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Subject: Current status of the Process Advisory Committee
Dear OASIS Board, Your Process Advisory Committee wishes you to know the following. 1. We are continuing to discuss a set of patches to the current OASIS TC process. At this point we are about halfway through the issues list; see meeting minutes below. Our next meeting is scheduled for June 27, and we hope to have addressed most of the outstanding issues by the end of that meeting. 2. In any case, we expect to report all of our recommendations to the board before the board meeting scheduled for 2 August 2001, and we hope that you will see fit to act on our recommendations at that time. 3. As previously noted, we intend to dissolve the PAC following the current round of amendments to the existing process so that the board can create a new process committee to design a new set of procedures specifically designed to govern technical activities formally sponsored by the board. 4. Before we go out of existence, however, we would like to request a special meeting of the PAC and the board so that we can explain the current TC process and present the plan arrived at by the PAC and the TAC regarding the direction to be taken in further development of the process. We would like to propose a phone conference from 11 a.m. from 1 p.m. California time 22 August 2001 for this meeting and humbly request the board to advise us whether this date and time will be convenient for such a discussion. Sincerely, Jon Bosak Chair, OASIS Process Advisory Committee &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& MINUTES OF THE OASIS PROCESS ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING 2001.06.13 Voting Members Present Karl Best Jon Bosak (chair) Robin Cover Eduardo Gutentag Ken Holman Debbie Lapeyre Tommie Usdin Lauren Wood Proceedings Debbie Lapeyre was unable to act as secretary this meeting, so the chair took notes and has prepared these minutes. We proceeded with the plan decided on in meetings held 2001.04.18 and 2001.05.30 to consider a number of issues related to the existing OASIS TC process before ending this phase of the process development work. In this meeting, we got about half way through an issues list provided by Karl Best. In the summary below, the numbers refer to the issue numbers in Karl's list. We will meet again on Wednesday, 2001.06.27, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. California time to consider the remaining issues. In addition to the recommendations listed below, the PAC hereby requests the OASIS board of directors (1) to note that the PAC intends to submit all of our proposed amendations to the current OASIS TC process for consideration by the board at the board meeting scheduled for 2 August 2001, and (2) to schedule a special meeting or conference call after formation of the new board following the annual board elections in order that the PAC may present the plan arrived at between the PAC and the TAC regarding the direction to be taken in further development of the OASIS technical committee process. We propose a phone conference from 11 a.m. from 1 p.m. California time 22 August 2001 for this meeting. Jon ################################################################## DISPOSITION OF ISSUES, 2001.06.13 ################################################################## Issue 1a: Identification of related work at time of TC Formation Discussion: We cannot require proposers of TCs to know of the existence of similar initiatives. Resolution: We assume that at some point OASIS will provide informal, non-normative guidelines for the conduct of TCs, and we agree that those guidelines should say that a TC's web presence should include the identification of similar or related activities where such activities are known to the participants. Editorial note: Here, as elsewhere, the process assumes that public oversight of the process will reveal the existence of competing or overlapping efforts. ################################################################## Issue 1b: Conformance testing Resolution: No action needed here. ################################################################## Issue 2: Changes to TC charters after formation Discussion: There are no TC charters per se. The process says that a submission for the creation of a TC must contain these two items, among others: - Statement of purpose, which must be germane to the mission of OASIS. - List of deliverables, with projected dates. - The meeting schedule for the year following the formation of the TC, or until the projected date of the final deliverable, whichever comes first. The section covering changes to these items reads as follows: 12. TC Revision A TC can clarify its statement of purpose; revise its deliverables; and change its meeting schedule. Such changes shall be reported on the TC announcement list, and any revisable publicly visible description (e.g., Web page) promulgated by the TC shall be updated to reflect such changes. The fact we have to deal with is that TCs are making changes as authorized in Section 12 quoted above without making the required announcements. Resolution: Karl should notify groups that have been making changes to their purpose or deliverables under Section 12 that they need to submit notice of such changes to Karl for publication on the TC announcement list. ################################################################## Issue 3: Require founding members of a TC to come from different companies. Discussion: This was exhaustively considered when we designed the process. There are basically two ways to regard the members of TCs: as company representatives or as individual experts. The OASIS TC process follows ISO and many other formal standards bodies in considering the participants of technical committees to be individual experts rather than representatives of particular organizations. The process relies upon this basic principle in handling logistical problems, such as the apparatus that would otherwise be required to certify particular people as representatives of different companies and to designate alternates. It also handles the case where someone switches jobs; they can almost always deal with this by securing an individual