There are several important issues that people have raised here already -
notably the question of confidentiality of information; the question of the
membership of this "task force"; and the question of whether the
whistleblower process was effective/sufficient.
However, I'd like to refer to this point in particular:
On 2 May 2016 at 19:10, Denny Vrandečić <vrandecic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
This task force involved
outside legal counsel and conducted professional fact finding. The first
request of the task force to the Board members was to ask for all documents
and notes pertaining to the case.
I'd like to ask about *who* this "professional fact finding" process talked
to? I'm not asking to "name specific names" but more about which groups of
people. In particular:
- I assume that the C-level [senior] staff were interviewed, but were any
non-executive staff interviewed as well? This question speaks to the level
of detail/depth that this investigation was expecting to have... I would
think that if the "task force" was serious then it would be interested in
hearing from across the organisation at all levels, and directly from the
people affected. However, if it only spoke with people in the executive of
the organisation then it would only be hearing views that either had
already been relayed to [some] members of the board by the executive, or
the views of the executive themselves. Obviously the C-Level staff
themselves should have been interviewed, but ALSO other staff so that, at
the very least, it didn't appear to be just a token-effort at investigating
claims.
- Were the Knight Foundation spoken with? Given that the apparent disparity
between what was in the grant document and what (some) on the board thought
was being build in the "knowledge engine" project, it seems important to
know if the Knight Foundation genuinely was of the same understanding as
the Board? This disparity also seems to have been a core issue to the
concerns raised by by the staff, and in the concerns that were held by
James, so it seems particularly pertinent to be checking what the the
Knight Foundation's perspective actually was.
-Liam
wittylama.com
Peace, love & metadata