Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hey Fabiana, Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com wrote: ... I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I agree with the general thrust of the question: Foundation members should feel that their votes count, and that they have a stake in the Foundation. More than that: I think we need a Foundation that is more visible, and more integrated with the rest of the project. This is something that I would like to help improve, and have ideas about (although I also expect there to be constraints and pressures that limit what we can do in this area). We need to recognise that transparency isn't always simple or straightforward. It takes work to make things transparent (such as writing reports or blog posts), and we all know that Board members are busy and have limited time. Additionally, more transparency wouldn't necessarily make the Foundation easier to understand or more engaging: posting the transcript of every meeting, or making all the finances public, wouldn't make the Foundation more engaging. Likewise, many of the matters that the Board deals with probably aren't that interesting to the membership, and more transparency around them might not make people more active within the Foundation. So I think we need to be smart: we need to identify opportunities where information about the Board will be interesting and meaningful; we need to figure out how to produce that information efficiently, and we need to present it in a way that is easy to digest. It's not a question of more transparency, but when and how to be transparent. I would like us to keep this issue in mind during the day-to-day running of the Board. Also, I do have some ideas for increasing transparency: First, we need to regularly review the Board's communications. Ensuring that agendas and minutes are sent out in a timely fashion and are meaningful is an obvious thing to keep an eye on. Second, I think that there needs to be more information about the performance of individual board members. Right now, when Board members run for re-election, there is very little information about how they have performed in the past year. This risks turning the elections into a popularity contest, and doesn't help us to ensure that we have an effective Board. One thing we could do is keep a record of how board members have voted over the year, as well as the tasks that they have successfully completed. These records could be published ahead of the elections. Third, I'm interested in trying to break down the barrier between the Board and other teams, so that Foundation business is spread out more widely. It would be great if the Engagement Team could be more involved in campaigns that are run by the Board, for example. If I am elected to the Board, I'd be interested in hearing peoples' ideas for increasing transparency, and would be happy to pursue them when possible. Thanks, Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, 2015-05-25 at 12:39 +0200, Fabiana Simões wrote: Hi everyone, I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Having served on the board, I do think the board is transparent about its activities. The meeting minutes that get published have everything that the board is able to disclose. Sometimes there are things that can't be disclosed. As for accountability, I know in the past some people have asked for a list of who voted how on issues. But the board generally works toward consensus whenever possible, so dissenting votes aren't common. When a board member wishes to have his or her objection noted for the public, that shows up in the minutes. Now, I do think we could do a better job of making this information more digestible. Keeping up with meeting minutes isn't fun. Minutes are full of mundane activities, and it's hard to get the story in your head if you don't read them all and pay close attention. A long time ago, we used to publish reports. We had an annual report and quarterly reports. The reports had synopses from various teams in GNOME, as well as from the board. They were a lot more fun to read than minutes and made it easier to see what's happening at a glance. Getting back to doing reports would be nice, but they are a lot of work. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 3:39 AM, Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com wrote: How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? I value transparency a lot, and I think the Board should be as transparent as it can - but not more. That is, I understand that some discussions need to happen first behind closed doors. For instance, when discussing a matter publicly might negatively impact the outcome for the Foundation (legal matters for instance), or when some dispute arises between Foundation members that wish to stay private. I think the board has been transparent enough in the last term, and I much appreciated the minutes being more timely than in the past. I share Allan's feeling that the activities of the Foundation would be naturally perceived as more transparent, among other things, if other teams were more often delegated tasks that are currently the sole responsibility of the Board members. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I very much agree with this sentiment; the way information is presented today does not lend itself to that kind of visualization. I wouldn't suggest that a quantitative approach to e.g. tasks completed by a Board member during one term would be a fair assessment of all the work that particular person has done, but I can see how a different presentation of the Foundation activities, where tasks can be easily followed and information found in a single place, would be beneficial to making members feel more engaged. Moving off e-mail and towards publicly accessible tools like kanban boards, among others, is a direction worth exploring IMO. Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi everyone, I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Thanks, Fabiana ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, Hi, I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? The board should communicate almost everything they do to the members. I say almost because I see a few exceptions. There are cases such as the groupon campaign where they can't unfortunately say anything about what's going on because that could play against the foundation. There are also cases that don't need to be advertised. For instance say the board is mediating in an issue involving two members. The decision to make this public does not belong to the board, but to the member that complained to the board. So far, I guess the board was good on transparency. There are always times where the community is impatient and wants to know more about something that's going on, but I trust that when the board says there's nothing we can say right now it is actually true. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Meeting notes are difficult to read, and more precisely it is hard to follow an ongoing agenda item over several meetings. Each member has to do some digging on their own to find out what happened (and who was involved). It would be nice to have a place to sum up the activities of the board. I'm not sure yet which form it would take, but it could be a wiki page per term, or a quarterly report… I also hear the board has been experimenting with a kanban app, I wonder if this could come in handy to craft the reports. In the past we had some reports by our employees (sysadmin and ED) and I found them very valuable, so I reckon the board should provide something similar in some way. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: It would be nice to have a place to sum up the activities of the board. I'm not sure yet which form it would take, but it could be a wiki page per term, or a quarterly report… I also hear the board has been experimenting with a kanban app, I wonder if this could come in handy to craft the reports. In the past we had some reports by our employees (sysadmin and ED) and I found them very valuable, so I reckon the board should provide something similar in some way. Sorry, I forgot to mention the awesome President's report Jeff did. This is really welcome and is an example of the things the board should do, but doesn't solve the difficult-to-follow issue described earlier. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, - Original Message - | | | Hi everyone, | | I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and | accountability on the Board. | | How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What I think the transparency should be complete. Since GNOME relies on money from the community. | should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent | enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in I think it should be communicated when something big happens (ED contracted, Hackfests, programs like outreachy, etc.) and then after a fiscal year or so. | your priorities would be to do so? I think the last year in GUADEC GNOME showed a very detailed graphic on expenses, actually it was too complex to understanding it at first in my humble opinion =) I think a good way is a simple graphic with the income/outcome/balance and the important items where the outcome went and if it accomplished the expected result. I could understand that the income can need some privacy (companies that doesn't want to show its name or so?) | | In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the | Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals | and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and | context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation | have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I think this needs improvement, and I don't have a clear solution without putting more work on the board right now. | | Thanks, | Fabiana | | ___ | foundation-list mailing list | foundation-list@gnome.org | https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list | Cheers, Carlos Soriano ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
2015-05-25 12:39 GMT+02:00 Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com: Hi everyone, Hey Fabiana! How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? During this last term we had to discuss several items that couldn't be disclosed with the community for the particular subject they were covering or for the parties involved that wanted to remain private. I'm mainly referring to the Groupon legal matter and the huge amount of behind-the-scenes action items each of us took part in during this last year. It's clear these kind of subjects are (and were in the Groupon's case) going to be made public when the Board will actually decide (upon consulting with our legal counsel) that it's time to disclose the information and the results we gathered. That's intended to prevent the external entity, party or person involved to know the plans and next moves of the GNOME Foundation and benefit from it. We had other similar cases as well and I personally made sure and asked the whole Board to evaluate how much had to be disclosed about these specific matters. For example the WHS agreement that was finally signed during this term was made public at [1], the GNOME Foundation -- SFC move of Outreachy was included on the minutes of many Board meetings in a detailed manner. What we probably omitted at first was the name of the new program as there was an explicit request from the organizers. That didn't mean we weren't going to let the Foundation membership know at all about the new name but just that it was going to take a few weeks for us to make that information available. We valued transparency a lot during this term and you can notice how detailed the minutes are going from the items discussed on the meeting itself to the ones discussed on the mailing list. A few examples [2], [3], [4]. (and more :-) ) As the Secretary of the Board transparency has been one of my main goals and will remain as such in case of a re-election. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? This is a very interesting point. While right now meeting minutes do provide a good overview of what's going on within the Board itself and the items that are being discussed they don't provide a summary of who worked on what and how long it took for an action item to be completed. During this term we introduced a tasks system based on [5] which helped us identifying who was in charge of a certain item. We might want to bring the meeting minutes to the next level making them more detailed by including the name, surname of the person who achieved a certain action item to facilitate the membership to verify one's involvement. Having some sort of stats every year (also in terms of meeting's participations for each member) would also help. Although the new tasks system served the Board great not every member got used to it and hopefully having a new Board that will start using it from the beginning will definitely allow everyone to be as much as productive as we originally thought when we introduced the software. [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/WHSAgreement [2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg2.html [3] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-April/msg4.html [4] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-April/msg2.html [5] http://kanboard.net -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:39:50PM +0200, Fabiana Simões wrote: I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I believe the board should be entirely transparent about all of its activities and discussions, with two exceptions: First, if the board is discussing some legal or contractual issue that cannot be disclosed until after a certain point, then detailed records should still be kept, but those records can be kept private until the point where they can be released/discussed. And second, if the board is handling some privacy-sensitive issue for community members, such as harassment or dispute mediation, then the decision of how much to disclose there should be up to the parties involved rather than to the board. Other than exceptions like those, the board should be entirely transparent and public about its activities and records. From what I've seen in the board minutes and similar, I think the board has been quite transparent about what happens in board meetings, but I agree that the board could potentially improve transparency about followups and resolutions that happen via activity outside of board meetings. I also think that activity summaries such as those other board members have recently posted help to avoid the hidden in plain sight problem that the minutes can have. Do you have any specific examples of board-related activities you could point to where you think additional transparency would have been helpful, as an example of what to improve? I certainly plan to be entirely transparent about my *own* activities if elected to the board. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, Great question, thanks! Response inline: I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? I think it is appropriate the board seek a consensus from the community before adopting any new policy. I also believe it it is fair practice for the board to take steps to advertise posts, such as: secretary, treasurer and president before appointing new officers. I would seek to encourage healthy discussion between the board and the rest of the community about matters of importance arising, which would include, taking conscious steps to publish the agenda and minutes as early as possible. I would also advocate we publish advisory board minutes. More generally, I think it would be useful if we kept an up to date list of all committee names, committee members, committee meeting logs/minutes and policies, just as we already to keep our current members list up to date on the Foundation pages. Always useful to be able to see a more detailed breakdown of income and outgoings so we are clear on how much each “sponsor is actually contributing to the project in real, practical terms. The community could also benefit from being kept abreast of the specific yearly contributions of advisory board affiliates. Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? Who knows that GNOME has been a “delinquent” charity in the eyes of so the California State Department of Justice since 2013? The board have done their best under exceptionally challenging circumstances, but of course must always strive to do better, year on year. If elected, I would be seeking feedback from members on an ongoing basis. Transparency and accessibility go hand in hand: This is a top priority for me. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? It would be useful to be able to provide access to meeting logs, but as I understand things, there are some confidentiality issues which may prevent that from being workable. I suppose I could advocate each director write a monthly or (dare I say it) maybe even a fortnightly report, that sort of thing could make it clear to members that everyone is pulling their weight” and ensure members are always clear on what tasks are actively being carried out by each member of the board. By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Jeff’s end of term update was a good call and I get the sense that the rest of the community really appreciated his efforts too. It would be great to see the same sort of thing from all board members and then compiled either into a pdf document or as a condensed so it can be added to the annual report and I would certainly be willing to support an initiative like this. Thanks again, for your questions! Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
