For those working on or funding open infrastructure for research, understanding the landscape of community health and how decisions are made is crucial. Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) was recently featured on CHAOSScast Episode 112, with our Product Lead, Chrys Wu, discussing key findings from our 2025 State of Open Infrastructure report and from our Measurement of Community Health Indicators project, funded by the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund. This episode offered invaluable insights, particularly concerning the awareness and impact of community health frameworks.
Key Findings from the Landscape of Community Health Framework Research
Our research specifically investigated the awareness and impact of various community health frameworks, specifically:
Our research to date yielded two critical findings regarding the landscape of community health frameworks and decision-making for open infrastructure:
- Generally low awareness of community health frameworks: A significant finding from our research is the overall low awareness of community health frameworks among those involved in open infrastructure. Despite the existence of structured approaches like CHAOSS metrics, the FOREST framework, and POSI, many practitioners and funders are not yet widely familiar with or actively utilising them
- Trust as the key theme in decision-making: Crucially, the research revealed that trust emerged as the paramount theme in decision-making processes for open infrastructure. This underscores the vital role of interpersonal and community trust, often serving as the primary factor when formal frameworks may not be widely known or applied.
The discussion further explored how users frequently depend on peer feedback and case studies when making decisions about open infrastructure, largely due to the common lack of formal sales or support mechanisms often found in open-source projects. This further reinforces the critical importance of community and trust within the ecosystem.
Next steps
Recognising these findings, our work aims to bridge the existing gaps in awareness and provide actionable tools:
- Infra Finder is a tool designed to gather comprehensive information and enable organisations to assess the readiness and sustainability of open infrastructure projects. Notably, it has already been successfully employed in procurement processes.
- Supporting community health and visibility: Chrys and the panellists of CHAOSScast also discussed how CHAOSS metrics are developed to be context-aware, assisting projects in areas like identifying organizational diversity or adoption levels, and supporting new contributors through resources such as project badging, practitioner guides, and metric models. IOI also actively supports project in refining their sustainability modelling, business design, and governance framework design and implementation while centering community values.
Our sincerely gratitude to CHAOSScast for having us on the show!
For those interested in delving deeper and collaborating, IOI plans more in-depth sharing of the report findings in the near future. We encourage you to listen to the full CHAOSScast Episode 112, and let us know any feedback you may have, by emailing research [at] investinopen [dot] org! For the latest on our research and other engagement opportunities, please subscribe to our newsletter.
Social media image by Agata Ciosek on Unsplash.