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Version: 1.2

Community Roles

Understanding the different roles will help you get quickly oriented to the community.

Our community has these roles:

  • Community Members: Anyone with an interest in these standards is part of the community, from those who rely on them to those who contribute and those who control content and direction.
  • Participants: Participants raise questions about the Standards, and identify problems they're having with them. Generally, participants will rely on community contributors to help answer questions and identify solutions for the problems they've raised.
  • Contributors: Contributors submit specific changes to the Standards. Typically, contributors do not make changes directly to the Standards, but submit detailed proposals for the Standards Oversight Forum to consider.
  • Standards Oversight Forum (SOF) members: A set of appointed subject matter experts who have final authority over the content of these API Standards. SOF members consider all proposed changes, and those members with the required skills and knowledge incorporate any approved changes directly into the Standards.
  • Moderators: Community members who focus on the quality of community discussions, encouraging constructive participation in resolving issues. They also enforce the code of conduct and ensure other community guidelines are followed.
  • Working Groups: When a particularly complex or specialised topic is raised, we might gather a group of SOF members and contributors with the required technical expertise to focus on it. Once a proposal is drafted, the working group will bring it back to the wider community for their thoughts and suggestions.
  • Owner : The owner is responsible for the ongoing evolution and publication of the Standards. They decide when to publish a new version for the community.

Together the SOF, moderators and owners lead our community.

Initially, Health NZ will appoint the owner, moderators and the members of the SOF; however, as the community grows and becomes more active, contributors who have demonstrated their passion and expertise will be encouraged to take on the roles of moderators and SOF members too.

The relationship of these roles is shown in the following diagram

PlantUML diagram describing API standards community roles

Detailed description of figure

The diagram describes the roles and relationships within an API standards community. There are five main storage containers: Community, Participants, Contributors, Standards Oversight Forum, and Owner. The Community consists of Public, Iwi, Health Consumers, and Health Sector. The Participants consist of API Producers, API Consumers, Product Owners, Health Providers, Health Workforce, and Other Participants. The Contributors consist of Producer Developers, Consumer Developers, Moderators, and Other Experts. The Standards Oversight Forum consists of Regular Members and Voting Members. The Owner is responsible for the entire community.