membership at $250, which due to the fact that there is no company affiliation is enough to handle almost all employment transition problems. See more on this part under Issue 6. Resolution: No action needed. ################################################################## Issue 4: Must be a PEOTCP at time of notice of intent to join TC Discussion: We agree with Karl: This is to solve an administrative problem: people are signing up for the TC when they are not yet members; additional time is required for additional tracking to make sure that they obtain OASIS membership before the first meeting. The current language does not promote scalability. Resolution: We recommend that the first paragraph of Article 14 Section 4 be amended to add "and must be eligible for TC participation at the time they register." after "their intention to attend the meeting." Before amendment: 4. First Meeting of a TC The first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a telephone meeting and no less than 45 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a face-to-face meeting. Persons intending to participate in the first meeting must register to attend no later than 15 days prior to the event by notifying the person named as chair of the new TC of their intention to attend the meeting. Every PEOTCP present at the first meeting of a TC shall be initially a voting member of the TC. After amendment: 4. First Meeting of a TC The first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a telephone meeting and no less than 45 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a face-to-face meeting. Persons intending to participate in the first meeting must register to attend no later than 15 days prior to the event by notifying the person named as chair of the new TC of their intention to attend the meeting and must be eligible for TC participation at the time they register. Every PEOTCP present at the first meeting of a TC shall be initially a voting member of the TC. ################################################################## Issue 5. Bug in the two-out-of-three rule The current language (which, it should be remembered, was taken from ANSI), reads: a. A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC upon failure to attend two out of every three successive meetings of the TC. Membership shall be terminated if the member fails to attend the next meeting following transmittal of the warning. For a description of the problem, see Eve's message to this list under the heading "Delicate subject: changing the attendance requirements" and dated Thu, 15 Feb 2001 15:40:16 -0500: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/workprocess/200102/msg00002.html Discussion: Mechanically, it's not the intent of the rule that's the problem, it's the warning mechanism. Warnings shouldn't reset the clock. But beyond the mechanics is the more subtle management problem of how a chair handles one of two very different cases. Sometimes the problem is that a few very useful members are also useful members of other committees and simply cannot attend all of the meetings. In this case, a chair needs to be able to support the continuing participation of such members. But in some other cases, the problem is that a person who wishes to be perceived as a member is not, in fact, willing to contribute to the work. The TC process is specifically designed to remove persons in the second category from voting membership in the TC. The trick is how to enable the completely automatic removal of a useless member while permitting the chair (with the tacit consent of the TC) to allow a useful member to break the rule occasionally. Resolution: We recommend that the first paragraph of Article 14 Section 6 be amended as follows: 1. Insert "their first" into the first sentence of Section 6 so that it reads: a. A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC upon their first failure to attend two out of every three successive meetings of the TC. 2. Add "or if the member consistently fails to attend two out of every three meetings" to the second sentence of the same paragraph so that it reads: Membership shall be terminated if the member fails to attend the next meeting following transmittal of the warning or if the member consistently fails to attend two out of every three meetings. ################################################################## Issue 6: Retention of membership upon change of employment Discussion: Since TC members are individual experts whose company affiliation is irrelevant to their membership in the TC, most cases of this kind can be handled very straightforwardly if the member obtains an individual membership ($250) before leaving an OASIS member employer. But if the member has already accepted employment with another OASIS organization, this will be a waste of money. And there is the increasingly frequent case where a member's employment ceases without notice. We need to patch over the crack here with a grace period. Resolution: We recommend that Article 14 Section 5 of the TC process be amended by adding this new paragraph at the end of the section: Persons who lose PEOTCP status for reasons including, but not limited to, change of employment, shall have a further 14 days of TC membership in which to request a leave of absence or re-establish eligibility. ################################################################## Issue 7: Participation of prospective members as observers Background: The first paragraph of Art. 14 Section 5 says: 5. TC Membership A PEOTCP shall become a prospective member of an existing TC by sending by mail notice of intention to participate to the chair of the TC. Prospective membership shall begin seven days after this notice is received. A prospective member may attend face-to-face meetings as an observer. A prospective member may attend phone meetings as an observer at the discretion of the chair. The suggestion is: In section 5 add the requirement that a prospective TC member participate in the TC as an observer according to the existing "two out of three" attendance rules during the probationary period. This would make sure that the new member is committed and educated before being allowed to vote. Discussion: Everyone agrees that ideally it would be best to require prospective members (who are serving out the 60 days or two meetings before they can become members of a particular TC after it's been started) to come up to speed somehow on the committee into the midst of whose deliberations they are entering. But when we designed the process, we discovered that there are several serious problems with this idea: 1. The TC may be large already, and the prospective member may not be such as the chair judges likely to actually participate after the waiting period. 