2014-04-28 5:22 GMT+02:00 Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com>om>:
On 27 April 2014 15:00, Cristian Consonni
<kikkocristian(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2014-04-27 19:49 GMT+02:00 Risker
<risker.wp(a)gmail.com>om>:
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