Motion to Open Governors’ Quarterly On-line Meeting to the Membership

The Issue

Right now, Quarterly Governors' On-line Meetings are " confidential " - they are not open to the public. This is because the CFC Handbook states that they are to be held on the Governors' Discussion Board, which is confidential.

A different option, which was being discussed by the governors, was to have the on-line meeting in a special public discussion forum, like this one, where all could attend. The limitation would be that only the Governors could post. Members/Public could then see the posts/replies/polls, but it would be " public view-only " - the members/public could not post.

To give the governors some indication of whether the membership cares about this at all, I asked .whether members would be interested enough in what the governors were doing at a quarterly meeting, to attend the on-line meeting? The poll question , which was open for 5 days, was:

Poll Options

I would attend a " Public View Only " Governors' On-line Meeting.
Yes
No

The Arguments

Before getting to the results of the poll, it is important to evaluate the pro’s and con’s of this proposal. The following list has been developed ( which I drafted, based on various input ):

PRO's

1. Transparency: The Governors need to be more transparent in their governing, and this is achieved by " public view-only " on-line meetings. This in turn gives the CFC more transparency.

2. Member Interest: This will increase member interest in the affairs of the CFC. It is recognized that many CFC members are rather apolitical, and would likely not come to an open meeting. But we have seen from the members’ CFC Chess Chat Forum, that there are at least 100 what we might term “ hardcore CFC supporters “ , who monitor the board regularly, and are willing to wade through not all that exciting policy posts, and comment on them. If we could generate even more interest in this group, CFC might increase its pool of volunteers, including for non-executive officer volunteer positions, and perhaps even candidates for CFC governorship.

3. Confidentiality Issues: The meeting can always be adjourned to a private forum temporarily if " confidential " matters arise.

4. Governor Activity Monitoring: Though posting of summaries gives some information on the meeting, they are very truncated, and don't reveal which governors took what positions. Members may be interested in how their own local governors contributed. Public view-only meetings allow the members to measure their local governor activity.

5. AGM: the AGM, to which the quarterly non-AGM governors’ on-line meetings are quite similar, is open to the public. So the quarterly on-line meetings should be too.

CON's

1. Decrease in quality of meeting: Governors may become more reticent than they already are to give opinions or take public positions. This decreases the quality of governance.

2. Parallel " Out of Context " Discussions : Because of copying/pasting, governor comments can be taken out of context and posted on other discussion boards, where CFC may get slagged, and it will be unable to respond. Or if it can respond, it will require some coordination of response, which will take energy away from the meeting.

3. Confidentiality: The issue of confidentiality could be raised on numerous occasions. Arguments will have to be made each time, and this will take valuable time away from the meeting. As well, confidential information could inadvertently be disclosed BEFORE the issue of going " in camera " gets raised, and this information could then be posted elsewhere.

4. Summaries - The fact that the procedures state that " minutes " ( interpreted as " summaries " ) are to be posted on the CFC website almost immediately after the meeting, meets the test of having a " public " component to the meeting.

So, in my view, the arguments on both sides are somewhat balanced, and which side you are on depends what weight you give to various factors. What benefits do you see, as weighed against possible risks?

View of the Governors

I also asked the governors to vote on whether they would agree to open the meetings to the public. But the matters raised on the Governors’ Discussion Board are confidential, and so at this point, I don’t think I can reveal the results of the vote. But I think I can say that the governors are fairly divided.

View of the Members/Public

As I noted above, I posted for 5 days on the members’ CFC Chat Forum, the question of whether they would attend a meeting if it was open on a “ public view-only “ basis. I didn’t just want a theoretical answer that anyone could give, that the meeting should be open. I wanted to know what would actually happen if we opened the meetings. The voting was light – only 10 of you voted.. There are usually over the course of this length of time, in my experience, about 100 members viewing ( the number of views was over 200, but this is because there were multiple reply posts, and therefore duplicate views ). In polls, I was advised by one member, Kevin Pacey, that a 10% response was considered adequate to use the poll. On these 2 assumptions, 10% of those present voted. But most importantly, they were almost unanimous that they would attend. There was only one “ No “ vote - that they would not attend. So, using the rule of thumb for normal voting percentages re response, we can say that the members by a vast majority, want the meeting open – they will attend in a significant, though likely minority, number.

Conclusion

This is a very close call, but it seems the weight of opinion, especially for the membership, is in favour of opening the meeting. I think the governors have to give this topic serious discussion, and that can best be done in the context of a motion.

Action

I will therefore draft and file a motion specifically amending the relevant sections of the Meeting Procedures in the CFC Handbook, to have the meeting in a Special Public Forum, with the limitation that only governors will be able to post, and the public will have “ view-only “ status. The rules will accommodate “ confidentiality “, by allowing the Chair to direct, after taking a vote of the governors’ present, whether to adjourn the meeting to the Governors’ Discussion Board for the purpose of dealing with the “ confidential “ matter. Thereafter the meeting will resume in the public forum.

Timing

I think this topic is controversial, and should not be dealt with in a great rush in an e-mail vote by the governors, where there is no real debate between them. This matter requires good interactive dialogue between the governors, such as will take place at the Winter Quarterly ( Jan. 2011 ) Governors’ On-line Meeting. I see no reason to rush this decision – there is no great urgency that it be in place for the Winter meeting. Summaries of the meetings are posted on the CFC website, so the public does have now some access to the proceedings. We can continue to have the Winter meeting “ confidential “, but in it we will then have a full governor debate, where they can consider your poll voting on this issue.

I will therefore ask that my motion go onto the agenda for the Winter meeting.

Once the Winter Meeting agenda is posted, and it is confirmed that the motion is on the agenda, I will suggest you contact your local CFC Governor, and the governors-at-large you know, to urge them to vote in favour of the motion.

Thanks to those who took the time to express their opinion in the members’ poll on this.

Bob