2. Under the basic rule governing the rights of an assembly with regard to observers, prospective members, as observers, are always subject to removal from the meeting if the members decide to meet in executive session. While certainly not impossible to handle, the situations that could arise from this in the case of prospective members attending as observers might be awkward. 3. Taking away the ability of the chair to exclude prospective members from phone meetings could prove either administratively unmanageable for the chair or prohibitively expensive for the company sponsoring the calls in the case where a large number of members suddenly decided that they wanted to be in on the call. At the very least, sponsors should have advance notice of a new requirement that they support a stampede of new members. 4. There is nothing in the existing process that prevents prospective members from reading the archives and coming up to speed that way. Resolution: No action needed. ################################################################## Issue 8: Invited experts Discussion: Nonvoting invited experts are already allowed by the native ability of any deliberative body to invite observers. (Editorial note: And in my opinion, there's nothing to prevent any committee from setting up a special category of observers that they agree to call "invited experts" and adopting this as a standing rule. In fact, I proposed a mechanism for an "invited observer" status to be adopted by a TC in the CBL proposal I submitted in February of this year.) So the only reason we might want to change the process is to allow certain people to become voting members of a TC without requiring them or their organizations to pay OASIS dues. Since the TC process (definition of a PEOTCP, Art. 14 Sect. 1) already allows the board to designate any person or group as eligible to participate without paying dues, the only effective change here would allow a TC to extend individual OASIS membership on an ad-hoc basis. We don't think TCs should be allowed to do this. Resolution: The guidelines (yet to be written) should point to the section in Robert's on "Executive Session" and the rules there pertaining to observers. ################################################################## Issue 9: TCs with too few members Discussion: There's nothing in Robert's to prevent a committee from consisting of just one or two people (and indeed, such a committee can be a very useful thing, allowing an issue, for example, to be handled by a Motion to Commit and then designating just one trusted person, as chair and only member of the committee, to research something and come back with a recommendation). But while we think that this is fine for subcommittees of a TC, we don't like the idea of an OASIS Technical Committee itself having fewer members than the three we require to start it in the first place. The least disruptive way we can think of to effect this change is to prevent a group that falls below three members from conducting business. The tactic adopted below utilizes the annual garbage collection of dead groups that's in the existing process. Resolution: We recommend that Art. 14 Section 11 of the TC process be amended by adding a third paragraph, so that the section in its entirety reads as follows: 11. TC Meetings "TC meeting" shall be construed to include telephone conferences and video conferences as well as face-to-face meetings. Any TC that fails to conduct at least one meeting during a calendar year shall cease to exist at the beginning of the calendar year immediately following. [new paragraph:] Any TC whose voting membership falls below three members shall cease to exist. ################################################################## Issue 10: Public subscription to discussion lists Discussion: the current TC process allows for the formation of short-term "discussion lists" (maximum life 90 days) for the purpose of discussing the formation of a TC. Such discussion lists are visible to the general public. The question is whether they should also be publicly subscribable. While the advisability of extending what is essentially a member benefit to nonmembers is debatable, the fact that the current list machinery will not support the automatic exclusion of non-PEOTCPs gives this question real weight: it means that any list that's not subscribable by everyone requires new members to be approved manually by the chair or by OASIS administration. There is nothing we can do about this overhead in the case of TC lists, but we can at least step around this in the case of discussion lists by just allowing public subscription. While the motivation here is mainly practical (our recommendation can be effected by simply setting a switch in the mail server interface), allowing the public to subscribe could also have the advantage of promoting new OASIS memberships among persons who become engaged in the initial discussion phase and want to follow it into TC work. Resolution: We recommend that the first paragraph of Art. 14 Section 2 be amended to add the words "publicly subscribable" before "discussion list." Before amendment: 2. TC Discussion Lists Any group of at least three PEOTCPs shall be authorized to begin a discussion list for the purpose of forming a TC by submitting to OASIS TC administration the following items: [...] After amendment: 2. TC Discussion Lists Any group of at least three PEOTCPs shall be authorized to begin a publicly subscribable discussion list for the purpose of forming a TC by submitting to OASIS TC administration the following items: [...] (Issues 11-20 will be take up at the PAC meeting scheduled for 2001.06.27.)
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