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titleMinutes: Restructuring of the Scientific Board of the DDI Alliance working group meeting 2020-04-29

Agenda:

To make progress on Jared’s document in google drive. This could be used as a basis for further deliverables.

Attendees:

Achim, Dan G., Hilde, Ingo, Jane, Jared, Jon, Nicolas, Ron, Wendy (last part of the meeting).

Apologies:

None

Discussion

The bigger group – role and name

Hilde asked what the bigger group of scientific and technical staff the SB would work with should be called, and what this group would be like. The discussion started by questioning whether the Scientific Assembly should be kept as a name or not. Dan G. meant that to have a constitutional larger group other than on the level of members would not be needed, but to speak about an informal group that could fulfill scientific and technical roles would work. Different proposals for the relationship between the SB and the larger group were mentioned. Should these people only fulfill roles, or as Ron suggests, is the not the community building aspect also important?

Ingo then asked Dan G. to provide a related proposal for discussion at the next meeting.

Group reports and related discussions

Short reports from work on document sections was presented and discussed.

Purpose

Jon and Wendy had provided a proposal for a text for Purpose. Jon commented that the voting clause was removed, as the new SB is expected to have a more coordinating role.

A proposal for revision of the related bylaws was also provided. Ingo suggests the same to be provided for all sections.

Organization

Dan and Nicolas have been working on a proposal for Organization. They will upgrade with proposed changes to the bylaws for the next meeting.

Jared asked for a clarification about the term ‘voting members’ used. He also raised a concern of whether a group consisting of seven members, two external experts and two ex officios (the Excecutive Director and TC chair) would be small enough to perform its task efficiently. A question of seven or up to seven would be the correct wording. There are different opinions in the group regarding group size, where some mean a smaller group would be better. The wording seven members is however kept in the proposal.

Nicolas asked if a quorum for internal SB members voting would be useful. A quorum of four of seven was tentatively agreed.  

It was stated again that, as agreed earlier, external experts and ex officio members will not have voting rights, and that the chair and vice chair of the TC as a standing committee cannot be officers of the SB.

Achim and Ingo proposed that a similar change could be relevant to include in the bylaws of the EB, that the chair and vice chair of another formal body cannot at the same time be chair and vice of the EB.

Elections

Jared and Jane provided a proposal for a new section on Elections for the bylaws. Jane commented that it would be good if the chair and vice chair could be elected for periods of different time length, in order to facilitate some overlap between them. Ron commented however that this preferably should be handled within the SB to avoid confusion.

Voting

While the members should vote on the larger issues, day to day voting, for example to elect chair and vice chair, to form working groups etc. is done within the SB.

Ron and Hilde had been working on this and suggested that SB voting is described in guidelines rather than in the bylaws.

Jon, however, mentioned it could be useful to have them in the bylaws.

Ron agreed to provide some recommendations on how and for what to vote within the SB for the next meeting, based on input from the group members.

Roles

Ingo and Achim have been working on Roles. Hilde asked whether it should be mentioned that the proposed scientific and technical roles together make up the scientific assembly/community. Ingo agreed to this.

Next meeting

Next meeting is scheduled to Wednesday May 6th

The groups were asked by Jared to update their sections till Monday 4th for further review and discussions.

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titleMinutes: Restructuring of the Scientific Board of the DDI Alliance working group meeting 2020-04-22

Attendees

Achim, Dan G., Hilde, Ingo, Jane, Jared, Jon, Nicolas, Ron, Wendy

Apologies

None

Agenda (provided by Ingo at the meeting)

  • Agree on what the deliverable should look like.

  • Decide who would work on what.

What the deliverable should look like

Regarding what the deliverable should look like Ingo started by raising three questions:

  • How many documents should the deliverable consist of?

  • How long should the document(s) be?

  • What should their structure look like?

He also stressed the importance of providing something that people whould read. Would a short two page with bullet points be enough?

Wendy proposed a threefold deliverable:

  • A short document containing the proposal

  • A longer outline of its rationale

  • A document describing possible changes to the bylaws

Status: Agreed as a working plan

Discussion

Dan then raised the question: What do we agree about? A discussion regarding unresolved issues then followed.

Ingo meant that agreements had been reached that as much of the old structure as possible should be kept, and add what is needed added as new. Hilde, while agreeing with Ingo, argued en passant that a takeover of name (Scientific Board) from an existing body to a new one be confusing. Dan G. then repeated his argument for the smaller SB to replace the current (larger) SB, but pointed to the proposed contact roles as a way for the smaller SB to involve scientific and technical staff within the member institutions in the work of the DDI-Alliance.

