Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Medium-term plan 2019/Annual Plan 2021-2022

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Welcome to the talk page for the Annual Plan Fiscal Year 2021-2022. This talk page will be monitored from 13 July through 6 August in all timezones. Please leave any comments or clarifying questions here. We also encourage you to bring any comments or questions to the Annual Plan Conversations, to ask members of the executive team in real time. The Annual Plan has been finalized by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. While it will not undergo additional changes, teams across the Foundation will continue to offer project-specific opportunities for engagement and community feedback.

Timing

Isn't this plan a bit late - the WMF financial year already started almost two weeks ago? So presumably that means there's no time for any significant changes that the community might suggest? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:54, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the fiscal year began July 1, 2021, and you are correct that the annual plan is a finalized product. As you'll see in some of the annual plan materials, the annual plan is how the Foundation sets objectives for the year ahead, and it is heavily influenced by community processes, such as movement strategy, as well as internal processes such as budgeting, staffing, and coordination. On the content of the plan, Foundation teams collaborate throughout the year with communities about the design and implementation of their work. --KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

From a time standpoint, it's simply far more efficient to skip over this step when the board simply implements whatever they intended to already do anyway. But don't worry, they totally took the community opinions into consideration, I'm sure. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 22:13, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Not a plan

Once again, this is not an annual plan. It says absolutely nothing on what the WMF is actually planning to do. It only contains some vague high-level statements. One could say it's a tactical statement (as opposed to a multi-year strategic statement) with a corresponding allocation of resources to very broad areas, but if there's a plan it wasn't shared with us here. Nemo 20:26, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

OKRs "Milestones"

An example for OKRs "milestones" under the 2019-2020 annual plan

I have noticed that WMF departments have OKRs "milestones" that aim to operationalise the annual plan. You can find them in the 'Tuning Sessions' slides (example on the right), but I have failed to find them elsewhere. Is it possible to see these in advance, rather than in retrospect? If not, why not? --Gnom (talk) 18:58, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Gnom, great question. The Tuning Session slides, and the broader quarterly reviews they are a part of, are indeed retrospective. They are designed this way, and serve quarterly check-ins for Foundation teams to assess progress on goals and course correct (hence why they don’t exist “in advance”). “OKR” stands for “objective and key results”. The objectives are listed in the Annual Plan materials, and both the objectives and their key results (basically metrics for the objectives) are evaluated in Tuning Sessions. In short, the annual plan is what we hope to achieve in the coming year, and Tuning Sessions with their slides are a check-in on how we’re doing. To your broader question about how to get involved in real time, all objectives and key results have projects and teams behind them, which regularly offer opportunities for communities to engage and provide feedback. . --KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi KStineRowe (WMF), thank you. I probably used the wrong terminology in my question, so please allow me to ask again: In the Tuning Sessions slides, teams report on their progress on the level of individual projects or deliverables or "milestones" (in the example on the right: 'policy statement', 'framework', 'KPIs', etc.). Is "milestones" the correct term for these? My question was: Is it possible to learn about what these "milestones" are in advance, and not just read about them later in the Tuning Sessions slides? If not, why not? --Gnom (talk)

Ah gotcha, Gnom. “Key Results” is the term used across the organization for the metrics of how we achieve our objectives. “Milestones” is a more generic term, used in this case by the Operations Department to describe components of the key results they want to achieve. For the main focus area objectives under this year’s Annual Plan, we have published the summarized key results. Those are listed in the Annual Plan slides (slides 9-22, see “how we’ll measure.”). For the sake of simplicity, and because most key results are still in progress, we kept the Meta page to objectives. Staff spend time in the first quarter (July-September) refining how to measure their impact as they start planning for and designing their work for the year. --KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, and will these be published? Last year, they weren't (except for the Tuning Sessions slides), but in the past, they sometimes were, like here. --Gnom (talk) 21:25, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

