[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation's non-disclosure agreement

[Fae]

On 6 March 2013 07:11, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> It's unclear whether Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees members and
> Wikimedia stewards are also required to sign NDAs. It seems all Wikimedia
> Foundation employees are required to sign one.

Staff contracts should effectively do this, though one might need to
add NDAs for temporary contractors and consultants.

(A personal statement, off the top of my head and without doing any
research...) trustees should not be asked to sign a NDA as they should
be free to act with their conscience for the long term benefit of the
charity, which may include being free to publicly discuss negative
material; hard to do if every email and document is covered by a NDA.
Plus one expects trustees to have liability insurance, so unless there
is gross misconduct, such a contract would never be enforceable if the
trustee can claim to be acting within their role as a trustee (i.e.
any civil claim for damages would effectively be the charity acting
against itself).

Wikimedia UK has a Trustee Code of Conduct, which ensures that
trustees do not go "off the rails", and sets the behavioural
expectations for prospective trustees rather nicely.[1] As well as a
list of NDAs, it would be good to have an index of similar governance
related codes (Trustee CoC, COI policies,[2] Financial reporting
standards, et al).

Links
1. https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trustee_Code_of_Conduct
2. https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_Interest_Policy,
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_policy

Cheers,
Fae
-- 
Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) faewik at gmail.com
Chapters Association Council Chair http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae