Rules for board functioning

Previous board decision

Antonis has proposed rules for more specific responsibilities of board members, and with more details on how the board works. He will submit them to the board and Jean-Marc for comment so that they are finalised. They may be proposed for inclusion in the statutes.

What happened

Antonis proposed the following rules:

Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:45:06 +0300
From: Antonis Christofides <anthony@itia.ntua.gr>
To: board@ffii.org
Subject: Proposal for the functioning of board members

Hi, at the last meeting I was asked to provide a plan about what are
the duties of each board member.  Here's my proposal below, taken from
the draft new statutes (http://action.ffii.org/FFII_draft_statutes),
with a few changes so that they can work now (I've deleted some parts
that have to do with chapters).

     9. Board
     ========

     (Omit paragraphs 1 to 3, which are irrelevant.)

     4. The main tasks of the board are to manage members; manage the
        finances of the organisation; allocate funds to workgroups and
        designate and supervise workgroup leaders; and organise the
        membership assembly.

        (The part about allocating funds and leaders to workgroups
        could be ignored for now.)

     5. The president presides at board meetings; prepares their
        agenda in co-operation with the secretary; has the authority
        to execute in the name of the association all bonds,
        contracts, deeds, leases, and other written instruments to be
        executed by the association; and cares for conformance to the
        statutes and to the decisions of board meetings and the
        international assembly.

     6. The vice president, if one is elected, performs the duties and
        exercises the powers of the president in the absence or
        disability of the president. If more than one vice president
        is available and the president is absent or becomes disabled,
        the board chooses one vice president to perform the duties and
        exercise the powers of the president.

     7. The secretary prepares the agenda for board meetings in
        co-operation with the president; keeps records of the board
        meeting minutes and communicates them to members; notifies of
        board decisions the persons responsible for executing them,
        monitors progress, and reports back to the board; and keeps
        the registry of members. The secretary, in case of absence or
        disability, is replaced by the president or a person appointed
        by the president.

     8. The treasurer has custody of all association funds and
        financial records; keeps full and accurate accounts of
        receipts and disbursements, and renders accounts thereof at
        the board and international assembly; and cares for the
        payment of international membership fees.

    (Omit 9 - 12)

    13. Except wherever otherwise mentioned in these statutes, board
        decisions are by simple majority of the number of board
        members. Board members may vote either in physical board
        meetings or by means of verified communication.

After that, the only question raised was whether it might be nice if board members could delegate others to vote in their place. This was a bit controversial.

Another issue that has arisen since then, is that board members fail to vote, even for trivial issues that, however, really need a formal decision. I don't have any concrete example, just a feeling of just failing to vote and letting things go on.

I can think of two solutions for this issue: One is that the secretary and president could become more insistent when asking for voting. This could work, but it could also not work.

The second solution is to change the rule about majority of number of board members, and go to majority of votes cast instead, but only if a board member has failed after a reasonable amount of time to reply "Yes, No, or Abstain". But such a rule might create disagreement on what is a "reasonable amount of time" or whether the request for vote was clear enough or whether there should have been more insistence.

Or we could combine the two solutions.

Proposal

Refine the above proposed solutions and adopt something along those lines.

Local chapters

Previous decision

Antonis has already proposed changes to the statutes that will make it easier for FFII to be an international organisation with chapters. He will continue to work on those, requesting feedback from representatives of existing chapters (including representatives of nominal chapters and representatives of local groups who prefer to not have a chapter), until the draft generally satisfies everyone. The draft will thereafter be submitted to the board and to Jürgen Siepmann for further processing, so that it can be proposed to the General Assembly in November.

What happened

Nothing.

Scope of FFII

Previous decision

Hartmut will prepare a written interpretation of the English translation of FFII's mission statement from the statutes. Benjamin, Antonis and Jan will provide feedback.

This interpretation is necessary so that the board will be better equipped to be making decisions about which area of concern (such as, for example, DRM and data retention) lies within FFII's scope and which doesn't.

What happened

Nothing.

Getting the FFII message better through to activists

Previous decision

Hartmut, with the help of Jonas and Jozef, will write an activist's guide, and submit it for comment to Erik, Pieter, and Antonis.

What happened

Nothing.

Monitoring the political machine

Previous decision

Benjamin will prepare a six-month calendar, asking for help from Laurence Vandewalle and Jiri Jirsa. He will submit it for comment to Erik and Jean-Marc. Antonis will be monitoring progress. Maintenance of this calendar will be discussed later, after a first version is ready.

What happened

Nothing that I know of.

Improving communication with supporters and activists

Previous decision

Benjamin will prepare: (1) guidelines for local persons on when to do mass mailing, and a procedure to easily do the mass mailing; (2) lists of contact people per country/region. He will provide the results to Antonis for comment.

What happened

Nothing that I know of.

Moving forward with web sites

Previous decision

Antonis will investigate possibilities for replacing the current webmaster (himself, that is), and submit a proposal to the board.

What happened

Antonis works on the web sites with Heather Stern, who is hoped to become our webmaster.

Proposal

Do nothing.

Better use of national interpellation rights

Previous decision

Benjamin will request each country to provide a Contact Howto, that is, list of contacts, when and how to contact, what to ask for, what to not ask for. Benjamin will review and collect these howtos.

What happened

Nothing that I know of.

Getting our paper through to agenda setters

Previous decision

Hartmut, with the help of Jonas, Erik, and Benjamin, will prepare: (1) a Call to Action with appendixes, for submission to agenda setters; (2) a conference (Benjamin will be involved in the latter only).

What happened

Nothing that I know of.

Faster engaging of people in actions

Previous decision

Jean-Marc will prepare (1) introductory material and (2) task descriptions and submit them to the board for discussion during the next board meeting.

What happened

Nothing that I know of.

Conference and General Assembly

Antonis will prepare a plan for a conference and General Assembly in November and submit it to the board (for the conference there is overlap with an item just above the one just above).

Next board meeting

Previous decision

The next board meeting will be held on 5 and 6 August either in Bratislava or in Prague, after investigating opportunities in both.

What happened

We had decided Prague, but failed to organise the meeting properly. So we decided to have an irc meeting.

Improving computing infrastructure

Previous decision

We will seek the creation of a small group of people who will be responsible for managing and extending the computing infrastructure. Antonis will do that and submit a proposal to the board.

What happened

A computing team consisting of Jeroen Dekkers, Tonnerre Lombard and Bernhard Kaindl has been proposed. The decision is pending.