I have made a proposal for discussion. See the Engine Room:
The following resolution was approved by the Wikimedia UK board in December 2013: [We should] redefine the role and purpose of the non-board committees to give them greater prominence, and if need be re-constitute and re-vitalise them with greater volunteer input to drive forward programmes. At present, the roles and memberships of non-board committees are somewhat unclear, and that has led to atrophy and lack of focus. Board/committee communication needs to be improved, and better board support for the committees’ work is needed. We would hope and expect that this will result in considerably greater community involvement.
I have put up a draft charter for discussion at Volunteer committees, and would like to hear what everyone thinks. Insofar as it's possible for a charter to re-vitalise our committees (bearing in mind it's only people not policy that can ultimate do that), is this a move in the right sort of direction?
Michael
Link: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room#A_charter_for_our_volunteer_commit...
I have raised some quick comments on the talk page, including a question about the title "volunteer committees" as other recognized committees not listed in the document are by definition composed and driven by volunteers.
The document gives the impression that only committees without any delegated powers are volunteer committees, which seems odd phrasing.
PS please allow for the fact that date on my email may be up to a day earlier than the actual posted date.
Fae
On 7 May 2014 15:07, Michael Maggs Michael@maggs.name wrote:
I have made a proposal for discussion. See the Engine Room:
The following resolution was approved by the Wikimedia UK board in December 2013:
[We should] redefine the role and purpose of the non-board committees to give them greater prominence, and if need be re-constitute and re-vitalise them with greater volunteer input to drive forward programmes. At present, the roles and memberships of non-board committees are somewhat unclear, and that has led to atrophy and lack of focus. Board/committee communication needs to be improved, and better board support for the committees’ work is needed. We would hope and expect that this will result in considerably greater community involvement.
I have put up a draft charter for discussion at Volunteer committees, and would like to hear what everyone thinks. Insofar as it's possible for a charter to re-vitalise our committees (bearing in mind it's only people not policy that can ultimate do that), is this a move in the right sort of direction?
Michael
Link: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room#A_charter_for_our_volunteer_commit...
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
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
On 7 May 2014, at 15:20, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
I have raised some quick comments on the talk page, including a question about the title "volunteer committees" as other recognized committees not listed in the document are by definition composed and driven by volunteers.
The document gives the impression that only committees without any delegated powers are volunteer committees, which seems odd phrasing.
PS please allow for the fact that date on my email may be up to a day earlier than the actual posted date.
Fae
On 7 May 2014 15:07, Michael Maggs Michael@maggs.name wrote:
I have made a proposal for discussion. See the Engine Room:
The following resolution was approved by the Wikimedia UK board in December 2013:
[We should] redefine the role and purpose of the non-board committees to give them greater prominence, and if need be re-constitute and re-vitalise them with greater volunteer input to drive forward programmes. At present, the roles and memberships of non-board committees are somewhat unclear, and that has led to atrophy and lack of focus. Board/committee communication needs to be improved, and better board support for the committees’ work is needed. We would hope and expect that this will result in considerably greater community involvement.
I have put up a draft charter for discussion at Volunteer committees, and would like to hear what everyone thinks. Insofar as it's possible for a charter to re-vitalise our committees (bearing in mind it's only people not policy that can ultimate do that), is this a move in the right sort of direction?
Michael
Link: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room#A_charter_for_our_volunteer_commit...
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
-- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
On 8 May 2014 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.
I believe the general understanding of
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Articles_of_Association/2013_EGM_revision#Dele...
is that
"1. Committees are sub-committees of the Wikimedia UK Board"
means that those committees would consist entirely of trustees.
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...
"Power balance"? Removing parentheses, that sentence reads "The power balance is very much on the side of the staff, who hold individual viewpoints rather than viewpoints balanced across a spectrum of views." With the following sentence, I do wonder what this is driving at.
Of course all committee members are going to advocate for particular perspectives, which is why there has to be a chair. With the first sentence, this is apparently about delegated powers to manage staff?
My experience of a couple of the committees would suggest, on the basis of particular instances:
(1) There can be an issue about committee members laying down the law (Mike, you are guilty of that); (2) There can be an issue with staff role and actions; (3) There can be an issue if participants disregard the role of chair.
But I don't think any of these is particularly a charter issue. The things I can bring to mind are at the level of what I would call "savoir faire".
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...
Well, they can do the first, and they are not going to be able to do the second (budget) thing directly, as I understand the status quo: they are clearly able to influence discussion of budgetary matters.
The point would be to have a layer of effective discussion between the strategic focus of the Board, and the detailed implementation by the office and contractors. I think it would be a mistake to define the "clearing-house" function out of existence.
Charles
On 9 May 2014, at 05:22, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
The point would be to have a layer of effective discussion between the strategic focus of the Board, and the detailed implementation by the office and contractors. I think it would be a mistake to define the "clearing-house" function out of existence.
That’s a very good way of putting it. Although the committees do not have direct budget control, my recent experience is that they should be (and are) very influential when it comes to the CE’s final decision on expenditure. They could be even better provided that we are ambitious enough and the committee members take it upon themselves to pick up some of the bigger issues (now starting to happen at least on Tech Com). Committees are much less useful and are much less attractive to volunteers when they spend their time working through very long, very detailed, lists of small operational issues. Such detailed stuff, as Charles has I think already suggested, should be subcontracted from the committee to a small working group so that that a larger part of committee meetings can be spent on higher-level discussions.
Michael
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
On 09/05/2014, Michael Maggs Michael@maggs.name wrote:
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.
Odd, nobody has suggested delegating the executive's work to committees. Delegating some current activities of the board (not the executive!) who may have limited time to discuss and review detail, to committees who can then report back with recommendations or make choices between proposed options would be perfectly in line with best practices for charity governance.
Examples would be:
1. a grants committee with authority to decline proposals against pre-agreed criteria and recommend suitable ones to the board for funding.
2. a friends committee that might assess and monitor communications or events intended to benefit friends of the charity, and have delegated powers to make choices between proposed options for using funds already approved by the board.
3. a performance review committee that would assess reports of the performance of the charity and make strategic recommendations back to the board and may have some delegated authority to provide (uncensored) feedback as part of the CE's annual performance review.
Fae
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org