There's not a plan to share the full set of Key Results ahead of the first quarter Tuning Session slides this year - as I mentioned, they're still evolving. As you pointed out, some teams have and do publish their KRs, but this level of detail and communications is generally left to a team by team basis. For example, you can follow the work of the Movement Strategy team here, and Community Resources here. Publishing all the KRs with the annual plan objectives is something we can think about for future years. --KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Can we not create a page where each team publishes their Key Results once they are ready? That would be super helpful for community members who are working on an issue that touches on the work of a specific team. --Gnom (talk) 10:39, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Gnom Thanks for bringing forward this idea. My team (movement communications) is looking at how we can share better what the Foundation is working on with the movement. We are looking at simplifying and streamlining the information we share, and are actively thinking about how to best elevate different teams’ key results and progress beyond the tuning session slides - which have historically been how we track and share progress internally. I will explore your idea of a central page with the team further and how we can better connect Foundation teams and community members working on similar issues. I am also in the annual planning conversation around communications in case you are considering joining. MPaul (WMF) (talk) 09:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@MPaul (WMF): Thank you for your response, but what you are saying sounds as if I were asking you to create an additional document. That is not what my question is about. Instead, I would like to see the existing document that simply lists all teams' goals for the fiscal year, in the most straightforward and boring fashion you can imagine. There must be such a document because there is one at any organisation similar to the WMF. You can see the equivalent document for Wikimedia Deutschland here. (Please do tell me if I am still not being clear.) And thank you for offering to join the meeting with your team, but my question is not about communications, and there seems to be no meeting where one can ask such a question. --Gnom (talk) 22:07, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Gnom thank you for the example, it's really helpful to understand!

The information you are looking for is here, we just use different terms than the example you shared. I'll use the Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) example as a translation guide. Most (but not all) of the same info is also here.

So if you take what WMDE call "Strategies" e.g. Volunteers, we call them "Medium term priority or MTP" e.g. Thriving Movement.

What WMDE calls "Impact Goal" e.g. Volunteers have optimal working conditions in the communities for collaborating on Free Knowledge, for us this is the "Outcomes" of the MTP e.g. We will welcome and support newcomers. Unfortunately, this is unhelpfully not included in the presentation but included as a link. The link works once you download the deck but does not in the preview, something for us to improve next time!

What WMDE calls "Objectives 2021 > What outcome do we want to achieve next:" e.g. Community members should be able to make their contributions to Free Knowledge in the best possible way. We have called "Focus area" e.g. Ensure Wikimedians have the system and tools they need to succeed. What WMDE calls "What we want to achieve by 2021", we have called "Objective".

What WMDE calls "How we can tell if we have been successful:", we have called "How we'll measure".

I'm sorry it took us a while to get there and thank you for bearing with us :-D Thank you also for the link, I can see some good ways to share the annual plan information there that we can use to improve how we do this next year! MPaul (WMF) (talk) 09:57, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

"Wikimedia application data"

I cannot remember seeing this term before, and there is no explaining glossary. What does it mean? ♥Ainali ^talk_{contributions} 22:02, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Ainali, thank you for the question. In the planning process for this OKR, we meant this more as an expression of intent rather than a precise definition. The working definition we have been using internally is "structured data elements and records that are generated by the operation of our publicly accessible systems." By this, we intend to describe entity and event metadata that are generated by normal system operations, and in our planing is distinguished from similar but sometimes related and sometimes overlapping or sub-sets of data such as product metrics data, production user data, survey data, and third party data. It doesn't include content revision data, which is less structured and not easily subject to the kinds of things we want to do and enable with the data. TTaylor (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes it clearer! ♥Ainali ^talk_{contributions} 15:46, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, TTaylor (WMF). Is this application data for internal use only, or is it (also) designed to aid reusers? If the latter, could you give an example of how this data would aid a reuser? --Andreas JN466 14:19, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Much of the application data we are describing is already available to the public, either directly through Wikimedia Downloads or through WMF-hosted tools such as Quarry, Wiki Stats, and sometimes is used by third-party tools also, such as this Listen to Wikipedia project, among many others. We are also describing data that we don't release to the public for reasons related to user and contributor privacy, sensitivity related to compliance with laws and regulations, etc. --TTaylor (WMF) (talk) 15:04, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Hierarchical structure