Hilde then argued the for the need to strengthen rather than weaken the scientific member representative role, in order to make it easier for scientific and technical staff to get worktime and funding from their institution for taking part in activities and meetings of the DDI Alliance. She fears that replacing the scientific membership role by contact roles would weaken rather then strengthen the possibilities for involvement. While Dan G. means that a section about contact roles usefully could be included in the bylaws, Hilde agrees with Jared’s proposal from earlier, to include contact roles as a set of recommendations in guidelines.

Ron argued that decided structures should be implementable. A leadership body for the governing of the activities is important. For the organizations it is important to avoid confusion of voting and representation. Ron also argued for the importance of empowering the scientific and technical staff to contribute to the work of the Alliance and asks what is needed to make this possible. Bylaws cannot be very specific. We need to look at the language in our documents. What is supporting and what is blocking the above goals? Do specific interpretations need to be pushed etc.? What could be done this way to maximize participation?

Timeline and procedures for producing the deliverables

Jared proposed all deliverables to be final by May 11th. A draft of the proposal (short document) should be available for the next meeting on Wednesday April 29th.

A procedure for how to produce a draft of the proposal was discussed, resulting in the following:

  • Groups of two/one work out proposals for text for chosen topics, and include the proposed text in Jared’s google drive document. This work is scheduled to the end of the week.

  • Everybody comments on the proposals through Monday.

  • Then each section is updated by the group responsible for it, taking comments into account. This is scheduled to next Wednesday, before the next meeting.

  • On the next meeting (Wednesday April 29th) each facilitated section will be discussed by the whole group with the aim to finalize it.

Who would work on what? 

People were asked by Ingo to sign up for providing text for topic-based sections of Jared’s document, based on their preference. The outcome was as follows:

Purpose - Jon/Wendy

Organization - Dan G./Nicolas

Election - Jared/Jane

Voting - Ron/Hilde

Roles - Ingo/Achim (decided post meeting)

Ron also proposed that Achim and Ingo reviews the proposal.

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titleMinutes: Restructuring of the Scientific Board of the DDI Alliance working group meeting 2020-04-15

Agenda

  • Go through open issues and try to reach agreement

  • Jared’s consensus document (in googledrive)

Attendees

Achim, Dan G., Hilde, Ingo, Jane, Jared, Jon, Nicolas, Ron, Wendy

Apologies

None

Administrative

Ingo reported that the DDI Alliance will hold two shorter virtual annual meetings this year, one on the 18th of May (Meeting of the Scientific Board) and one on 26th May (Meeting of Members).

The proposal will be presented at the SB meeting and further discussed at the members meeting. This means that the work of the temporary working group will need to be finalized in time good time for the first meeting. Then there will be a vote, and a call for participants to the new SB will go out if the proposal is approved. This process is expected to last 6 weeks to 3 months. Achim and Ingo have agreed to act as chair and vice chair of the SB on an interim basis, until a new leadership has been elected.

Ingo recommends to let the budget reserved for the cancelled Chur meeting of the temporary working group to be transferred to next year, to support a first meeting of the possible new SB.

Discussion

Number of elected members in SB

Jared’s consensus document as of 1st April states in the ‘Organization’ section that agreement was reached for the SB to have 5 voting members, in addition to 2 external experts without voting rights and the director of the DDI Alliance attending ex officio. Nicolas commented that 7 voting members would be preferred, in order to account for unexpected, instances like that people sometimes cannot meet or resign within an election period. Achim, on the other hand, expressed the concern that groups with a high number of participants could be less effective in leading something.

Status: After some discussion the proposal of Nicolas was agreed for the reasons mentioned. Jared’s document has been updated accordingly post meeting.

Voting/involvement of scientific representatives

Dan G. proposed voting has two levels. On the one hand the SB may need to vote on issues with in itself. For bigger things like products approval and strategical decisions the Alliance members will be brought in to vote. This was tentatively agreed.

Ron express consent with this idea. He then raised the question on whether the relationship of the SA to the SB should mirror the relationship of the Members to the EB when it comes to voting. That is, should the SA be an assembly with voting rights (on the scientific and technical issues of the Alliance). He also mentioned that a good SA body usefully could contain external experts.

Hilde likes the idea to have an SA with voting right, in order to strengthen the role of the scientific (scientific and technical) representatives.

Dan G. then repeated his view that the SA should bring in scientific and technical expertise, but the member organizations should decide who should vote.

Ingo then repeated his idea to have scientific, technical and administrative contact roles. An open question is whether contact roles should be described in the proposal or not.

Ingo and Wendy both underlined that a designated member representative does not need to be the person who votes, but according to the bylaws would be free to assign voting rights to a person with expertise in a specific field.

