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# System prepended metadata

title: OSCAL Monthly Email Strategy

---

# OSCAL Monthly Email Strategy

- ADDRESSES: Pillar 1: Communication, item v:
    - Launch monthly emails to the community advocating for resources + the value. 
        - Begin 2/1/23
- RELATED ISSUES: 
    - P1.iv: Improve Community Onboarding (email communication was identified & possible need of new mailing list)

## Goal

We highlight areas of work where we want community participation and highlight the value. The key goal is soliciting volunteers.

## Final Recommendations

Send a monthly brief newsletter highlighting the research and/or engineerinf issues where NIST needs help.

- [x] We will use one or both of the existing Google Groups.
- [ ] We need an announcement email. (R: AJ; A: Michaela; C: TBD; I: All)
- [ ] We need a template for sending the newsletter. (R: AJ; A: Michaela; C: TBD; I: All)
- [ ] We will need to set up an archive location on one of our websites for prior newsletters after they're sent. (R: AJ; A: Michaela; C: TBD; I: All)

## Open Decisions for Recommendation

- [ ] Which mailing list to send to, both (oscal-dev or oscal-updates)?
- [ ] Which website to host on (pages.nist.gov or the CSRC website)?
- [ ] Can we automate part of this? All of it?
- [ ] Examine Michaela's recommendation for using a Google form to automate this.

## Background

### Content

We need to focus on the action plan goal: "Launch monthly emails to the community advocating for resources + the value beginning 2/1/23"

### Means

1. Existing Google Group (e.g. oscal-dev@list.gov, oscal-updates@list.nist.gov)
2. New Google Group?
3. [GovDelivery](https://inet.nist.gov/pao/service-resource/use-govdelivery)
4. Alternate means, yet to be determined

1 and 2 have no ability to capture anonymized metrics, 3 does, and 4 potentially depending upon selection.

Given the high-level goals, 3 and 4 seem excessive and the tracking will not help (if people volunteer, they volunteer, we measure that). Likely 1, not 2, is the safest bet.

### Key Context Q&A

1. Who is our target audience? Volunteers
3. Do we need to be able to measure readership? Not really, this is not marketing/advocacy.
4. Do we need to be able to produce relevant content every month and cannot skip? How far in advance? Yes, but where we need volunters, not organic non-technical or technical content.
