Executive Board Minutes - 26 November 2008
Minutes of a meeting of the InternetNZ Executive Board held on 26 November 2008.
Present: Paul Swain (Chair), Miki Szikszai (Vice Chair), Judith Speight
In Attendance: Keith Davidson, Susi Fookes, Sandra Glasgow
Meeting Opened: 12.30pm - 1.15pm - Board Alone Time
The Chair formally opened the meeting at 1.15pm.
1. Apologies
Jordan Carter and June McCabe sent their apologies. (June has a clash in her diary that may cause issues every last Wednesday).
2. Minutes
No changes to the minutes were noted.
RN 24/08: THAT the minutes of the meeting held on 29 October 2008 be approved.
(Paul Swain/Judith Speight)
CARRIED U
3. Matters Arising
The Executive Board Register of Action Points – at 29 October 2008 (page 14 and 15 of the November Executive Board Papers) was used as the agenda for matters arising.
AP 24/08 – The Board retreat will be held on Tuesday 27th and Wednesday 28th of January.
Paul met with Craig O’Connell (Meeting
Facilitator) and is awaiting a proposal from him.
AP 26/08 – Members of the EB to give broad outline of papers they would like to see addressed at the retreat.
There is a general consensus that the Exec Board is feeling a lot of frustration as they have come into their roles half way through the structure Council had already put in place for 2008/09 and this is causing a bit of anxiety.
Paul outlined his suggested agenda for the retreat. The Board needs to consider the following:
1. What we want to achieve in the next 12 months
2. How we will achieve our goals
3. How we will measure our success.
The involvement of InternetNZ in certain projects will usually fit under one of six headings (Social Impact, Broadband Infrastructure, Regulatory and Legal Issues, International Issues, Technical Issues and Cyberlaw).
For each of these six headings, the Board needs to:
1. Identify our priorities
2. Decide on our projects
3. Decide on how we are going to promote ourselves (tell the public what we are doing)
4. Create our budgets and identify our commitments to each project
5. Evaluate the success of the project, having built in measureables.
Paul sees all the above forming our statement of intention which will be the driving force behind our work.
Board members discussed this proposed format. Judy would like to see long- and short-term goals discussed (12 month and 3 year) and noted that social impact can be both horizontal and vertical.
All present agreed to the general
principles outlined above.
AP 41/08: Members to feed suggestions regarding the Board retreat to Susi to pass on to Craig O’Connell.
AP 42/08: Susi also to pass on to Craig the Society’s objectives, existing strategic plans, current business plans and the 08/09 budget and the draft budgets for 09/10.
AP 43/08: Once proposal from Craig is received, Susi to send Board members a retreat papers package which will include information from the Strategic Planning day.
AP 36/08 – The Board declined the funding application from
HiTech.
AP 37/08 – A letter will not be written by Council to business
units to outline the role of the SSU in regards to accommodation as it was felt
to be inappropriate.
4. General Issues/Open Discussion
Miki and Paul both had changes to their
declarations in the Register of Interests that should be noted.
AP 44/08: Susi to update register of interests with the changes
emailed from Paul and Miki.
5. Chair’s Report
Board Vacancy – Council will resolve this matter at their December meeting.
Council Reporting and Expectations/SoI – Keith and Paul met with Rose Percival to discuss. There is not much detail regarding the Executive Board and their responsibilities and the statement of expectations is thought to be rather light. It will be examined to ensure there are no snags in it for the Executive Board and a Statement of Intention will be delivered to Council in response.
External Relations Working Group, including TUANZ – Paul asked Judy to report on the progress with TUANZ. There is a steering committee involving INZ and TUANZ with the common feature being Michael Foley who sits for both. Westlake Consulting has been commissioned to advise InternetNZ on its actions. Their work will be in two stages. Stage one will involve understanding both organisations and stage two will involve understanding the work.
A report on their recommendations will
be available to Council by 16 December and a decision on whether to pursue a
relationship with TUANZ will be made before Christmas.
AP 45/08: Paul to recommend to Council that InternetNZ obtain some public relations advice on dealings with TUANZ, as there is concern over the past media releases and the impact they are having on Internet NZ staff.
Paul will meet with Donald Clark to discuss external relations with National and International stakeholders. He will report on this in due course.
Remuneration Committee Update – Martin Jenkins have met with Keith and
Susi and are preparing their report.
Miki discussed his concern regarding the year-end financial position of
the Executive Director’s Office and the SSU and would like a End of Year
forecast from each before making a recommendation regarding CPI increases.
