Constitutional Working Group Report 30/09/02
The meeting was called to take place in Parliament buildings at 5:30 PM.
Present were
- Jordan Carter
- Chris Streatfield (convenor)
Absent
- David Farrar (David was unavailable due to illness).
The three items on the agenda for the Meeting were
- Examine the issue of Executive Committee versus Admin Committee
- Terms of Reference
- Future planning and meeting dates.
Although somewhat depleted in numbers we decided that we should press ahead with the meeting to at least give grounds for a report to open up discussion on the Const list on the issues.
Context for the Terms of Reference:
We started with an examination of the difference in powers between an executive committee and an administration committee. This became a very wide-ranging debate and Jordan has agreed to write up a report on Excom versus Admin Committee structure, which will form part of this overall report.
I mention it here because the outcome from that debate led us to re-examine the foundation(s) of the Constitutional Working Group in the context of Committees and Working Groups in general. During the period of most of our work in forming proposals for some fundamental changes to the Constitution we had already discussed the possibility of an on-going role for the Working Group, albeit at a considerably reduced level of work-load, to continue to receive and examine aspects of the constitutional structure of the Society and the overall functioning of the changes that had been implemented.
We came back to this discussion as part of the examination of structure. We determined to propose an on-going role for this working group, with a somewhat changed name and a slightly different focus.
In discussion concerning structure we came to the obvious, and well-known, problem of the flawed governance roles in the Society. The proposal for changes currently underway in staffing in the Society led us to discuss how the relationships between the Governance arm and the Operational arm of the Society should function. We are well aware of the failures in this area, both from the stand-point of poor definition and considerably less than ideal implementation.
With our examination of the functions of an Executive Committee we determined that with sound management of the governance process it would be possible to reduce Council plenary sessions to around 4 per year. This would also require that the Committee and Working Group structure be better managed. Council should better delegate activities to appropriate Committees that should be expected to meet on a regular basis and to fully address issues handed to them. By the imposition of a requirement to write formal reports by Committees and Working Groups and the use of fully annotated agendas Council meetings should become less a debating chamber constantly re-litigating issues and more of a future policy setting process. We see this as huge step forward in the functioning of the Society and its governance function. This process would also lead to a freeing up resources with staff being more able to support the Committee structure and financially considerably less needed for Council Meetings would enable a greater proportion of the money pool available for the work of the Society.
In the run-up to the AGM in 2002 there were some issues surrounding election processes that led Admin Committee to obtain external advice as to a "reasonable" interpretation of the rules. The legal advice was followed but the layer expressed some surprise that that the Constitution did not have a rule specifying some party, the President, the Chair of the AGM and so-on who could make a definitive ruling on such interpretations. This, in his opinion, is both normal and acceptable. On discussion following this advice the Admin Committee came to the conclusion that this was a role it could play. A proposed amendment put to the Members at the AGM to formalise this role was defeated, so the Constitution still does not have such a provision. We do not see an inconsistency with our overall focus in this area if the Constitutional Working Group takes on this role. We also see this as part of the Committee and Working Group structure taking on more responsibility for their particular area of focus.
Terms of Reference:
Appended to the November Report.
Future Meetings
The next meeting of the WG will be Tuesday 15 October at 5:30. Future meetings will be held every 2nd Tuesday of the month with the exception of January.
The meeting closed at 8:00 PM
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Last updated 06 December 2002
