SSC-NG is being built in five tasks, executed over a roughly three-year timeline, coordinated by a Preliminary Governing Council (PGC — see Governance).

Task 1: Coordination and Governance

Convene the PGC — senior and junior contributors from the current SSC community, members with experience from other statistical-software community projects, and international members, including the current SSC maintainer. The PGC will:

  • Define the future governance of contributions to SSC, in collaboration with current coordinators and stakeholders.
  • Define a software architecture that enables easier contributions, updated to modern practices.
  • Update software tooling to leverage the new architecture and versioning.
  • Improve dependency management and automated metadata checking.
  • Produce a white paper and a Stata Journal article about the new architecture.
  • Convene a working meeting at the annual Stata conference (or a mutually convenient conference) to finalize governance with community participation.
  • Define a successor, self-perpetuating council within the first year.

Task 2: Design SSC-NG

Design a system that supports both email submission (for legacy users) and a web-based submission system that enables automation, with authentication of contributors and protection against spam or spurious submissions. Key elements planned for the first year:

  • General web hosts and email addresses not tied to a single person or institution, redirecting transparently to existing mechanisms at first, then transitioning to new ones.
  • Automated checks and tests, starting with simple checks (e.g., no collisions with existing function names), run across multiple Stata versions, with unit tests and sample run code added over time.
  • arXiv-style moderation, where volunteer subject-matter specialists approve in-scope submissions without vetting utility or correctness.
  • Julia-style register, using pull requests against a central, GitHub-hosted catalog to build the physical SSC package repository, while remaining backward-compatible with current installation methods.
  • Interim infrastructure: centrally hosted Git repositories within a new GitHub organization for authors without their own repository, wound down later for actively maintained packages but preserved for unmaintained ones.
  • Fully redundant hosting: because Stata packages are lightweight, a complete copy of the SSC catalog can be taken into physical custody rather than relying on links to author-controlled repositories that may disappear.
  • Improved preservation: regular snapshots (e.g., monthly full and daily incremental) pushed to a trusted archive with an API, such as Zenodo or a Dataverse instance, with tooling to “re-hydrate” the archive.
  • Date-based preservation, similar to CRAN’s archival function and the date-based functionality of the (now defunct) MRAN / the current Posit Package Manager.
  • Compliance with existing infrastructure: continued indexing in RePEc, continued functioning of ssccount and ssc hot, and a smooth transition worked out with Stata, Boston College, and RePEc maintainers.

Task 3: Community Input

Before enhancing SSC-NG further, gather input from the Stata user community through one or more of:

  • An open working group at Stata and/or disciplinary conferences.
  • Articles submitted to relevant academic publications (e.g., Stata Journal).
  • Open fora on the Stata discussion list.
  • A survey of past SSC contributors.
  • A survey of current Stata customers (with Stata’s assistance).

Students assist with developing and analyzing the survey.

Task 4: Enhance the SSC-NG Repository

Building on Task 2 and informed by Task 3, make the submission system more scalable, efficient, and automated:

  • Streamlined submissions: a website for developers without a GitHub- or GitLab-based repository, and a submission bot for those who have one.
  • Reputation-based automatic acceptance / sponsored initial acceptance, tested and implemented along the lines of the Julia registry, informed by approaches such as pyOpenSci and rOpenSci.
  • Version-based preservation, adding checks that warn submitters when metadata such as a version number is absent or inconsistent.
  • Tutorials for developers: a package template with step-by-step guidance on creating, testing, and submitting packages, with an emphasis on automated submission.
  • Dependency constraints: robust dependency declarations published as part of RePEc, and new functionality within package installation commands to actually enforce declared dependencies.
  • Central documentation for all packages: parsing the full SSC archive and generating consistent HTML help pages, incorporating richer author-maintained documentation where it exists.
  • Improved citability of packages: a new metadata standard for self-citation of Stata packages, and a Stata package that makes it easy to cite other packages.

Task 5: Persistent Non-Profit Support Structure

In parallel with Task 4, define and implement a persistent non-profit support structure, along one of two paths:

  • A 501(c)(3)-compliant charitable organization as a formal LLC or corporation, or
  • Association with a fiscal sponsor that is itself a 501(c)(3)-compliant non-profit, such as Software in the Public Interest (SPI) or Open Source Collective (OSC).

In either case, the PGC’s role is to define bylaws and a business model, and to hand over a functioning entity to the successor non-profit organization.

Timeline

Year 1:

  • Convene the PGC and establish the governance structure (Task 1).
  • Design SSC-NG’s architecture and implement core features (Task 2).
  • Deploy an initial version with date-based archiving and automated checks.
  • Gather community input through surveys and workshops (Task 3).
  • Milestone: first SSC-NG release with backward compatibility.

Year 2:

  • Implement enhanced features, including version-based preservation (Task 4).
  • Develop the streamlined submission system and web interface.
  • Create central documentation.
  • Develop tutorials and onboarding materials for contributors.
  • Begin work on the non-profit organizational structure (Task 5).
  • Milestone: fully functional SSC-NG with enhanced features.

Year 3:

  • Finalize the non-profit structure (Task 5).
  • Complete the transition of governance to the successor organization.
  • Publish a white paper and a Stata Journal article on SSC-NG.
  • Milestone: self-sustaining organization operational.

The PGC plans to meet with the community at the Stata conference near the end of Task 2 to gather input and discuss next steps. Year 3 is planned, but may conclude early depending on how quickly Task 5 succeeds.