PAC: Rough language for CT 1-7

[Jon Bosak <bosak@boethius.eng.sun.com>]

To: workprocess@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: PAC: Rough language for CT 1-7

This isn't proposed language yet; I'm just trying to sum up where
I think we got to with this set of issues in our meeting of
2000.04.27.

We started with this list:

   C. TECHNICAL COMMITTEE TAXONOMY

      CT 1. Technical specification committees

      CT 2. Maintenance committees

      CT 3. Joint subcommittees

      CT 4. Charter committees

      CT 5. Industry harmonization committees

      CT 6. Coordination committees 

      CT 7. Translation committees

All of these are varieties of "technical committees" and are
governed by default by the generic rules for TCs that we have been
formulating.  The question is, how much must be added to the
generic TC rules in each case to provide procedures appropriate to
the governance of each variety of TC?

Much of our discussion of this set of issues consisted of
considering just what basic structural differences actually obtain
here -- for example, whether the difference between a translation
committee and a technical specification committee is a basic
difference in committee structure or merely a difference in some
attribute such as the purpose or deliverable of each committee.

We fairly quickly came to the determination that there are
structurally only two kinds of TCs on our list: those whose
purpose is to provide coordination between other committees (i.e.,
joint subcommittees and coordination committees) and all the rest.
Thus, the difference between an ordinary technical specification
TC and a maintenance TC, charter TC, harmonization TC, or
translation TC is a difference in initialization parameters
(purpose, deliverables, meeting schedule, membership, leadership)
rather than a difference in basic structure or governance.

We thought for a while about the difference in Robert's between
special (or ad hoc) committees and standing committees.  The
procedural differences between a standing committee and a special
committee are that a standing committee has to report back to its
creating body at least annually, that members of the standing
committee are typically elected or reappointed periodically, and
that a standing committee never formally "rises" or ceases to
exist on its own but rather times out at the end of each renewal
period.

We want to recognize the difference between a committee formed to
deliver something and a committee formed to carry out a continuing
activity, but it seems to us that the Robert's framework is not in
this respect appropriate in its details for TCs that are not
responsible to any higher authority and cannot depend on such an
authority to periodically recertify a TC's work and membership.

After some discussion, our conclusion was that the traditional
distinction between special and standing committees is, in the
context of OASIS TCs, simply another distinction in a committee's
initialization parameters: a "special committee" is one that is
created to deliver something, whereas a "standing committee" is
one that is created to perform a set of activities on a continuing
basis.  We concluded that it would be enough simply to amend
our earlier decision about initialization criteria (see CS 1,
section 3) so that the item that formerly read "list of
deliverables, with projected dates" would now read "list of
deliverables, with projected dates, or description of activities
to be performed on a continuing basis."

I wasn't as clear as I thought I was on the distinction between
special and standing committees when we discussed this in our
meeting of 2000.04.27.  RROR (1915, section 52) says:

   52. Committees, Special and Standing. It is usual in
   deliberative assemblies, to have all preliminary work in the
   preparation of matter for their action done by means of
   committees. The committee may be either a "standing committee,"
   appointed for a definite time, as a session or a year; or a
   "special [or select] committee," appointed for a special
   purpose; or a "committee of the whole" consisting of the entire
   assembly.

The complete description of committees in our current normative
version of Robert's can be found on pp. 479-490 of the Ninth
edition.  (Apparently the term "ad hoc" for a special committee is
a later development, because it's indexed in the later version but
not in the earlier one.)

