[Community-Discuss] Evaluating Performance of the Board

Tue Dec 29 05:18:00 UTC 2015

thank you Owen for your useful inputs!

2015-12-29 0:05 GMT+04:00 Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com>:

> In AfriNIC case, there is also some level of accountability to the community,
> but the community is not empowered to apply any sort of forceful control
> over the board. The members do have forceful power over the board in
> that they can refuse to re-elect a board member. I don’t know if there is a
> process in AfriNIC for membership or community to initiate the removal
> of one or more board members prior to the expiration of their term.

i'm not aware there is any such process. someone who knows better
should clarify this.

>
>> I also like to know, what are the thing used to measure whether a
>> board being effective? should we clarifie this mesures so that its
>> self-evidence to everyone when board is doing good job or not? (or
>> should we just wait till we see big red warning light of oncoming
>> failure?)
>
> That’s very hard to do. If you ask 10 different people what the AfriNIC board
> should have as their number 1 priority, you may well get as many as 12 different
> answers.

hard but not impossible. one way or another, board agrees on some
priority and its fruit/result can only become evident in 1 - 2 years
time. i am interested in the simple weekly rituals board engages in to
makes sure that priority will be attained and/or if it should be
adapted.

very rough example:

priority: i want to publish a book by 2017

a good indicator (predictor?) can be: how many words do i force myself
to write every day/week

logic being if someone is consistent in writing a 500 word every day,
they are more likely to achieve the goal of writing enough for a book

> As I have said a few times in this thread, attempting to dictate the basis on which
> others evaluate board candidates is unlikely to produce a useful result.

I agree with you. I am not asking for criteria to evaluate individual
candidates, rather looking for ways to evaluate performance of the
board as the whole which you go into below :-)

>
> If you are asking for advice on how you should evaluate board member performance,
> then I would suggest the following:
>
> 1.      Consider what you think should be the primary things AfriNIC focuses on.
> 2.      Look at the minutes of board meetings and voting record of board members.
> 3.      Compare the data from item 2 to your thoughts on item 1 and decide
>         whether you feel that the actions in item 2 match the goals in item 1 or not.

this is a reasonable place to start with the caution that what afrinic
focuses on determine largely by it strategic plan. not sure if that is
responsibility of board or ceo but i assume board must at least
approve a plan produce by staff. so in a way, community can hold board
for ensure that the strategy is fit where afrinic want to go.

so, i what about following informations that are tracked and reported
regularly on public website and at meetings

a) Monthly or quarterly board meeting attendance record i.e. % of
board members that attend each meeting not who attended or did not
attend
b) Number of resolutions
c) Voting record on various issue raise in board meeting
d) Issues of focus (as determine from resolutions/minute i.e.) will
tell us what board spend most of their time on

as you indicate above, these actions above here should correlate to
achieving the priorities. if they don't  ... then something wrong.
also combination of priorities should get afrinic towards its mission
(better service to region, financial sustainabilite, etc etc) ...if
not then priorities are wrong

i admit board job is voluntaire so we cannot measure thing out of normal duties.

what does community think about the above?

>
>> should we add that check and balance formally to responsabilite of governance
>> committee? i belief good performance and good governance go hand in
>> hand.
>
> The devil is in the details here. We should not, IMHO, make the board accountable
> to a committee that effectively serves at the pleasure of the board. That creates
> a number of conflicts of interest around how the committee is selected, how
> the committee performs its duties and how the committee can communicate
> with the community and the membership.

+100 governance council in my opinion should come from community &
members and report to community and members and not board. the council
can then use a set of measures like suggested above (plus others) to
do their work.

>
> The governance committee, IMHO, should be focused on issues of process and
> procedure to ensure that the processes and procedures in place are serving the
> community and provide adequate controls to ensure that the governance of
> AfriNIC does not stray too far from the ideals of the community without the
> community being able to apply necessary corrections.

indicators will be

- how many times was process A executed this year
- how many times was there violation/compliance

uhhhh. ....... seems like lot of work  ..... but that's price of good
governance.

:)))

>
> See above. ;-)
>
> Owen
>
>
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-- 
Borg le Chevalier
___________________________________
"Common sense is what tells us the world is flat"