Re: Publically viewable resolutions and increasing the visibility of board activity

No-one seemse to have commented on this, so:

Draft resolution 2007-01-16.iwj.1. This is pursuant to MJ Ray's
"membership communication" item and should probably be treated as a
proposed amendment to that part of MJ Ray's proposal:

1. SPI board members would like to be fully prepared and briefed by
the time of the meeting, both to improve the quality of
decisionmaking and to improve the efficiency of the meeting itself.

2. SPI members should be given reasonable notice of what business is
to be transacted at board meetings, so that the membership can
participate most fully in the discussion, and arrange to attend
meetings which deal with subjects in which they have particular
interest.

3. It is good practice to set a deadline for submission of new
business, and to list the business to be conducted in meeting
announcements.

4. The SPI Secretary has already made progress towards improving the
mechanics of SPI Board meetings, in particular by establishing
formal standards for proposing business for the meeting.

5. The SPI Secretary is requested to incorporate into those formal
standards a timetable resembling this one:

by T-10 days but not before T-14 days:
Announcement giving time and place of meeting and
instructions for getting items onto the agenda.
T-7 days: Latest non-emergency agenda item submission deadline,
to be submitted in accordance with other instructions
from the Secretary.
Agenda items which are intended to result in a board
decision (ie nearly all of them) should come with a
draft resolution text to be considered.
by T-5 days: Meeting reminder announcement, sent by email,
containing complete list of non-emergency business to
be conducted (NB, _containing_ not _linking to_).

where T is the time of any particular board meeting.

6. For emergency agenda items, or any items not submitted in the proper
manner or time, which a board member feels should be considered
despite the irregularity, the board will first vote whether to
treat it as an urgent item and deal with it straight away; failing
that it will be deferred for the next meeting.

Ian.