Status: Needs revisiting.

TC chair/vice chair’s role in SB

Ron reminded that the TC belongs in the SB, as a working committee under the SB. A question then arose if members of the TC should be in the SB or not. Hilde then proposed that members of the TC could be in the SB, but that the chair and vice chair of the TC should not at the same time be chair or vice chair of the SB. Dan G. expressed skepsis to have the chair of the TC as a voting member. Ron then proposed for the TC  chair to be member of the SB ex officio, in order to maintain the connection between the SB and the TC sub-group. Wendy expressed consent with this.

Status: Agreement for the TC chair to be ex officio member of the SB. It was also agreed that the TC  chair and vice chair couldn’t at the same time be chair/vice chair of the SB. Jared’s document has been updated accordingly post meeting.

Next meeting

Next meeting will be scheduled to Wednesday April 22nd.

Topic for the meeting will be the organization of the report of the group’s work. Dan G. agreed to provide a structure for the report in advance of the meeting.

Designated persons in charge of each section of the report will be assigned at the forthcoming meeting.

...

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titleMinutes: Restructuring of the Scientific Board of the DDI Alliance working group meeting 2020-03-17

Agenda

The following agenda was presented by Ingo at the meeting:

  1. Summary of discussions from virtual sub-group meetings 2020-03-17

a. Purpose group

b. Organization group

2. Make a plan for moving forward with the work

Attendees

Achim, Dan G., Hilde, Ingo, Jane, Jared, Jon, Nicolas, Ron, Wendy

Apologies

None

1)  Summary of discussions from virtual sub-group meetings 2020-03-17

a.    Purpose group

Jon reported from the purpose sub-group meeting:

Consensus in the group had been reached on several points.

  • Strategy and overview as the main purpose of the group.

  • Current purposes as reflected in the bylaws are expressed more as functions than as purposes. Should the SB be allowed to make its own momentum rather than limit what it is?

  • An important task for the SB is to set up sub-groups. Should more details on strategies and development processes be provided?

  • The SB should present a report to the Annual meeting on activities from the past year, but also provide a strategic plan for the forthcoming period, to allow for proper discussions at Annual meeting.

  • Organizational issues: A strong feeling was expressed that small groups are needed to get something done.

  • Voting on revisions were not discussed.

A summary of the discussion in the purpose sub-group can be found here on the related Confluence page.

b.    Organization group

Dan G. reported from the work in the organization group. At the start of the meeting there were two competing ideas regarding the composition of the SB:

  • The original proposal from Sydney, keeping a larger SB and creating a small Acting Committee for this. To improve the efficiency of the larger SB, a clarification of the role of scientific representatives also seems to be important (Hilde).

  • To make the small group the SB with the DDI Alliance members as overall approvers (Dan G.).

At the organization group meeting Ingo came up with a third proposal with the aim to bridge between the two:

  • The smaller group (AC or SB) should liaise with the member institutions on specific topics through a set of contact ‘roles’ within each institution. The threefold role set consists of an administrative contact role, a scientific contact role and a technical contact role. A single person could take more than one of these roles. It would be left to each member organization to assign staff to the different contact roles. According to this proposal each member institution should, however, only have one voting member. Further definitions of each role would be required.

Tentative agreement regarding the following topics was reached at the organization group meeting:

  • A smaller group consisting of 6 – 7 elected members, the DDI Alliance executive director and 2 additional external experts, should be established. The external experts should have an advisory role.

  • Voting for representatives for the smaller group should mirror the elections for the EB. It would be important to ensure that full turnover will not happen.

Link to minutes from the group discussion.

Discussion

After the presentation of the report from the sub-group meetings a discussion followed. The main areas of the discussion were centered around how to restructure the SB in the best possible way to support the governance of the Alliance, as well as how to attract new people to become involved in the work and the balance between openness and regulations.

Sub-topics of the discussion were:

Organizational improvement

  • Which competence is needed in the smaller group to enable it to fulfill its purpose in the best possible way?

  • How are competences defined? (Related to the above).

  • The role of scientific member representatives

  • Would contact ‘roles’ be more useful?

  • Who should have voting rights within an organization?

Attracting new people; balance between openness and regulation

  • What could be done to make more/new people involved in the work of the Alliance

  • Balance between openness and regulations

Organizational improvement

Which competence is needed in the smaller group to enable it to fulfill its purpose in the best possible way?

