not obligated to) have one or more representatives within the Governance Committee for decision-making. If a vote is being held, each Member Organization has one collective vote.

Product Design Committee

The Product Design Committee identifies, designs, and prioritizes core product needs from Users, Contributors, and Member Organizations into a consolidated product roadmap. The Product Design Committee is also responsible for drafting detailed Product Requirements Documents for core features to reflect the needs of Users and Member Organizations and inform development.

Technical Design Committee

The Technical Design Committee drafts and approves major technical design decisions to ensure the quality, reliability, and maintainability of CiviForm for all its Users. If a vote is being held, each individual member of the Committee has one vote. The Committee is currently comprised of Maintainers and new members can be added by majority vote.