Hi, On 10/23/2014 08:22 AM, Sarah Hoffmann wrote: > The problem is that I don't see where the membership has any leverge on > the board apart from the elections. We have had discussions about > transparency before but they have been utterly fruitless so far. A good > part of the current members has promised to report from the work of the > board in their manifestos.
Let me describe a purely hypothetical situation. Say there's someone on the board who doesn't really do anything. They rarely show up for meetings, don't participate in mailing list discussions, and respond late if at all to inquiries by the rest of the board. It's not however *so* bad that board would go through the trouble of calling an EGM to have that board member removed or replaced, especially since that would always require someone to be the first to stand up and spread disharmony by pointing out the obvious. A new election comes up and, lo and behold, that same board member even stands for re-election. The other board members are a bit puzzled but what can they do, they can't suddenly start a campaign against one of their own, can they? In the absence of any communications from other board members, the OSMF membership assumes that the board member in question must have been doing a good job, and promptly re-elects them. End of hypothetical situation. It is obvious that something has gone wrong, but what, and how could it have been better? Can we expect board members to report to the membership about the (perceived?) lack of performance of their peers? Or does the membership have to ask questions to find out what happens or does not happen? Board members are expected to keep board matters confidential, something that is also enshrined in the Rules of Order that you mention. This is to avoid reading about the board meeting in 5 different twitter feeds instead of on the OSMF wiki ;) but maybe the balance is not right. Maybe individual board members should be asked to report about their work to the electorate. But that would of course hardly be objective. Currently not only have we no such reporting, but the secretary (me) has even been asked not to specifically minute *who* voted for *what* in those few cases where board votes on something. > It very clear states the obligations of a board member with respect to > board meetings and transparency. How does the board hold its individual > members accountable for following the rules of order? Not at all, really. The rules of order is something we spent quite some time on during our face-to-face meeting last year. I had introduced that document because I felt that being clear about expectations and obligations would remove some of the problems. The bill didn't pass fully (I think the draft is still on my user page on the OSM Foundation Wiki, something I caught flak for internally BTW) but at the time I hoped that the bits that passed, like that board members shouldn't keep information from each other, would clear some obstacles. I think that was one of those occasions where I was naive. > How can the > OSMF membership hold board members accountable for it? Watch what the board are doing, and ask questions. Read the answers you get, and ask the questions that arise from them. That's what I would suggest, and as a board member I'd actually value it if I saw that members were interested in my work. Even if I'd probably have to give many an embarrassing answer. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk