Governance & Constitutional Committee Report to Council 14/10/04
Report for Period to October 14 2004
Meeting took place in the Auckland Offices (ISG meeting Room) Thursday 14/10/04 at 11:00 AM
Present: Jordan Carter, David Farrar, Michael Wallmannsberger, Chris Streatfield
Apologies: Dave Moskovitz
1. InternetNZ Projects and financial recognition for elected persons. Way forward and consequences as a result of the Members' Consultation process
N.B. For this document the term "Councillor" includes all elected persons sitting at the Council table including Officers of the Society.
The meeting was set in Auckland to coincide with various other meetings also taking place. The discussion on Councillor involvement in InternetNZ Projects was re-opened following on from the Member consultation process that we undertook recently. In discussion we agreed, and recommend to Council that:
- Decisions concerning the allocation of projects to Councillors that
carry an honorarium element must be made [only] by Council at an
approved meeting.
- Any project based honoraria will be calculated at considerably
below a commercial rate to take account of the voluntary element of the
work. Levels considered could be around 33%-50% of market levels. The
Society's Members principally agreed to the honorarium being a bulk
sum, calculating any such honorarium as a roughly related to the total
estimated time commitment.
- Projects identified as being open to commercial bidding (to
external consultants) will not be included as part of this process.
Such projects will not be open for Councillors to bid for as a normal
commercial project. On the rare occasions where a Councillor is
directly concerned by a company that is a potential bidder, the
Councillor must fully and clearly identify the conflict of interest and
recuse themselves from all participation in Council discussion and
decisions concerning the project. Failure to do so contravenes the
current code of ethics of the Society.
- If, due to a failure of the commercial bidding process, a
Councillor who has been part of the construction of the project
specification becomes involved directly as project leader/manager, or
indirectly if the matter is handled by an external entity with which
the Councillor has some connection, a de facto conflict of interest is
created and so a full declaration of such conflict must be made to the
Society and noted on the InternetNZ web site at the first moment this
becomes clear.
- If a project cascades down from a commercial project to an
"internal" project where Council accept that it the project can be
identified as attracting an honorarium for undertaking by a Councillor,
the potential Councillor must recuse themselves as soon as possible
from any further Council discussion or decisions on progressing the
project.
- Councillors identified to undertake any such roles, as project
leader/manager, will be those that Council agree (accept) is the best
person to undertake the role, e.g. due their position, or because of
their personal capabilities/skill-set.
- We have not, at this time, committed this process to be retrospective covering existing projects.
The meeting closed at 2:00 PM
Recommendations:
That Council accept this report
That Council agree to the above framework concerning projects having a financial benefit, as honorarium, where elected persons of InternetNZ are the beneficiaries.
