[Chapter-delegates] My comment to the the board re:supporting chapters

[Livingood, Jason]

Sounds like it is time for the advisory committee to develop a consensus view and put forward a proposal for ISOC's consideration. Take advantage of your new organization and the power of having one voice.

JL

On 4/8/16, 5:22 PM, "Chapter-delegates on behalf of Dave Burstein" <chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org<mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org> on behalf of daveb at dslprime.com<mailto:daveb at dslprime.com>> wrote:

Folks

Later today, following up on a discussion at the North American chapters, I'm going to suggest this to the board. Improvements welcome but I'm moving quickly. If you have opinions, I suggest you write board members directly or ask a question in the open, web streamed meeting. I'm happy to share the emails of board members who make them publicly available, which is most.

My suggestion on how to move forward:

First, that ISOC start immediately on a program to allow chapters to decide how to spend, say, 3% of the ISOC budget.

I suggest the first step should be modest, perhaps a $2,000-$10,000 allocation to each active chapter. The guideline would be to spend the money as ISOC is currently spending on chapter support: events, expenses to F2F events, web sites, necessary fees for non-profit status, ...

It should be accompanied by serious but easy to follow rules on accountabilty.  For example, any amount spent above petty cash must be reported on a simple web form within 30 days and posted so others can see where the money is going, Someone independent should check the accuracy of the bank account fairly regularly.

Sure there will be some wastage, but there's some waste in everYthing we do. Modest supervision should keep it under control.

Second, that staff discuss in depth with the relevant chapters any major policy move, before the policy is decided. (Unless it's urgent.) This is the right way to run the organization. It also will lead to better policy choices.

Our staff is skilled but not expert in everything. For example, a top staffer made a forceful policy recommendation that would have resulted in 30-50% less wireless capacity in Kenya. (LTE Carrier Aggregation efficiency takes some study to understand,) We particularly lack detailed knowledge of the networks in other countries. In an ITU filing, we insisted on competition as the solution. The cintext was mostly about bringing broadband to rural regions that have difficulty attracting even a single provider. Competition can be great but doesn't work everywhere.

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Kathy has done an excellent job getting members to speak up. If we are to be a bottom-up, multi-stakeholder, however, we need to get the stakeholders involved in decisionmaking as well.

Everyone, including the board, has been in general agreement on deepening the chapter role. A former board member tells me this has been an issue for over a decade.

TIme to make it so.

Dave Burstein


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