2014-04-28 5:22 GMT+02:00 Risker risker.wp@gmail.com:
On 27 April 2014 15:00, Cristian Consonni kikkocristian@gmail.com wrote:
2014-04-27 19:49 GMT+02:00 Risker risker.wp@gmail.com:
Well, no, I'm not misunderstanding. If a staff assessment is needed,
then
it needs to be done by staff.
You are suggesting that the staff assessment of the WMF proposal has to be done by WMF staff, i.e. by the very same people who drafted the documents in the first place?
I think you misunderstand who drafts the budget for the WMF, if you think that Anasuya and her department are 'the very same people who drafted the documents".
You are missing the fact that Garfield does a review which is part of the staff assessment and of course he has a major role in drafting WMF's budget. Furthermore, putting Anasuya and the grant team in the position of assessing their colleagues' work would be in my view, to say the least, very unpleasant. Also, the staff assessment comprises usually some information like past compliance with reporting and other grant-related duties that in this case would not apply.
As Anders said above the staff assessment "gives some key things not to be overlooked by FDC", since we recognize the value of this input we are trying to replicate this also for the peculiar case of WMF.
At best, they draft the recommendation for their own department - which includes the FDC budget so your reviewing it is a conflict anyway.
We are aware of that but as there is no amount the problem is, in my view, not so pressing. Note also that there will be the FDC Adivsory Committee meeting at the end of May that will be reviewing this first two years of FDC and, among other things, they will recommend to the board if the FDC is worth continuing or should be disbanded. Furthermore, to be hypothetical, if there would have been amounts in the proposal the amount related to the FDC would have been specifically excluded, I hope that we will have this problem next year.
The FDC doesn't have the authority to delegate that, either.
We are aware that evaluating the WMF is in many respects different from evaluating other entities, so we are trying our best to adapt the existing process to the new situation. Why? Because having the WMF going through the same process as all the other entities seems fair and reasonable and add steps for community review that are not available now. As for authority to delegate, yes, we did not make any formal request to change the process but I am pretty sure that the board is aware of what we are doing.
There is a commonly used term for this: "normalization of unsafe practice", also known as "something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done". It is accepting an assignment knowing that it cannot be completed without significant aberration from standard and safe practices, just to get it more or less done in some fashion, even if it is done suboptimally. In this case, there's not even a recognition that this is an undesirable practice.
You may want to address to the BoT so they can ask the staff (with the legitimateness to do so they have) to adhere more closely the FDC process next time (for example putting amounts in), this has been discussed in the last months and that would be also my suggestion. To me the alternative looks that we would have been missing a moment for reviewing the FDC that is now being added.
And this is what is most worrisome to anyone who believes that the WMF must be a fiscally responsible organization. Not everything can be done at once. Being able to tell affiliates that it is essential that they prioritize their goals and objectives and identify which ones they feel are most important is part of the proposal assessment process. The FDC has a specific amount of money it can give out; the Board has already given you the marching papers on this, and provided support to the FDC in making these hard decisions by telling affilliates that there is a limited pool and they cannot grow by 30% per year.
Yes, of course. In my answer I was following your premises i.e. that the projects would be good enough that canceling for lack of funding would cause more harm than good.
Cristian