Hello. I am wondering if keeping these annual plan pages as subpages of the medium-term page(s) is the best route. It creates a somewhat confusing page title. I think using links and categories would help make it clear that an annual plan falls under a specific medium-term plan, if that is indeed the intention. Killiondude (talk) 16:56, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Killiondude. Thanks for the suggestion and I agree, the subpage structure is confusing. We did it this way to follow suit with the Annual Plans from recent years, which are all intended to make progress toward our Medium Term Plan goals. Essentially to show that annual goals work towards multi-year goals. Your point is well-taken that the current page structure doesn’t showcase this hierarchy well. Improving this would require an overhaul of the page structures for the past three Annual Plans, so we can’t really do it this time, but we will definitely take this suggestion into consideration ahead of time for future years. Thanks again for the thought. --ELappen (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Environmental sustainability

Missing environmental impact statement

Please forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but the Board of Trustees' 2017 Environmental Impact Resolution states, "Starting in 2018, we will include an environmental impact statement in our annual plan." Like in past years, this has apparently been forgotten again (even though it is required by a standing Board resolution!), and as every year, I am bringing this point up again (with a growing feeling of helplessness). Can I ask you to amend the published annual plan to meet this requirement? --Gnom (talk) 18:37, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Programmes on environmental sustainability

One of the prioritised initiatives for the Movement Strategy implementation process calls on the Wikimedia Foundation to "Support Environmental Sustainability Practices", namely to (1) become carbon-neutral by 2030, and (2) to establish an 'ecosystem for climate action'. What programmes in the 2021-2022 annual plan will help us move forward on this? --Gnom (talk) 18:51, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Gnom I’ll reply to both of your questions together. Regarding the environmental impact statement, you’re right that this wasn’t mentioned in our annual plan objectives. This environmental sustainability work is now part of our normal Foundation operations, and generally speaking, not all areas of our recurring work are assigned formal annual plan objectives. While it wasn’t published in the annual plan, the work has not been forgotten, and we will continue to do an annual carbon footprint evaluation and include an impact statement (we are in the process of finalizing the 2020 report right now and will publish it after it’s completed). Regarding programs on environmental sustainability, questions around our climate footprint did play a part in our annual planning discussions. Some of the themes we touched on were continuing to minimize travel and in person events for Foundation staff plus including environmental criteria as part of selecting vendors and locations for our data centers. --JBaldwin (WMF) (talk) 23:19, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi JBaldwin (WMF), Thank you for your response, but don't you agree with me that "we will include an environmental impact statement in our annual plan" clearly requires the WMF to include an environmental impact statement in the annual plan? To me, this is ignoring a standing board resolution – am I missing something here?

Concerning my second question: It is interesting to hear about what you "touched on" environmental sustainability in the "annual planning discussions". But I would like to know what budgets, staff, and programmes are included in the annual plan about the implementation of the prioritised initiative "Support Environmental Sustainability Practices". If the answer is 'none', please say so. --Gnom (talk) 08:12, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

As discussed in my previous answer, not all areas of work, especially those that are recurring, are assigned annual plan objectives. While we don’t have a segregated budget for this work, we do have staff who will be working on this project and have budgeted for a carbon footprint evaluation by an outside expert. Additionally there are other staff and resources that have some aspects of sustainability related work integrated into other responsibilities - like the data center procurement activities that I referenced above. For more questions about our environmental and sustainability work, please join our live annual plan Conversation (LINK) with Jaime Villagomez, our head of Finance & Administration, and Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, our head of Advancement. --JBaldwin (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Questions

1. How do I find out which departments that are listed here are in which of these Annual Plan categories? For example, there are departments called "Apps Engineering", "IT services", "Technology", "Analytics", "Architecture," etc., all of which employ computer scientists. Which of these are part of "Thriving Movement", which are part of "Technical Infrastructure", which are part of "Platform Evolution", etc.?
2. Where do I find further breakdowns of these categories like "Thriving Movement," "Technical Infrastructure", etc.? This Annual Plan says we're spending a quarter of the money on "Thriving Movement" and a quarter of the money on "Technical Infrastructure"... surely there is more detail than just those four words to describe how we're spending half the money? :-)
3. Is there a "real" (non-marketing-speak) version of the Annual Plan, or certified financial statements that have things like a Profit & Loss Statement, a Balance Sheet, a Statement of Cash Flows, and follows GAAP? (I see the audited financial statement from 19-20 here... when will 20-21 be available?) I have a hard time matching the categories in the audited financials with the categories in the Annual Plan because the categories in the Annual Plan are, um, unique. Where can I find the "budgeted v. actuals" report for 20/21 and then the budget for 21/22 (the budget that would appear on the budget v actuals for 21/22, which appears not to be in the budget section of the annual plan).

