Add considerations of technical constraints for implementation process

[jpmckinney]

Design

• If the OCDS publication is not treated as a core function of the eGP system, then it is very easy for the eGP system to continue to change and cause the OCDS publication to break.
  • If the eGP system has an existing data export function, it might be safest to build the OCDS publication on top of that function, since it is already supported and maintained.
  • If the current function lacks field coverage or has other issues, it might be best to improve that function (which is already supported), rather than build a parallel OCDS publication function (which might not have continued investment).
• If the OCDS publication is implemented by an external team:
  • If there isn't careful hand-off to the local team, there is higher risk of the OCDS publication becoming unmaintained.
  • The external team might work in a supported language of the OCDS documentation, but the local team might not. The project might need to translate key OCDS materials for the local team to use (e.g. schema and codelists).

Map

• Some data fields might be too low quality to export. The team will have to decide what data to export, but should describe these decisions in their publication policy.
• Old data can be much harder or more expensive to extract, or might be of lower quality, and in any case is of less utility that recent data, so it might not be worth extracting to OCDS. This decision should be described in the publication policy.
• Developers need to identify reliable approaches to extract data. For example, the eGP system might have event hooks, from which OCDS releases can be generated. If there aren't hooks for all relevant events, then either those hooks need to be implemented, or the OCDS releases need to instead be extracted from the database. (That said, if the new hooks are only of interest to OCDS publication, they might not be maintained.)
• If the eGP system's code and database lack documentation, it might be necessary to contact the original developers of the eGP system. (This might be a consideration at the Design stage; if the lack of documentation is a major blocker to the project, then perhaps it's necessary to first write some documentation before considering an OCDS publication.)

(Inspired by conversations with support providers.)