Hi Mike. Most of the discussion on this seems to be happening on-wiki, which is probably the best place.
See
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Non-board_committees
for anyone who needs the link (Mike, I know you are well aware of it!)
I’ll just pick up one point here. Giving committees fully delegated powers to take executive action under the direct supervision of the board would not be consistent with any normal principle of charitable good governance. Not only would it mean that trustees would once again become operational programme line-managers, which is explicitly what we do not want to happen, but it would remove whole swathes of the charity’s work from supervision by the CE. No charity could work effectively within a structure that is partly managed by the board and partly by the CE.
Michael
On 8 May 2014, at 21:48, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Hi all,
It's good to see the role of the WMUK committees being focused on - thank you Michael for starting this.
However, I think it's a real shame that the committees are becoming much more advisory than they were supposed to be when they were originally envisaged and created just a few years ago. The charter here basically gives the committee no powers whatsoever. Compare it with the proposal I posted in 2012 at: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/General_Committee_Charter which was aimed at giving the committees some amount of delegated power to decide what would or wouldn't happen. Instead, now we're seeing committees that may or may not be able to give input to staff members (depending on whether staff members decide if they want to consult the committees or not). The power balance is very much on the side of the staff, who hold individual viewpoints (which are generally very good and worth listening to - but they are individual viewpoints) rather than viewpoints balanced across a spectrum of views (which is what a committee can provide). It's also worth remembering that the staff were hired to support the community rather than the other way around...
If the priorities could be flipped here, and the committees are given the direct ability to give recommendations to the WMUK board or to make some level of budget decisions, then I think it's useful to continue to have the committees. If not, then I would ask why the committees exist here...
Thanks, Mike