Thanks in advance for answering these questions. Levivich (talk) 15:41, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Levivich - I’ll take questions 1 and 2 to start. As I’ve shared above, the annual plan exists to help Foundation teams plan for the year ahead by setting high-level objectives that we refine and execute throughout the year. It’s not meant to be a detailed playbook of activities. Our annual plan is organized according to the priority areas of the Medium Term Plan: Brand awareness, Worldwide readership, Thriving Movement, Platform evolution, and Global advocacy. Think of these as multi-year categories about what we hope to achieve. At the Foundation, this work is implemented by multiple departments. The departments you see listed on the website are indeed our departments - Product, Communications, Advancement, Technology, etc. Each MTP priority is usually supported by multiple departments, as we’re a pretty collaborative organization. ;) We do not have departments for “IT services”, “Analytics”, “Architecture” - these are usually teams that fall within departments. To learn more about the specific work happening under our annual plan categories, I’d encourage you to check out our annual plan video series and join our live annual plan conversations hosted in the next few weeks with the leaders of different departments. For Thriving Movement specifically, Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, Maggie Dennis, is hosting an additional office hours with information here. --KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi! I'm afraid there's a bit of confusion; I'm not actually hosting an additional office hour; I'm part of one of the planned office hours, with the Legal & Talent Culture departments. :) I probably won't be hosting another office hour of my own until September, having hosted one just a few weeks ago. That said, Levivich, Thriving Movement does indeed involve multiple departments and teams. I'm working on a page for Meta which specifics which teams are working on which objectives, but staff include multiple teams from Legal, Technology, Product, Communications and Advancement. I hope you can join the office hour where I will be and, if not, I hope that once I get a page up on Meta it will help make that more clear! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@KStineRowe (WMF) and Mdennis (WMF): thank you for your quick answers! What I'm looking to find out, and I can't seem to find it in the financial reports or the annual report, is the answer to questions like these: What % or $ of our resources are being spent on: fixing the problems with the mobile app v. Community Engagement v. Discussion Tools v. Visual Editor v. UCOC v. clearing phab tickets v. Enterprise API v. etc. etc. ... how much did we spend on each of those things (and other WMF projects) last year? How much are we planning to spend on each this year? How do I find this information? Thanks again, Levivich (talk) 15:49, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Levivich, On the third question, for FY20-21, we just completed our fiscal year on June 30, 2021. We are going through our process to ‘close the books’ and will be starting the audit process soon for the fiscal year Jul 2020 to June 2021. Our audit process is scheduled to be completed in early October 2021 and we will publish it shortly after, in our usual place here.

We also share financial reports on a quarterly basis that includes a comparison of budget vs. actuals as part of our quarterly reporting and monitoring process that we call our “Tuning Sessions”. You can find those financial reports in the Finance & Administration decks on this page. You can see the most recent report that was completed for our third quarter. Our next report for the full year will be published in our usual cycle in August. These quarterly budget vs. actual reports do conform to GAAP except in unusual instances that we explain in footnotes to the report.

We have presented our financial information on pages 33 to 37 of our Annual Plan Overview to align better with the foundation’s overarching priorities presented on pages 3 to 31. We can also post a further summary that presents the financial information in a tabular format breaking it down by programmatic expense etc, which I hope is responsive to your question.

