This page contains documentation relating to the values and governance of the project. If you would like documentation relating to the product, please reach out to Tailwind Digital.
IMS Memorandum of Understanding
The purpose of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is to guide and support councils that co-develop, share, and maintain the open source codebase for the Local Gov Income Management System (LG IMS).
Wherever possible we will re-use existing knowledge and solutions.
Values
The project team are committed to the principles of the Local Digital Declaration including:
- An open culture that values, encourages and expects digital ways of working from contributors
- Working in the open and sharing our plans and experience
- Working collaboratively with other councils
- Developing and reusing good practice
- Publishing our work under open source licences
We agree to maintain a common codebase — all improvements will be available to all councils. We aim to create a diverse community and value everyone’s voices.
Intellectual property and licensing
Code and other materials are automatically licensed to participants on an agreed open source licence. A council that develops code retains the intellectual property of the code. At the point of publishing, it is licensed under the appropriate licence for others to use.
Local Gov IMS is intended to be released under the GNU AGPLv3 licence. Documentation is intended for publication under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY). The current codebase is available on GitHub. We plan to release an updated version once governance arrangements have been agreed with project partners and MHCLG.
Liability
No party has liability for any contribution. Code and other materials are provided without any warranty or support or other liabilities. Other collaborators must be told about bugs and security issues in a private and secure manner and according to good practice.
Parties involved in the LG IMS project
- Project team — partner councils, MHCLG, and managed service provider Tailwind Digital.
- LG IMS users — councils using the LG IMS.
- Wider community — councils with an interest in Local Gov IMS and its development.
The structure will evolve as the project grows. If you’d like to get involved in the governance discussions please get in touch.
Governance
Governance in development
Local Gov IMS is an active and growing community project. Governance arrangements are currently being developed in partnership with MHCLG, with the aim of establishing a sustainable, council-led structure that reflects the collaborative nature of the project. We'll update this section as those arrangements are confirmed. In the meantime, the project continues to operate openly.
Compliance
- All functionality should adhere to WCAG 2.1 AA at a minimum
- All councils must comply with relevant data protection legislation
- Code follows the principles of data protection by design and default
Finance
The Local Gov IMS has been funded by the Local Digital Fund provided by MHCLG. The codebase will remain open source and freely available. The current codebase is on GitHub — an updated version will be released once governance arrangements are agreed with project partners and MHCLG.
Communication
The project team works in the open. Pull requests, roadmap, and progress updates are publicly accessible. The team encourages other councils to follow along and get involved.