Gathering Views On By-laws - Purpose

Purpose	Contribute to the substantive content of DDI standards and semantic products and approve major version revisions.	Evaluate technical proposals through the Alliance standards review process.	Undertake research and testing concerning proposals for DDI standards and semantic products.	Develop and promulgate best practices for use of DDI standards and semantic products.	Assess progress and barriers to progress.	Suggest future directions and activities for the Alliance.	Comments
Jon Johnson	Agree	Agree	Disagree - should be working group of domain experts, so canvass opinion	Disagree - should be working group of domain experts, promulgate YES, develop - No	Agree	Agree	SB could commission research and testing
Wendy Thomas	Agree	Agree	A certain level of testing takes place during the development process of DDI products. In this sense it is the role of the working group but they should be able to pull experts from the community.	Disagree - for reasons Jon noted. Proposing best practices for vetting by domain experts. Definitely promulgation through publication and training,	Agree	Agree - in one sense this is also achieved by filing issues on current products and proposing new working group. We vote with our feet on this. If there is interest among a group of members general (non-monetary support) should be provided and content developed and vetted according to the standard process.
Ingo Barkow	SB should specify requirements on a meta level. Scientists are not technical experts. Sign off has to be prepared as an executive summary. No scientist will understand the technical specification in RDF or XSD and thus is clueless what he or she signs off.	Again, this has to be high level or the SB has to put a committee in place.	Unlikely - the scientist with the SB will most likely use a tool to use the standard.	Nope. Technical level will not be high enough for these tasks.	Agree	Agree
Jared Lyle	Agree. (I agree with all purposes/columns listed here, but feel the implementation details need to be clarified.)	Agree	Agree	Agree	Agree	Agree	Agree
Joachim Wackerow	I agree with all purposes/columns listed here. See the note in the comment column for clarification.						The SB is a level between the Executive Board (responsible for the strategic plan and for the budget) and the working groups (including the standing working group Technical Committee). The SB has the task to guide all the described purposes and to provide a frame around them. The working groups work on the details of specific purposes. The SB should make a comprehensive plan along the strategic plan. This plan should provide a frame for all the work in the working groups. This plan can be on the one hand a high-level working plan and on the other hand a plan for exploring new areas and/or partnering with new people/groups. The general ideas of this are already described in the bylaws. Maybe some more clarification and details would make it more useful. An elected Acting Committee with a clear role in the structure of the DDI Alliance could be a good basis. This would not change the Bylaws in the core. The amendment of the bylaws can only provide a better frame for this. As background: there are a couple of issues which we experience for a long time: It is not clear how the current SB could be active beyond the annual meeting. An Acting Committee could provide a better platform for achieving the goals described above. The EB didn’t provide a strategic plan since 2017. The SB Acting Committee could work with the EB on a strategic plan. The TC filled the gap between the EB and the working groups since many years (basically since the first draft of DDI Lifecycle). This made sense for an intermediate period. But the Breckenhill already pointed out that this should be changed. Only committees / working groups (formal ones or informal ones) with engaged participants can have an impact. A change in the bylaws is only one step. The involvement of additional, new, and younger people is crucial.
Hilde Orten	I agree with all purposes/columns listed here						I agree with Achim’s comments
Jane Fry	agree	agree	disagree for same reasons as Jon	disagree for same reasons	agree	agree	agree with Achim’s comments - very well thought out - especially the last one.
Ron Nakao	I agree with all current Bylaw SB Purposes. Re: voting to approve major revisions, the Designated Member Representative will be designated by the Member Organization. For many MOs this may be one person, but it may be more. (See VI.B.1.a-b)	Agree	Agree. SB can form Working Groups that can include outside domain experts. (See VII.B.7 and II.Working Groups)	Agree. SB can pursue both objectives, if it wishes. Again, Working Groups can be formed by SB that include outside domain experts. (See VII.B.7 and II.Working Groups)	Agree	Agree	ByLaws were revised to address the governance problems experienced by the Alliance at the time as recommended by the Breckenhill Report (July 2011). The Executive Board replaced the Steering Committee, which was not functioning, and it placed the overall governance of the Alliance in an elected Board. The Scientific Board was to provide leadership/governance for the technical/scientific/DDI specification, which had been in the TIC and various working groups, The goal was to establish an organizational division of labor within the Alliance that would allow technical/scientific/domain expertise to populate the Scientific Board functions. I believe the underlying problem is not so much the ByLaws, but the lack of people to populate the Scientific Board. If the establishment of an elected Acting Committee will better lead and catalyze the growth of a more-populated and functioning Scientific Board, then I support its creation.