Do note though that some of the granular expense examples you mention in your last follow up do not, for the most part, exist as the financial tracking we do is at a Medium-term Plan priority or objective level and not at the level of individual tasks or projects. JBaldwin (WMF) (talk) 14:45, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, JBaldwin (WMF), the link to the quarterly reviews was extremely helpful: those slide decks have breakdowns and metrics for the different Annual Plan categories like "Thriving Movement." I'm still left a bit confused, though: what is the difference between Thriving Movement, Worldwide Readership, and Brand Awareness (why aren't the latter two part of the first)? Similarly, what is the difference between Technical Infrastructure (23.8% of the budget, which "includes all the engineering and technology needed to build and maintain our projects, platform, and internal infrastructure that is outside of our Medium-term Plan priorities like Worldwide Readership and Thriving Movement") and "Platform Evolution" (5.3%) which seems to be the same thing--what is in Platform Evolution that isn't in Technical Infrastructure and vice versa (it's a huge difference between those budget allocations)? Without my having to read the several hundred pages of quarterly reports, is there a summary or explanation somewhere?

For example, one thing that confuses me is that the Annual Plan intro says "This year’s plan involves three overarching priorities—ensuring a thriving movement, an evolved platform on which that movement can thrive, and a resilient and inclusive Foundation to carry out this work." But Thriving Movement is 24.5%, "Resilient & Inclusive Foundation" is 23.5% (half is Fundraising, half is General & Admin) and "Platform Evolution" is 5.3%. That's a little over 50% of the total. Why is "Platform Evolution" so small, and if Technical Infrastructure is 23.8%, isn't it (whatever "it" is) de facto a higher overarching priority than Platform Evolution? We have three overarching priorities but we're only spending half the money on them, and we're spending ~5x on a non-priority category than we're spending on one of the three priority categories? I don't get it. :-) Levivich (talk) 14:48, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Organsation for the Endowment

Hello, Jaime Villagomez mentioned in his video about the Finance and Administration topics that there will be a own organization for the Endowment what is currenctly at the Tides Foundation. What will be the name for this third organization after Wikimedia Enterprise LLC and where will this be registered and is there then own staff at this organization or not.--Hogü-456 (talk) 18:50, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the question Hogü-456. The Wikimedia Endowment will be its own 501c3 charity, incorporated in the U.S. It will simply be called the Wikimedia Endowment and it will share staff with the Wikimedia Foundation through a cost-sharing agreement. Here is the board resolution that gives more background. --Lgruwell-WMF (talk) 01:00, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Data Dashboard

Hello,

what for a software will you use for the data dashboard that will be introduced at the begin of next year in January 2022 within the Wikimedia Foundation and do you plan to publish the source code for that. For me this is an interesting part and I think it were great if it is possible that you use for this an open source or free software. Please ask people before you buy a software and think about internal solutions and tell a bit more what the needs of the software for the dashboards is. What are the funcionalities that you need in the dashboards.--Hogü-456 (talk) 20:26, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Hogü-456, we intend to use Superset, an open source software package for visualization, and that access to the data will be subject to privacy and sensitivity controls. --CMacholan (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Software Licences

Hello,

how high are propably the costs for Software Licences in 2021-2022 for the Wikimedia Foundation and can you please give a list of the internal used software in the Wikimedia Foundation for what you pay for licenses and for what you use this software. I dont need it in a detailed way and I think it is an important topic to understand for what software you pay.--Hogü-456 (talk) 20:33, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Hogü-456. We don't currently publish this information or share this level of budget detail, but we are planning to do more communications about our use of software this coming year to give community members more insight into our practices. In general, the software choices we make are guided by business operational needs, organizational capacity, security, privacy and operational compliance.

This means we opt for software that allows our lean IT team to most effectively support a sizable remote workforce (keeping administrative costs low in order to direct the majority of the budget toward programmatic work) while maintaining privacy and security compliance (for example, when we work with banks, we are required to use industry standard tools). --EBarrios (WMF) (talk) 02:12, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Baselines and targets

Could you please share the baselines and targets for the objectives listed in the plan with us? Thanks so much, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 03:06, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Frank Schulenburg, please see the discussion above on Milestones. --KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Income

It is stated that the total revenue of FY21-22 is 150 US$ million. Where we could see the full breakdown behind this number? Especially, the income source. (How many percent is from donations, external grants, etc)

Thank you. Rtnf (talk) 22:40, 21 July 2021 (UTC)