RE: [board-agenda] Proposed Changes to the Member Section Policy

["Patrick Gannon" <pgannon@warningsystems.com>]

Jeff,

Thanks for all the hard work of the Process Committee and staff who
carefully considered these changes to the MS Policy.

In your email below you state the proposed actions to include "pending
asking for and receiving feedback from chairs".  I would agree that the
Member Section Steering Committee Chair is the appropriate person to provide
the summary feedback, but that each MS Steering Committee should be sent the
final draft MS Policy with request that they review and the Chair provide
feedback.  

All of the proposed changes in this revision of the MS Policy appear
appropriate.  However, in the new section 3.3 Modifications to the Member
Section RoP is not aligned with the relative duties within a MS.  Line 179
states "Approval of the proposal shall require a Member Section Special
Majority Vote."

I suggest that this should reference the Steering Committee vote - not a
MS-wide vote.  So inserting "Steering Committee" before "Special Majority
Vote" would fix this.

The reason goes to the relative responsibilities.  See lines 203-204 in
Section 3.6 Activities of a Member Section Steering Committee.  

"The following are activities of the Member Section Steering Committee:
	a) Must maintain a Rules of Procedure (ROP) document for the Member
Section (as defined in 203 Section 3.2, "Formation of a Member Section")."

Maintaining the ROP would include proposing revisions to that MS's ROP.  In
the past, it has been the MS StC that has decided and put forward to the
OASIS Board any MS ROP revisions.  

Whereas in section 3.7 Activities of the Member Section Members, the MS
Members elect the StC and provide feedback to the StC.  They are not
responsible to maintain (revise) the ROP. 

Thus, the new proposed section 3.3 appropriately has a 30-day email
discussion among the MS Members, giving them the opportunity to provide
feedback to the StC.  However, it would be in line with the defined
responsibilities of the StC to have the MS ROP modification Special Majority
Vote conducted by the Steering Committee.  This will also be easier for the
MS Admin person to get a quorum vote within the MS StC, than trying to get a
quorum of votes from the entire ME Qualified Electors.


Respectfully submitted,

Patrick Gannon



-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Mischkinsky [mailto:jeff.mischkinsky@oracle.com] 
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2010 11:21 AM
To: board-agenda@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [board-agenda] Proposed Changes to the Member Section Policy

Hi,

  The Process Committee has been working on improving the Member Section
Policy mostly to clarify some procedures, answer some questions that have
come up, and to make various processes identical (or at least very similar)
to the TC Process Policy.

We've reached a point where we think we are done (with this iteration).

The Process Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the board adopt
these changes pending asking for and receiving feedback from chairs.

  Our plan is to have this on the Agenda for the Napa as an A Item, and
hopefully vote to approve it. If there are more issues/questions raised than
the Board feels comfortable dealing with, then we hope to come back at the
next teleconference.

  Here are the highlights:

1. Define a better process for how ROPs are created making sure that OASIS
primaries are in the loop. (Note: there is no required member review/discuss
step because in general creation of Member Section is more of an
initiative/delicate negotiation between a few companies and the board, often
involving OASIS in effect acquiring another organization.

2. Define a better process for how ROPs can be modified.

3. Create the formal staff role of MS Administrator, analogous to TC
process.

4. Define an appeals process, analogous to TC process.

5. Define rules for a Member Section Special Majority vote


Please send comments to Mary and myself.

cheers,
jeff