Adopted by the Steering Committee (28 June 2022) (v2.0)

The memorandum of understanding is formulated to ensure the collaboration functions efficiently. It must be read along with the PHA4GE Charter and the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct; understood and signed by both parties.

1. Mission Statement of the Consortium. PHA4GE is a global consortium working in public health bioinformatics to establish consensus standards; document and share best practices; improve the availability of critical bioinformatic tools and resources; and advocate for greater openness, interoperability, accessibility and reproducibility of data and standards.

2. Purpose. The purpose of the Consortium is to advance global public health through the development of an open source, community-supported ecosystem for bioinformatic software development, implementation, validation and support. No organization currently exists to support this goal at a global level.

3. Organizational structure. The consortium consists of three Support Groups and five technical Working Groups. The Support Groups consist of the Steering
Committee, Advisory Board and the PHA4GE Secretariat. The technical Working Groups include Data Structures; Infrastructure; Bioinformatics Pipelines and Data
Visualizations; Reference, Training and Workforce Development; Users and Applications and Ethics and Data Sharing.

More information regarding the organizational structure and work of the Consortium can be found in the Charter.

4. Membership. Support Groups and Working Groups have closed and open membership, respectively. All members are further classified as active, affiliated, or consulting. Each member is accountable for their actions in the Consortium. Further description of joining and exiting the Consortium, privileges, roles and responsibilities for these classes of members are explained in the Charter.

5. Meetings. Meetings are scheduled within groups with a similar format across all groups. This includes circulating the agenda among group members prior to the meeting, group Chair, Vice Chair or their designate presiding over the meeting, minute taking and sharing the proceedings among all group members. Except for the Advisory Board, every group will meet at least once a month. The aforementioned elements and others relating to meetings are outlined in the Charter.

6. Voting. The Consortium encourages voting to reach decisions during meetings and for the appointment of group Chairs and Vice Chairs. All active group members have voting rights. Chairs and Vice Chairs will be elected by means of a majority vote (the candidate that receives the most votes). Decisions related to work activities should be based on group consensus, however, if consensus cannot be reached, a majority vote will carry the item. Please refer to the Charter for further clarifications around voting.

7. Compensation. Participation in all the Consortium’s activities requires in-kind contribution from all members. This means all members volunteer their free time in fulfilling the Consortium’s mandate, except for the Secretariat. The funding provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports the Secretariat functions. Provisions are available and need to be applied for through the Secretariat to assist implementation of tools or methods at identified public health institutions and presentation of PHA4GE work at national and international meetings and conferences..

8. Ethical behavior. All members must uphold ethical behavior always. This includes, but is not limited to, declaring conflicts of interest, maintaining confidentiality, professional resolution of differences and respecting one another. Examples of ethical issues and how to address them are described in the Charter and Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

9. Amendments to the memorandum of understanding. The memorandum of understanding is subject to revisions whenever substantive changes are made to the Charter. Unless requested by an existing member, only new members will be requested to agree to the latest version of the memorandum of understanding.

10. Publications. PHA4GE aims to disseminate its outputs without unnecessary delay in order to facilitate an appropriate public health response. These outputs are publications such as papers, software publications, presentations, PHA4GE newsletters, press releases, social media announcements and policy briefs. The Publication Policy will guide this aim by clarifying the specific objectives and the processes to be followed.