NDSA:Principles of Collaboration

Organizational Structure Notes

The subcommittee reported on their draft document. The goal of the Principles of Collaboration is to act as a bylaws-lite that will spell out how the member organizations of the Alliance work together in the first three-year period. Attempts were made to acknowledge the importance of virtual meetings, a guiding group called the Coordinating Committee, and voting.

Small Group Discussion Topic:
Review and comment on the Principles of Collaboration document.

The groups reported back about the following topics with a great deal of consensus:
• Coordinating Committee

    o Provide the NDSA strategic vision

    o Maintain any membership eligibility standards 

    o Assist in reducing duplication of efforts between working groups

    o Have a strong connections with the working groups

    o Add or disband working groups as necessary

• Secretariat role should be administrative and logistical in character
• Votes are for identifying Coordinating Committee members, changing/ratifying the Principles of Collaboration, or other such tasks.

    o A vote should happen online rather than at a convention 

    o Clarity on how a favorable vote is determine is needed. 

• Robert's Rules of Order is too formal for this organization

The groups expressed differing view points about the following issues:
• Officers on the Coordinating Committee

    o There was general agreement that the person running the next Coordinating Committee should be identified in advance of the next meeting.

    o Beyond that, there was a group or two that wanted more structure than others and would like to see officers

• There was no consensus on what should replace Robert's Rules of Order.

Coordinating Committee
The group agreed that the Coordinating Committee was a valuable entity to have in the NDSA. There was consensus that the Coordinating Committee should:
• Should probably start off with 9 members but should be flexible enough to grow or shrink as needed by the NDSA
• Provide the NDSA strategic vision
• Maintain any membership eligibility standards
• Assist in reducing duplication of efforts between working groups
• Each member of the Coordinating Committee should be responsible for acting as liaison with one or more of the working groups
• Add or disband working groups as necessary
• Members of the Coordinating Committee should be voted in by the NDSA members Program Representative
• Members of the Coordinating Committee could be nominated by others or volunteer to serve

Some individuals made the following recommendations but there was no clear group consensus about these recommendations:
• Members of the Coordinating Committee should serve staggered terms (there should be some turn over every year and some stability at all times)
• The Coordinating Committee should make recommendations about working group products that should be circulated more widely, especially items that should be submitted as articles or disseminated to the larger digital preservation community as reports