[SPIKE] Stakeholder Analysis

[tyliec]

Objective

To determine and analyze who the main users of the UIPA.org platform are, both current and future users.

Background

UIPA.org has been live since around 2017, and has currently helped facilitate over 950~ FOIA/UIPA requests. We know very little about who the main users of the site are, and what they use it for.

There are some challenges with getting this data in the first place:

1. We don't own the infrastructure the application runs on (Public First Law Center does), so any data export can be done but is a little more challenging
2. Some users choose to remain private when submitting a request. While there is a "embargo" period where users requests will eventually be made public, requester information is still kept private after that embargo period. Example Request
   i. Note: We can get around this with a private data export, but we should figure out if this is something we should/want/need to do before just doing it.

Another note here is that users that submit requests are only one dimensions of users, there are many other users that simply observe/look up existing requests, without submitting a request of their own. We don't have much information on these types of users other than just a general how many there are. Here is a Google Analytics Report for November 2023: November_2023_Google_Analytics_Report.pdf to get an idea of how many people we might be looking at.

1. Note: We can request more months/years of this data, as Brian Black should have all the rest of them buried in their inbox... somewhere.

For some insight into the totality/impact the UIPA.org portal has in comparison to all UIPA requests, the Office of Information Practices publishes some statistics in annual reports. (These may not be complete, as some entities might not be apart of this report)

Tasks

• Figure out what we need to know about our users. Would it be useful to know things like their occupation, what information they were requesting, ...etc?

Related Items

Parent Epic: #56

What is a Spike?: https://www.visual-paradigm.com/scrum/what-is-scrum-spike/