Robert's committee taxonomy is basically as follows:

   1. Boards (etc.)

   2. Ordinary committees

      a. Special (select, ad hoc) committees

      b. Standing committees

      c. Committees of the whole

Our current bylaws specify a third basic type of committee, the
advisory committee.  I believe that what we're doing is adding a
fourth basic type, the TC, in parallel with board, ordinary
committees of the membership, and advisory committees; I don't
think we're adding a fourth kind of ordinary committee in parallel
with special and standing or that the distinction between special
and standing applies directly to TCs, though there is indeed a
difference between a purpose that relates to a specific
deliverable and a purpose that relates to a continuing activity.
The procedure for TCs that we are developing in the PAC replaces
most of the apparatus in Robert's relating to the creation of
ordinary committees, especially relating to their appointment, so
I think our best bet here is to think of what we're doing with TCs
as the establishment of a completely new category of committee,
which we are going to specify in a new article of the bylaws.

In this light, it seems to me that our decision simply to expand
the relevant initialization criterion for TCs to say "list of
deliverables, with projected dates, or description of activities
to be performed on a continuing basis" is, in fact, the correct
one.  But I would urge members of the PAC to review the language
relating to ordinary committees in Robert's to see whether I've
missed something.

Notice that the direction I'm suggesting leaves unchanged all the
provisions of Robert's pertaining to ordinary committees and
therefore lets us apply those default provisions unchanged to both
the creation of committees of the membership (implied by the
current bylaws, though never exercised, as far as we know) and
more importantly to the creation of subcommittees of TCs.  We
will, of course, have to include a clause applying Robert's to
this new category of committees in the new article of the bylaws
describing TCs, just as is done now directly in the bylaws for
rules governing the board and meetings of the membership and
indirectly for the rules governing advisory committees, but I
don't think it's advisable to try to impose the Robert's version
of special and standing committees onto TCs (as opposed to their
subcommittees); I think it's cleaner to consider them their own
kind of thing.

Having boiled all the other categories of technical committees
into the single category of TC, we are now left with the
definition of joint subcommittees and coordination committees.  By
"joint subcommittee" I mean a committee that is created by
appointing subsets of the membership of two or more TCs and
formally constituting them as a committee empowered to discuss a
particular issue and charged with reporting back to the creating
TCs with a recommendation.  (We seem to agree that the TCs that
have created a joint subcommittee are free to accept or reject its
recommendation.)  By "coordination committee" I mean a committee
that is created by appointing subsets of the membership of two or
more TCs and formally constituting them as a committee empowered
to oversee the work of the TCs consenting to be so directed.

We seem to have achieved a conceptual breakthrough in our meeting
of 2000.04.27 with the observation that the difference between a
joint subcommittee and a coordination committee is the same as the
difference between a committee with a specific deliverable and a
committee responsible for a continuing activity.  If we are
correct in thinking that these can be considered attributes of a
single common committee structure, then all we need is a single
entry for Joint Committees (JCs), and the job of specification
comes down to specifying the behavior of TCs and specifying the
behavior of JCs.

The OASIS committee taxonomy would then look something like this:

   1. Board of directors (Article 3)

      a. Executive committee of the board (Article 5 Section 1)

      b. Advisory committees of the board (Article 5 Section 2)

         (i) Subcommittees of advisory committees (RRO per
             Art. 5 Sect. 3 by implication)

   3. Ordinary committees of the membership
      (RRO per Article 13 by implication)

      a. Special (select, ad hoc) committees (RRO)

      b. Standing committees (RRO)

      c. Committees of the whole (RRO)

   4. Technical Committees (new Article of the bylaws)

      a. Ordinary technical committees (TCs, new article)

         (i) Subcommittees of TCs (RRO per the new article)

      b. Joint committees (JCs, new article)

         (i) Subcommittees of JCs (RRO per the new article)

I have taken an action item to write up a proposal for joint
committees, in the process of which it should become clearer
whether this simplification will work.  Note that this action item
is identical to the earlier one I accepted to write up the Motion
to Connect, since the Motion to Connect would perform the same
function in creating a joint committee that the standard Motion to
Commit does in creating an ordinary committee.

It's possible that we may end up concluding that joint committees
are different enough from technical committees to require them to
be broken out as a fifth basic type in parallel with advisory
committees and TCs; we'll see what's easiest when we get there.

Jon