As a PMO myself, I'm very keen on the subject of governance. It helps to consolidate trust on the processes, faciliates decision-making, communication and is key to achieve any strategic objective. It is so for every company, government and it wouldnt be different for Cardano. Hence, having a challenge to estimulate governance collaboration can certianly bring a lot of value to Cardano, catalyst and community. Moreover, having the right governance is essential to reach Voltaire era in a consistent manner. As the proposal itself, it is well structured with a clear and straightfoward approach and good scope delimitation. the approach, by the way, is interesting as it incentivizes improvement of governance through collaboration. Finally, challenge proposed here is very aligned with F9 strategic goals of "Turning Cardano into an open source project", as it estimulate collaboration and "prepare a group of people willing and able to make contributions to the ecosystem".

One imporant thing to notice is that there are other proposals to create a challenge dedicated to governance, in this F9 challenge setting campaign. Though they have different approaches for governance, if both get funded, it would be interesting to evaluate if it makes sense to somehow merge them, so we dont have proposals on the same subject spread out.

This challenge proposal really is an absolute must for the next fund. It really grasps the governance and collaboration part of Cardanos mission at its core and seems like the perfect prelude to the Voltaire era. What I especially like about the challenge is it aiming for collaborative proposals only, as collaboration across different groups is the very essence of governance and helps counter tribalism and silo thinking. Good job :-)

This challenge setting has a unique approach in that it is for project proposals that previously have applied for funding related to decentralised governance. The motivation for this is to create more cohesion and counteract fragmentation which in turn will allow the community to properly become self-governing as part of the Voltaire era. Alignment refers to two aspects. The fund9 strategic goals and the challenge setting guiding questions. In terms of the 3 strategic goals, this challenge setting proposal does (a) encourage groups of people to make contributions to the ecosystem, and indirectly (b) make Cardano an open-source project, since any open-source project must have functioning mechanisms for decision making regarding standards etc, but does not directly address (c) the growth and evolution of developer & app ecosystem. In terms of the 3 challenge setting guiding questions, the alignment is mixed too. As a CA/vCAs from the past two funds, my impression is that this is unlikely to (a) create a lot of engagement amongst voters and as it is explicitly tied to proposers who have previously asked for funding, it is also not likely to (b) be a springboard for wider Cardano adoption even though I am convinced that it is very well-aligned with (c) Cardano’s overarching mission, as part of Voltaire.

The challenge set forth by the Collaboration for Governance team aligns with Cardano's mission and the Fund9 challenge setting goals by calling to action and mobilizing people who have experience with Catalyst and governance to contribute to the ecosystem. The goal is for Catalyst to one day become a completely decentralized entity from IOG, and this proposal is not only calling for those experienced to participate, but also to collaborate by requiring at least 2 past funding round governance solution proposing team members to make up the proposer team in this future challenge. This also reduces the risk of silo working, unleveled distribution of power in the ecosystem, and lack of accountability.

As for the verifiability, there's a "key metrics to measure" section but what is written there is not metrics per se, it is more a collection of guiding questions. They are imporant and a are a good start but are not kpis. In order to improve this part, it would be imporant to see these questions turned really into real metrics, which is where it is possible to make measurments to assesss progress in addressing the challenge. For instance, the first question (Is the proposal a collaboration between two governance-related proposers from a previous Fund? ) could be tuned into a kpi as "number of proposals that have collaboration between two governance-relate proposers from previous fund. Some are easy to make this translation others not, but it is essential to have things that measurable.

The challenge metrics are well set up in order to audit the proposals in the context of governance and cooperativity and to quantify the effects of the proposals well in this context. They show the way towards the solutions to keep them in the context of the challenge, but are not constraining creativity and the type of the solutions themselves.

There are 6 key metrics proposed. Only two of them are very easy to measure objectively: whether there is a collaboration between two previously funded/non-funded governance-related project proposers and whether it moves us towards more decentralised structures and tools. Two of them are relatively easy to assess even though they require some discretionary judgement: whether the team has demonstrated knowledge of the Catalyst community and whether they have “thought about why they are collaborating”. The last two are very difficult in my view, as someone who has been a CA/vCA in the past two funds. They relate to ensuring that decision-making is more widely distributed, “structural exclusions” such as geography, gender, language and economic power are challenged and whether they are bringing genuinely new approaches. These metrics are quite well-suited and the only objection I have is the proposals are asked to challenge “traditional assumptions about leaders, hierarchies, the link between wealth and power and who can be meaningfully involved in governance” which some may be interpreted as a bit tangential given the main framing of the challenge brief - namely that this challenge is for creating a more cohesive yet decentralised governance ecosystem.

The key metric criteria are clear in that at least 2 proposal team members have to have submitted a governance related proposal in the past and have qualified experience proven within the list of governance related areas listed at the end of the posed challenge setting information. Along with this the proposers have to provide information of their knowledge of Catalyst governance issues, that decision making power is evenly distributed and structures are adequately diversified. It requires new opportunities for governance approaches be presented.