Stephen LaPorte <slaporte@...> writes:
Hi all,
The Board of Trustees has published minutes from the Board meeting on April
22, 2016. You can find the meeting minutes and accompanying documents on the
Foundation Wiki:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2016-04
So the confidentiality agreement which was passed seems like it will represent
a regression in transparency. One of the things I pointed out in the last
controversy is that it wasn't clear that the non-executive session portion of
the board meeting was actually confidential. This closes that gap with 1.b.
and 1.c defining as confidential "the Foundation’s nonpublic plans, strategies,
budgets, or financial information;" and "nonpublic information shared in
connection with Board meetings, deliberations, and discussions, including
nonpublic communications on private mailing lists or private wikis". Why it is
necessary to have a blanket everything as confidential rather than narrowly
defining the scope to specifically documents and deliberations is unclear. This
seems to run contrary to the suggestions which came out of discussions in
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_transparency_gap
This effectively silences trustees from offering any information, lest they
befall what happened to James (who didn't even give any information to his
constituents, the community, only staff). Historically Samuel Klein and Phoebe
spoke to the community to some limited degree about their board involvement,
but I wonder how comfortable a trustee could feel in providing even such
limited information with this confidentiality agreement in place.
For an example of how this affects our conversations with our elected
representatives:
Last month, "Geoff and Stephen prepared a draft set of basic best-practice
recommendations [on governance]". These weren't released publicly as far as I
am aware. "Maria and Dariusz were tasked with preparing a proposal for a
lightweight structure to increase transparency" but as far as I am aware we've
received no color on what this proposal might end up looking like. Someone on
this list asked Dariuszand he declined to offer details; if I recall correctly
he said the boardshoulddo what it can internally first. I disagree with this:
if you do a bunch of work without consulting your stakeholders, there's a good
chance you'llhave to scrap all that work. In the software world we call early
feedback from the stakeholders "Agile", and it is widely viewed as a superior
process to long efforts without feedback.
Would Maria and Dariusz even be able to share thoughts on their proposal if
theyhad provided any initial information in the board room? The way this
confidentiality agreement reads, once something is discussed in the boardroom,
it becomes off-limits for public conversation until the Chair approves it.
The presentation by Geoff and Stephen also seems off-limits, and it's hard to
imagine why this should be treated as proprietary/secret. Or is it public since
we know that such a draft exists?
I really think we need to see the best-practices recommendation that Geoff and
Stephen presented.
Do we have a champion for transparency left on the board with James gone?
I did like the PDF overview. And I was happy to see that the board ended the
meeting with a no-staff executive session. That's a well-recognized best
practice which really helps the board assert itself and form a more
consistent voice.