Umm....what the NDA says is very much a part of employment standards. The NDA is an employer-employee agreement. It is not subject to the wishes of the Wikimedia community, except in a very indirect way. NDAs are used to control people's behaviours - if they're employees, they get disciplined up to and including termination should they violate them. In the case of volunteers (and yes, there are many volunteers who sign NDAs for various types of access, myself included), their privileged access can be removed and potentially they could face legal ramifications for disclosure depending on the nature of the disclosure.
There have been transparency problems, no question about it. But they had nothing to do with NDAs. Let's leave NDAs out of it at this point. They're absolutely not within Community Engagement's purview.
Risker/Anne
On 12 March 2016 at 22:11, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Anne,
This is not a question of employment standards – it's not about what these NDAs etc. should or shouldn't say. We are talking about publication of existing boilerplate agreements that are in routine use.
It's a question of transparency. When volunteers talk to staff, it's useful for them to have an accurate understanding of what staff can and can't talk about, in particular as some staff members have raised this as an issue.
If preparing this for publication takes a month or two, because there are more pressing things to do right now, I have no problem with that. What isn't good is if the community is told in response to queries, "Yes, publishing the NDAs etc. is a reasonable idea", and those words just fade into the mist because the task has never been actioned and delegated. Perhaps we can agree on that.
As Sarah says, a dedicated transparency officer within the community engagement department would be a great idea, because this is a community-facing issue. I'd be interested in hearing Maggie's views on that.
Andreas
On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 2:25 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Really, Andreas? You're complaining that the resigning ED didn't do this and the one appointed less than 36 hours ago hasn't got around to it?
This is not Maggie's responsibility - she is not responsible for
employment
standards or expectations. That would be the VP Human Resources...who
has
just resigned, too, and has yet to be replaced.
Risker/Anne
On 12 March 2016 at 21:09, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On March 1, Jimmy Wales wrote:[1]
things like standard boilerplate language to be signed by
all employees doesn't strike me as something in and of itself to be
kept
private - there is a valid interest in showing that our policies are fair and humane for employees, responsible in terms of the privacy of personal information, etc.
Nothing appears to have happened since then – we seem to be no nearer
to
transparency about the non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses WMF staff have to sign than we were two weeks ago, when
discussion
around this topic kicked off in another thread.[2]
This seems to be a recurring (and daunting) pattern. People call for transparency about a particular issue. Eventually, someone in a
leadership
position responds that yes, demands for transparency about this issue
are
quite reasonable, and in fact more transparency would be absolutely desirable.
At this point, people relax, feeling they have been heard. The
clamouring
crowd disperses. But in fact, nothing happens, and the same questions
arise
again some weeks, months, years down the line.
Maggie, is this something your department could take on? It would be
good
to have one identified person at the Foundation who is responsible for tracking such queries and reporting back to the community, one way or
the
other.
Andreas
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082852.html
[2]
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/685183#685183
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