Achim, Dan G.  and Hilde argued that metadata competence is needed for the AC/SB to fulfill its purpose and perform its tasks as the purpose of the DDI Alliance is related to metadata standards development and the SB is the scientific and technical body of the Alliance. The purpose of the AC/SB is to provide strategy and oversight over the scientific and technical work of the Alliance, setting up sub-groups, planning, reviewing and reporting (see report from the purpose group above). To fulfill this task a good understanding of metadata and metadata standards is perceived as needed.

Ingo stressed the importance of distinguishing between the roles of the TC as a standing committee of the SB and the small AC/SB group when it comes to the type and level of detail of the advice they give and proposed that the smaller group should consist of scientists rather than of technical people. The TC should handle the technical issues, while the SB should handle issues on a higher level.

A discussion of how to define competences and what ‘scientific’ means in the context of the body of the DDI Alliance then followed.

How should competences defined? (Related to the above).

Achim explained that the name ‘Scientific Board’ was invented to have a good name for the board for the body that was created as a response to the outcome of the Breckenhill review. ‘Scientific’ in the context of metadata standards development means in this context would mean a person competent in the field of metadata methodology. Dan G. and Hilde expressed their support of this view.

Ingo, however, suggests to separate between ‘scientific’ and ‘technical’ roles. In his understanding a ‘scientific’ is a person with competence within a specific scientific field, like for example a survey expert, while technical is a person with a technical knowledge background. According to Ingo the AC/SB should be populated by ‘scientists’ in the above understanding.

Status: Needs further clarification.

The role of scientific member representatives – larger SB

As explained above, agreement has not yet been met as to whether the larger SB should be kept or not.

It was discussed what should be the roles of the scientific representatives, given that the larger SB will continue to exist. How could the scientific representatives be involved to a larger extent than is currently the case? Should they have voting rights or not (see below)?

Hilde suggested that the smaller AC/SB could liaise with the larger SB group while the year, in between the Annual meetings, in order to seek advice from them and get them interested and involved in the prioritized work of the Alliance.  

Would contact ‘roles’ be an alternative?

According to Ingo’s proposal (see the report by the organization group above), it would be useful to have set of contact ‘roles’ within each institution that the small group AC/SB could liaise with for input. As explained above Ingo suggests to distinguish between administrative, scientific and technical contact role, in order to be able to communicate with more people from the same institution. The contacts it should be up to each institution on how to organize the distribution of roles (should one person take all roles, should there be one person for each role etc.).  

Hilde argued that it probably will vary between institutions how the distribution of roles is organized, and that good communication within institutions that assign different people to the different roles would be crucial in order for this to succeed.

Status: Needs further clarification and discussion.

Who should have voting rights within an organization?

According to Ron the bylaws are not clear regarding who should vote, and that it is important to find a good way with this.

It was then discussed who/which roles should have voting rights. Ingo suggested there should be only one designated voting person by institution, while Hilde meant that giving people working on DDI related things (the scientific representatives) voting rights on related topics would be a good idea.

Wendy, on the other hand, meant that how institutions do the voting cannot be controlled by the Alliance.

Status: Needs further discussion.

Attracting new people; balance between openness and regulation

What could be done to make more/new people involved in the work of the Alliance

There is a strong agreement in the group that it is important to attract new people with some understanding of the field to take part in the work of the Alliance, and it was discussed how could that best be achieved.

Wendy stressed the importance of being open for initiatives of collaboration, as well as the forming of working groups based on interests of individuals or groups. She also brought forward the idea to have virtual discussions on specific topics where more people could be involved.

Nicolas mentioned that it is important to approach newcomers in a way that encourage them to get involved.  

Achim expressed the importance of talking to people.

He also proposed that a policy for the topic could developed and reflected in a document at a lower level than the bylaws.

Balance between openness and regulations

Hilde expressed that while it is important to be open to people and ideas, it is crucial to get people motivated to take part in the work on prioritized tasks within the Alliance.

While everyone agreed openness is important Ron pointed out that it is important to find a balance between openness and regularity as disagreement on direction and strategy within the Alliance may occur.

Status: Needs further work.Develop a policy for this?

2)  Make a plan for moving forward with the work

A summary of where we are is needed.

Ingo proposed to focus on where there is consensus in the group when moving forward.

The group is approaching agreement on the following:

  • That a smaller group is needed.

  • How voting should take place (who should vote needs, however, some further clarification – see above).

  • The purpose of the group as oversight, providing directions for further work and setting up/facilitating for working groups.

Clarification of terms, for example what ‘scientific’ means, is also needed in order to verify where agreement or disagreement is true or false.

Hilde will write up minutes/notes from the meeting (this document). Ingo will provide a summary on where we are based on the notes and will make comments regarding alternatives for the open questions.

Next meeting Monday March 23rd.

...