ACTION-43 and Issue-145: references to W3C Chair and Chief Operating Officer

I took an action (ACTION-43) to find the assignments of responsibilities to the W3C Chair and Chief Operating Officer (COO) and suggest how they should be handled. (The title on the action is misleading; the action is aimed at resolving Issue-145.) Those assignments are below and these are followed by the suggested actions to be taken (The responsibilities assigned to the Director are documented in
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Oct/0181.html )

2.1.3.2 Advisory Committee Meetings
Paragraph 1, Second sentence: "The Team appoints the Chair of these meetings (generally the W3C Chair<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#def-W3CChair>or Chief Operating Officer<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#def-COO>). At each Advisory Committee meeting,"
2.2 The W3C Team
Paragraph 2, First sentence, "The Team is led by the Director, W3C Chair, and Chief Operating Officer."
Paragraph 4, First sentence, "The W3C Chair leads Member relations, and liaisons<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#Liaisons> with other organizations, governments, and the public."
Paragraph 5, First sentence, "The Chief Operating Officer (COO) leads the operation of W3C as an organization: a collection of people, Host institutions<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#hosts>, and processes.
2.3.1 Advisory Board Participation
Paragraph 1, Second sentence, "The Team appoints the Chair of the Advisory Board<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#AB>, who is generally the W3C Chair<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#def-W3CChair>."
3.3 Consensus
Paragraph 1, Final sentence, "The Director, W3C Chair, and COO have the role of assessing consensus within the Advisory Committee."
Suggested actions.
Chaals [1] suggested that the first paragraph of 2.2 should be changed to,
"The Team consists of the Director, CEO, W3C paid staff, interns, and W3C Fellows (see the W3C Fellows Program<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Recruitment/Fellows> [PUB32<https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/AB/raw-file/default/cover.html#ref-fellows>]). The Director MAY delegate responsibility (generally to other individuals in the Team) for any of his roles described in this document."
Based on the above survey, I would suggest it read,
"The Team consists of the Director, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), W3C paid staff, interns, and W3C Fellows (see the W3C Fellows Program<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Recruitment/Fellows> [PUB32<https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/AB/raw-file/default/cover.html#ref-fellows>]). The Director and CEO MAY delegate their responsibilities (generally to other individuals in the Team) for any of their roles described in this document."
Note: There are responsibilities assigned to the W3C Chair and COO that should be transferred to the CEO with this process revision. These are:

1.      The Team appoints the Chair of the Advisory Board<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#AB>, who is generally the W3C Chair (change to CEO)

2.      The Team appoints the Chair of these [the AC] meetings (generally the W3C Chair<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#def-W3CChair> or Chief Operating Officer) (change to CEO)

3.      The Director, W3C Chair, and COO have the role of assessing consensus within the Advisory Committee.(change "W3C Chair and COO" to "CEO"

[Since the CEO is added, above, to the individuals that can delegate their responsibilities, 1. and 2., above, could be re-worded to remove that "is generally" because it is strictly redundant with delegation.]

And, the prior Team description assigned separate leadership roles to the W3C Chair and COO:

*       W3C Chair: leads Member relations, and liaisons<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#Liaisons> with other organizations, governments, and the public.

*       COO: leads the operation of W3C as an organization: a collection of people, Host institutions<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#hosts>, and processes.

As originally envisioned when these roles were split, there would have been two separate people, one for each role. This was because the prior W3C Chair saw the job as needing two people. This never happened due to budgetary constraints. With the change to a single CEO, these split roles are now combined in one person (by his choice). There is, therefore, little need to list separate responsibilities for the CEO role, but it would seem to make sense to give the CEO formal responsibility for at least one of these topics in the section where the topic is defined.

Paragraph 2 of section 10 Liaisons says,

"All liaisons MUST be coordinated by the Team due to requirements for public communication; patent, copyright, and other IPR policies; confidentiality agreements; and mutual membership agreements."

To implement the statement of bullet one above, this could change to,

"All liaisons MUST be coordinated by the Team under the leadership of the CEO due to requirements for public communication; patent, copyright, and other IPR policies; confidentiality agreements; and mutual membership agreements."

Steve Zilles
Chair, Process Document Task Force

Received on Monday, 1 December 2014 03:24:01 UTC