RE: [legalxml-courtfiling] Apologies and follow-up to Jan 6th 2004 conference call

["jmessing" <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

This email comments on the following (edited) exchange between Diane Lewis and Jim Cabral.

<diane lewis>	Suggest:  separate initiative either as part of the Court Filing TC or through a proposal to the LegalXML section to create a separate TC for Electronic Preparation Provider spec development??
....
>	Shouldn't an "off-spring" of Blue be a TC or a Sub TC under Court Filing that constructs an XML compliant syntax for representing court filing documents authored by Court customers (e.g. attorneys)?   Is there a need from such a specification?
>	
>	Decision for TC members to entertain:  Is this type of standard/specification development of value to the legal/justice community?  If so, where does it belong:   OASIS Legal XML or OASIS e-government, or a different effort similar which could be defined along the lines of the Education TC purpose statement ?
>	The purpose of the OASIS Education XML TC is to represent international pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade (PK12) interests by developing XML requirements documentation for shared extensible user profiles, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and thesauri, and other needed specifications.
</diane lewis>

<jim cabral>	To me, these questions seem to be more appropriate for the LegalXML Steering Committe to decide rather than for the TC.  Unfortunately, the Steering Committee has not provided sufficient direction to date in clarifying the relationships between the TCs in the Member Section.  It is something that I, and I believe other Steering Committee members are hoping to resolve once the committee is fully constituted, hopefully by the end of this month.
</jim cabral>
>	

I think Jim's response to Diane misconceives the nature of a steering committee within the OASIS structure. OASIS is a "bottom-up" structure where the TC's are the basic units that govern the work of the organization and the rest of the organization in theory exists to support the TC's. If an Electronic Preparation Provider TC is thought to be useful, then three or more OASIS members are empowered to draft a charter and propose it as a TC. If the CourtFiling TC believes it proper to create a subcommittee for this purpose or any other purpose related to its charter, then it is authorized to do so as a TC. The Steering Committee's role is to review and approve or disapprove a newly proposed TC Charter.

I was a member of the joint security steering committee of OASIS. From what Karl and others explained at that time, a steering committee represents a grouping of TC's. It exists to help the member TC's achieve their respective goals, largely in response to common concerns and requests of the TC's presented to the steering committee. The type of "leadership" which has been casually invoked as a criticism of the current Steering Committee of LegalXML-OASIS in the CourtFiling TC discussions is not suited to the structure that OASIS has created, although it might have been appropriate to the Board of Directors of LegalXML, which was a "top-down" structure, as it existed prior to the merger with OASIS.

The LegalXML-OASIS Steering Committee has decided in its discretion to await its full complement of members before taking substantive decisions affecting the organization. If this is not to the liking of the CourtFiling TC then perhaps Roger Winters can advise the Steering Committee accordingly and we can take a different course.

If the CourtFiling TC has proposals to make to the Steering Committee, then I invite the TC thought its representative to do so, directly and forthrightly, rather than by way of innuendo directed to the CourtFiling TC membership about the Steering Committee's presumed failure to meet its responsibilities, which is unfair to the newly constituted and hard-working volunteer Steering Committee members.

Best regards and happy new year to all.

John Messing