AP 46/08: ED and SSU to provide end of year forecast on
financial position to Executive Board (Miki)
Openness of Meetings
There was discussion on how open the Executive Board meetings should be. General consensus was that meetings should be open to all members, but that their speaking rights will be at the discretion of the Chair.
AP 47/08: Susi to investigate how to alert members of meetings and prepare a proposal.
6. Strategic Planning/Business Plan/Budget
Statement of Expectations
Already covered.
Business Plan and Budget
The Board discussed the 2009/10 budgets produced by each business unit. Managers were asked to rethink their budgets, try to trim them down so that they allow only for 3% inflation and resubmit by Tuesday 2nd December 2008. The Executive Board noted that once the budgets were agreed, there would be no subsequent approach to Council for further funds.
Susi noted that she was concerned with the current budget split and alerted the Board to her feeling that she was going to be well over budget by 31 March 2009. The Board has the ability to transfer funds between business units. Miki would like to see a forecast to 31 March 2009 from each business unit to enable assessment of the allocation of funds. Miki would also like to know how the 2009/10 budget for the SSU compares with budget allocations for the last six months of 2008/09.
The Board noted that the main reason the SSU budget for 2009/10 is showing a deficit is due to the assumption that Claire Eden will stay employed and that the SSU is covering all overheads for the ED, EB and Council.
AP 48/08: SSU Manager to provide comparison between 2008/09 monthly budget and 2009/10 monthly budget.
AP 49/08: Managers to reassess their draft budgets and return to Executive Board by Tuesday 2nd December for submission to Council.
Reporting to EB, frequency and format
Financial reports are to be given to the EB regardless of the meeting schedule.
7. Executive Director’s Report
Keith spoke to his report and the floor was opened to
questions and discussions.
Reporting
Board members noted that the project budget and expenses don’t link to the project explanations. Keith will remedy this by providing more commentary. Miki suggested that we commission external help to formulate a reporting model and this will be discussed at the retreat.
Keith pointed out that his reports are going to change next financial year as there will be no distinction between technical policy and public policy and as such felt we shouldn’t make any rash decisions regarding commissioning external consultants.
The Board would like to see key issues
and where we stand on those issues added to the international commitments
paper.
AP 50/08: Keith to resurrect the international commitments paper and presentation on our relationships for the February Meeting.
ICANN Report
There was great interest in Keith’s report on the
ICANN Cairo Meeting.
AP 51/08: Keith to circulate address to ICANN from ITU secretary General Dr Hamadoun Toure.
Linux Conference Australia
Keith submitted a paper about sponsoring the Linux Conference Australia to the Board for decision. The Board noted that the conference will be of benefit to New Zealand and the open source software community, but that it will not offer much benefit to InternetNZ. Sponsorship would create the right to advertise and add advertising material to conference participation packs. If InternetNZ sponsors the conference, the Board would also like to see InternetNZ branding throughout conference, InternetNZ mentioned in speeches, access to the participants list and speakers and flyers to be in all participation packs.
In general, the Board is interested in sponsoring the conference but there has to be sufficient branding and recognition of our sponsorship.
RN 25/08: THAT the Executive Director be authorised to enter into discussions with the conference hosts to investigate securing premier sponsorship for InternetNZ, providing the sponsorship requirements of the Board are met;
RN 26/08: THAT the Executive Director bring a report and recommendations back to the Executive Board for final approval.
(Miki Szikszai/ Judy Speight)
CARRIED U
RN 27/08: THAT the Executive Board receive the Executive Director’s report.
(Miki Szikszai/ Judy Speight)
CARRIED U
8. Shared Services Unit Report
Susi Spoke to the report and the floor was opened to questions and discussion.
RN 28/08: THAT the SSU agree to contract external accounting and administration support to TUANZ for an hourly rate or an annual contract fee.
(Paul Swain/Miki Szikszai)
CARRIED U
RN 29/08: THAT the SSU Manager’s report be received.
(Paul Swain/Miki Szikszai)
CARRIED U
Meeting
Closed: 5.00pm
9. Peter Dengate Thrush ICANN Presentation
Peter Dengate Thrush finished the meeting with a presentation on the history of ICANN which by all accounts was well received. Unfortunately people had to leave throughout and by the time the scribe left at 6.50pm, the Chair and the Executive Director were the only remaining attendees.
Next Meeting:
|
Signed as a true and correct record:
…………………………………………..
Paul Swain, Chair
