Allowing for the switching of ownership to other members in the ArcGIS Group

[SaraJL]

We do a lot of public virtual exhibits in the StoryMaps platform - they are collaboratively created by librarians and student workers in the library.

When students graduate, typically we'll duplicate a copy of the project and give it to the student if they want to keep it, and then switch ownership of the original to the librarian in order to keep it active in our online virtual exhibits.

Currently - it is not an option to switch ownership of materials if they are in a group with shared editing capabilities (usersnames removed for reasons)

I would be helpful if we could at least transfer ownership to people who have access to that particular group.

Right now, we have to remove items from the group, switch ownership, and then add items back to the same group. If there are associated materials (ie Web Maps), these also have to be all switched individually otherwise it breaks access.

I don't think it makes sense to switch ownership to anyone in the organization, but if we could switch it to members of that group or group managers, that would be incredibly helpful for data rentension and management purposes.

Thank you!

[WilliamTarpai]

Sara has tabled an interesting question to be sure.  I have taken an interest of late in the work of librarians helping to ship books to rural Kenya supporting school and village library development, so I'll leave it to the experts to resolve this specific issue, but am clearly looking for ideas we can work with.

I am also thinking about student and university collaborations, as well as possibly, community mapping joint exercises, and data  created to belong in the 'commons'.   So many possible topics for additional input and ESRI Community discussions.

Where ownership begins and end has certainly been the subject of many court cases as I think of the legal wranglings that happened as Facebook was being created.  But I'm sure, somewhere in the fine print, that we sadly often do not read until matters come to court, is already an acceptable answer.   

But, as Sara has noted, procedures are already in place, so the question for me becomes does a 'carve out' need to be made as an exception to the existing rules?    Kind of like lobbyist making tax policy exceptions....

[SaraJL]

@WilliamTarpai it's definitely an interesting side conversation for sure! 

At my university, IT and the Library are fused into 1 department (LITS), and I work on the IT side and frequently collaborate with Librarians on projects in various formats. I also team-teach projects in classes with research librarians, so we work together on a daily basis.

In the case of student workers (I don't manage our student workers, so take this with a grain of salt) but typically there are policies built in when students accept a university job that certain things they create are still part of the university since it's created for their job. We also have legal waiver forms so a student is okay with us using their work from a class, they can give us permission and also pick a level to which is okay to share it. We've actually had more students in the last year or so that want to share their work, but will only do it if they can take their name off it (for various reasons...)

But origin of the work aside, if they create something we always do what we can to make sure they can have a copy, post it on a resume, etc so they can get credit and also use it for professional stuff (because that's the point of the student work job to begin with!)

The ownership process is usually the easy part for us to manage - but the preservation of digital projects in general is always an ongoing conversation. We don't allow service/alias accounts for security reasons, so it's a requirement for data to be assigned to an individual. In the case of ArcGIS Online groups - people can collaborate/edit/view the information if they have share editing rights, so it would make sense that the project could be transferred to them if an account was discontinued (since they could already add/edit then information). Huzzah for data management and sustainable projects!

In a sense - it's the same scenario as Google Shared Drives - one person has ownership, but you can transfer documents to other people, and everyone with access to the Shared Drive can make edits.

But also, long story short - it's just really time consuming to transfer ownership in ArcGIS Online if it's a shared editing group. Because I have to do it all individually - and I have to remove it and re-add to the group every time. It's just me that manages the whole org, so I'm always looking for ways to make it a little easier on my sanity 😁

[WilliamTarpai]

@SaraJL Much appreciated.   Now that I understand better, am hoping you get a techie to fix it soon.   

Now back to back to the Civil Society Data Commons - https://csodata.ke

[SaraJL]

@WilliamTarpai I was just checking out the link to the site - that looks awesome!

Just because they are fun to share - here are our virtual exhibits (more will probably be added in a few weeks!) https://wp.stolaf.edu/virtualexhibits/

Good luck with your project!

[OwenGeo]

@SaraJL - Thanks for sharing this feedback! I've moved this idea to the ArcGIS Online Ideas board since it is related to permissions and roles.