On 27 April 2014 12:37, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Hi Risker,
On 27 Apr 2014, at 16:01, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
However, having accepted the validity of the "proposal", the FDC does not have the authority to delegate its role.
I think you're misunderstanding what has been delegated here. The FDC is asking WMDE to do the 'staff assessment' of the proposals, e.g. here's the one for WMDE from last round:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/Wikime... This is normally done by the WMF/FDC staff, not by the FDC itself. It's a separate document from the recommendations that the FDC makes each round. None of the role of the FDC itself has been delegated here.
Well, no, I'm not misunderstanding. If a staff assessment is needed, then it needs to be done by staff. The FDC doesn't have the authority to delegate that, either.
particularly when there are obvious conflicts of interest involved. The lack of recognition of that conflict of interest
on
the part of the FDC is a very serious matter, and raises doubts about the impartiality of the FDC as a whole.
In my personal opinion, WMDE has no more a COI here than the WMF/FDC staff has when they do the staff assessments of the other FDC applications. Remember that WMDE/WMF aren't in direct competition for money from the same pot here.
There's no money involved in this proposal, in case you haven't noticed. Your job isn't programmatic review, and you should have rejected the request. If you can't do it right, don't do it at all, and tell the WMF to go to the community as a whole, or recommend to the Board that a completely independent party do the programmatic review. The amount of feedback that is coming in for WMF proposals under the FDC is significantly reduced from what happened when they went to the community.
WMDE has stated it intends to review only two areas, one of which is an area where there is significant WMF/WMDE interface and historical friction. If they can't do the whole job, then the assessment will be of little value, as the staff assessments balance all aspects of proposals against each other. And really, it's unreasonable to expect another organization to take on a very time-consuming and technical process for which they have no experience and expect them to do so without payment - but the FDC doesn't have authority to spend money in that way.
It's all well and good for your members to step out of the room while discussing certain applications,
but
with 4 of 9 FDC members being directly affiliated with supplicant groups, your standards for avoidance of conflict of interest need to be significantly stronger. There was good reason for concern that the FDC
is
becoming a self-dealing group without this delegation of responsibility.
I think you're going off on a tangent here, and I don't think there's a big problem with how things are working at the moment with COI handling on the FDC, but I'd be interested to know how you'd strengthen this?
I can accept that perhaps 2 seats be reserved for appointees from supplicant groups, and that all other members be unaffiliated to any group that meets the baseline requirements for requesting FDC funding *even if their affiliate does not request funds*. If supplicant groups are one seat short of a majority, it seriously affects the ability of the committee to consider big-picture issues from a non-affiliated perspective; remember that the overwhelming majority of people active in the Wikimedia movement are unaffiliated with anything outside of editing a few specific projects.
With the Board's resolution restricting the total value of FDC grants in the coming two years, and the proposals being made by affiliates routinely seeking increases in funding that very significantly outstrips the limitations set by the Board, the FDC will very soon be in a position where they are not just assessing proposals on their own merits. In the near future, the FDC is going to have to say "no" to full funding of good proposals because the total cost of good projects is higher than the pool of funds the FDC has to dispense; the FDC will have to weigh proposals against each other, so that any member who has a conflict of interest for *one* proposal will have a conflict of interest for *all* proposals they are considering within a round (and possibly within a fiscal year).
Risker/Anne