[previous MINUTES] Board of Directors Meeting 2023-11-27

Hello,

as one of its tasks, the current board is looking into decisions and meeting minutes taken in the past that were not yet published according to our statutes.

Given the formatting challenges in Discourse, the public part of minutes from a meeting conducted by the previous board, on 2023-11-27, is now made public on TDF/BoD Meetings/2023 - The Document Foundation Wiki. Possible private parts will be made available to members on the respective mailing list.

Florian

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Hi @floeff , all,

let me comment on this (out of a number of similar posts) - sadly the quality of the minutes posted is terrible. They will only occasionally represent faithfully what was said or actually discussed. I cannot in good conscience approve them (and in fact have not) - which is the primary reason the previous board struggled to have them published in a timely fashion.

See agenda item “2. Status Report, Discuss: Improving boards minuting” in those very minutes, for some background.

I am not happy with the quality of the minutes either, reasons of the situation there are several. We’ve indeed come a long way since our first approach to improve minuting, and I think all these efforts fall into place one by one, and things are much better in the meantime.

However, there is one thing that I find even more challenging: There is a lot of private minutes that have not been published yet.

I think there is a lot of minutes that should be made public, or at least member public (depending on the topic), as mandated by the statutes. However, I am not sure if we had discussed any details of this in the last board.

Personally, I would suggest to make public what does not have a strict need for confidentiality, and make member-public the rest, unless there are some rare items that cannot be shared there as well. I wouldn’t mind to add a note that these are “as is” and didn’t see a sign-off recently.

5 Likes

Hello Florian,

Elected representatives of democratic organizations are expected to be transparent with voters.

I am in favor of the minutes being shared with the community.

Actually, who benefits from keeping the minutes secret?

Best,
Eliane Domingos


Tradução para o Português Brasil

Olá Florian,

Espera-se que os representantes eleitos de organizações democráticas sejam transparentes com os eleitores.

Sou a favor de que as atas sejam compartilhadas com a comunidade.

Na verdade, quem se beneficia com a sigilo das atas?

Att.
Eliane Domingos

6 Likes

I fully support minutes sharing, transparency of actions is an obligation to which we must adhere to in a solid manner.

Decisions made at the foundation level need not be kept hidden, unless there is a strict need for confidentiality, as Florian says.

== Español ==

Apoyo plenamente el hecho de compartir las actas, la transparencia de las acciones es una obligaciĂłn a la que debemos atenernos de forma sĂłlida.

Las decisiones tomadas a nivel de la fundación no tienen por qué mantenerse ocultas, a menos que exista una estricta necesidad de confidencialidad, como dice Florian.

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Yes, agreed with making public minutes which don’t have some essential need for confidentiality.

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I also support making the minutes available, unless, as Florian says, there is a need for confidentiality.

I know that exposing decisions to public scrutiny can be frustrating for a number of reasons, but I think there is more to be gained from making them public than keeping them private.

I also understand that accurate and timely minute-taking is onerous, but it’s a vital function of any organization. If we, as an organization, were deficient in that area before, it is better to publically acknowledge the mistake and make sure that we do better in the future.

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Acredito que para termos uma entidade forte e transparente todas as ATAS devem ser compartilhadas.
Qual o motivo de nĂŁo compartilhar as ATAS, so faz todos nos a pensar que deve ter algo errado, nĂŁo querem que nĂłs membros nĂŁo saibamos de algo.
Vamos liberar as ATAS para que nĂŁo tenhamos suspeitas de algo errado fora feito pelas diretoria anterior.

3 Likes

Translation for English
Hmtsuura wrote:

I believe that to have a strong and transparent organization all MINUTES should be shared.

What is the reason for not sharing the MINUTES, it only makes us all think that there must be something wrong, don’t want us members not to know something.

Let’s release the MINUTES so that we do not have suspicions that something wrong was done by the previous board.

Hi Florian,

I fully support your suggestion to publish also the private minutes so that our community can see the processes that led to decisions.

I also fully trust your expertise, to be confimed by our legal team if you find it necessary, in relation to withholding periods that might be necessary while matters are being resolved.

It’s an overdue action required to improve transparency so thanks for proposing it.

Ciao

Paolo

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Hi Florian,
I’m also in favor of publishing the private part of the minutes that can be published currently. I know this is a lot of work - thanks a lot for that - and actually it’s also part of our pledge. So yes, please go on.

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Another here who demands the minutes to be fully open to members.

Thanks, Florian, for your hard, honest committed work!

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Hi,

I agree with Thorsten here. Transparency is great, but if we publish content that is more confusing than helpful, it will only lead to even more misunderstandings and conflict.

Best Regards,

Bjoern

Seems reasonable to me - as long as:

  • as published - each minute makes it clear with a note that these are potentially substantially inaccurate and/or incomplete (cf. the recent sample correction here).
  • when these are member-public - that they are mailed with CC to those ex board members who have been excluded, to allow clarification as necessary - it seems both fair and less risky for TDF - if false statements are being attributed to them in.

I would also suggest it might be better to start by the current board set an example by publishing their own private minutes and answering trustee questions around them in a timely fashion.

Except for exceptional cases, I see no reason not to make all documents public. Transparency in our organization should be an example, not a matter of discussion.

== Español ==

Salvo casos excepcionales, no veo razĂłn para no hacer publicos todos los documentos. La transparencia en nuestra organizaciĂłn deberĂ­a ser un ejemplo, no asunto de discuciĂłn.

Hi Florian, hi all,

I support the publishing of minutes from the board meetings.
An organization like TDF that is working for the public good (and thus is tax-exempt) should act as transparent as possible.

Thus the private part of the minutes should be made at least available to the TDF members.

If there are no strong (lasting) reasons to not make them publicly available, TDF should let everyone have a look into them. This could help us to get more interaction and feedback with the (not already involved) society. And all interested could gain knowledge about our doings to improve the live of citizens and to overcome the digital divide.

Regards,
Andreas

1 Like

I agree. The ONLY reason why I should think minutes should not be made public is if there is a compelling legal reason for that. Even so, what “legal” reason would there be? That is a question I raise to the BOD. An explanation for us members would help a lot.
For example, I know that there are legal reasons for non-members to not participate in some meetings, as well as, in certain meetings where members cannot participate legally. As a member, it is never (once again) quite clear why certain things cannot be said.
Again, at least an explanation would help. Unfortunately, I have been trying to make sense of a lot that has been said and posted for quite some time now.
Special thanks to @italovignoli who went out of his way to analyze and produce a very well explanatory document.
Let’s have the minutes released.

Hi @elianedomingos , hi @sophi , dear all,

and

I assume that applies first and foremost to the minutes and discussions of the current board? There appear to be many gaps still, from the last year. :slight_smile:

And if not - copy-pasting the existing incomplete/mangled minutes from previous boards into the wiki now (from what I can tell, virtually unmodified from the state they were in more than 14 months ago) - is perhaps not terribly awesome. You could have done that more than a year ago, if no attempt was ever made to finish & approve them.

Best, Thorsten

Funny. What’s in the minutes that would “lead to even more misunderstandings and conflict”? Granted, everyone may have different interpretation of what’s recorded in it, but will hiding it from people help? What are you afraid of, actually? Being misunderstood? Isn’t it already what some of the people claim all the time?

Given that trust needs to be rebuild (if possible), I of course support and demand those minutes to be published, as a tiny step forward to trust rebuilding. Publishing them may not work to rebuild trust, but hiding them would DEFINITELY NOT help.

I agree and support this - making minutes public when there’s no strong need for confidentiality is a great idea. +1