Secretary conflict of interest

[Adam Culp]

FIG members,

We have a conflict, and I think it is time we fixed it. In particular I'm speaking about the bylaws governing secretary eligibility. (http://www.php-fig.org/bylaws/membership/#eligibility-criteria)

The oversight we are guilty of is that while a secretary cannot be an editor of a PSR in draft phase, I think the stipulation should be broader than that. The secretary role is a very important and time consuming position, not to mention the secretary must remain non-biased to properly aid the FIG members. This would include anything related bylaws, PSRs, and/or other actions being carried out by the FIG. Not only could these things distract a secretary from their given duties, but it hurts the FIG preventing a secretary of non-bias.

I have heard some comments related to, "This is why we have 3 secretaries." But I would contest this is not the case, but has been twisted. The reason we have 3 is to help pick up the pieces if one has problems that were unplanned. NOT to selectively decide what one of the 3 secretaries would or would not be a part of, and therefore able to hand things off to the others. By allowing secretaries to stray from their given task and randomly decide bias, it hurts the FIG and prevents the secretaries from doing what they were voted on to do.

Therefore I am calling that we enhance the eligibility criteria to eliminate this bias and confusion of duties in the secretary role.

Regards,

Adam Culp

IBMiToolkit

[grey...@gmail.com]

What are the proposed changes to the eligibility, exactly? Do you have wording or an example? I have trouble understanding exactly what you're trying to avoid.    

[Adam Culp]

Thanks for the question. I will return to this with a full idea and supporting facts. A little distracted for a day or so.

Regards,

Adam Culp

IBMiToolkit

[Adam Culp]

First, I'd like to state the goal and intention of this post is not to create drama and is not intended to point fingers at anybody. We have all been learning as we go. I'm legitimately concerned we did not fully define the eligibility criteria for the secretary role, and think we should enhance it now. Therefore, rather than stating instances and hashing over who/what/where I think we should try diligently to stick to the intent.

Further, as to the timing, I think now is a great time to tackle this...when nominations and voting of secretaries will be happening. This will ensure we do not repeat mistakes of yesterday with the new blood coming in.

I am not a good legal person, but see a problem, so I created this thread in hopes that others would step up and help flesh this out. To this end here is a stab at some new verbiage:

####

The role should be filled by three people (working together to ensure impartiality in all matters and continuous availability) at any one time and those individuals must not be:

• Project Representatives of a Member Project
• An Editor of a PSR that is in Draft phase
  
• Contributor to any by-law creation/addition at any phase
• A current contributor to activities influencing the authority of the Secretary role

####

Hopefully you can see my intent is to prevent someone in a secretary role from assigning themselves more power, or changing their role mid-stream. This sort of protection is needed regardless of role.

There are many out there smarter than me who can really help this become better. Please contribute.

Regards,

Adam Culp

On Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at 6:56:07 PM UTC-4, grey...@gmail.com wrote:

[Marc Alexander]

Just to clarify (also possibly for others), you're proposing to add these two points to the eligibility criteria:

• Contributor to any by-law creation/addition at any phase
• A current contributor to activities influencing the authority of the Secretary role

The first point is rather clear though it might be helpful to also state that this does not affect the clarification of the interpretation of bylaws as part of the secretaries functions ("Clarifying any interpretation of bylaw text").

I do however think that the second point is too vague. What are activities influencing the authority of the Secretary role?

[Lukas Smith]

On 12 Aug 2016, at 12:09, Marc Alexander <marc.ale...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just to clarify (also possibly for others), you're proposing to add these two points to the eligibility criteria:

• Contributor to any by-law creation/addition at any phase
• A current contributor to activities influencing the authority of the Secretary role

The first point is rather clear though it might be helpful to also state that this does not affect the clarification of the interpretation of bylaws as part of the secretaries functions ("Clarifying any interpretation of bylaw text").

I do however think that the second point is too vague. What are activities influencing the authority of the Secretary role?

I am also not sure if the 2nd point makes sense. In general the acting secretaries would have the best understanding of what might need to change and what might not work. So not letting then be involved does not make sense. 

I think Adam your concerns relate more to the fact that you didnt like how one secretary interpreted the by laws. Rather than your proposed changes (especially #2) I think you should just state your case and ensure other people are voted in next time. 

regards,

Lukas

[Alessandro Lai]

I agree with Lukas. I think that the main concern here should be avoiding that a secretary has any influence over a vote, directly (as a voting member) or indirectly (as a lead developer of a member project, as stated elsewhere). I think this should be enough as a limit.

[Phil Sturgeon]

Right, Lukas makes a great point. 

A secretary working on a bylaw is not an issue, because it still requires a majority vote from voting members to pass. If we're worried about the secretaries overstepping their powers, they can't do it unless given a bunch of +1s from the voting members, so where does this issue stem from?

With this groups recent dedication to making a bylaw change for pretty much anything anyone is going to do, not only will the secretaries need to be updating bylaws, but they'll be fundamentally unable to do anything at all without updating a bylaw first. 

Updating bylaws, or creating new ones, in line with requests from a number of voting members, then putting that to a vote sounds like exactly their job to me, and sounds like democracy in action. Isn't that what we want? 

[Larry Garfield]

It was tucked at the bottom of a long email before, so I will repost
this quote from myself as it seems relevant to this thread:

-----

Note that I am making an implicit assumption here:

Most adult professionals will act like responsible adult professionals
most of the time, given a structure that encourages doing so. The
challenge is ensuring the right structure and organization in which to
do so.

If we cannot make that assumption, then FIG is totally doomed as is our
industry and we should just all go become farmers. :-)

-----

Some of these recent threads have gotten far, far too carried away with
influence peddling. The PHP community isn't *that* large. Most of us
know each other, at least a little. Many of us are friends. A few are
in, or were at one point in, romantic relationships with others. Nearly
all of us have been out drinking with someone else here. (I've had a
soda, but it's still drinking.) Many of our projects make use of other
projects here. We all have influence on each other to some degree or
another. That's because we're all (I presume) humans.

A completely prescriptive approach to behavior and membership is not
treating each other as professionals. That's a problem. We shouldn't
be trying to catch every exception. We should be trying to build a
structure that encourages professionals and then trusts them to act
professionally... and in the *unusual* case that doesn't happen, has
mechanisms to correct it then.

Not allowing someone to be involved in helping revise bylaws just
because they may be impacted by them is, well, silly. Everyone here is
impacted by the bylaws. That's kinda the point.

The impartiality of Secretaries isn't to ensure that they're "not one of
us", or fully detached from the world, or something like that. It's not
a Congress/Supreme Court type of split. It's to avoid the blatantly
obvious conflicts of interest of being both the process pedant (their
job) and the thing being processed, ie, Editor. It's also to avoid
burning out one person by giving them too many active responsibilities
(which is not the same as "influence".)

And lest someone question FIG 3 in response to that position, I'll note
that, for all its verbiage, FIG 3 is still a fairly loose process.
There's formality defined around certain checkpoints that we know are
missing currently, but for the most part still assumes most people will
act responsibly and in good faith most of the time. What a Working
Group does internally is more or less its business. How CC members talk
to each other is more or less their business. Etc.

Similarly, I'm not all that concerned about Paul "controlling" the Aura
vote as secretary, just as I wasn't concerned about Fabien "controlling"
the Silex vote or Phil "controlling" the League vote. As Phil notes,
though, the strongest proponent of that "controlling the vote" fear in
the past was... Paul Jones. If Paul still stands by that position, that
creates a dissonance. If he has revised his position and no longer
believes that to be an issue, I would welcome that change of heart.
That would have to come from him, however.

--Larry Garfield