Kasutaja:Oop/WMEE kommentaarid WMUK tehtud peer review'le

Kommentaarid tekstile: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:F%C3%A6/sandbox#WMEE_Peer_review

Agreed recommendations

(Note, at the time of writing, these have yet to be agreed with the WMEE board.)

Comment: WMEE board is going to discuss these on our strategy meeting on April 27, 2013.

These recommendations are intended to be presented to the WMEE board and then be responded to with managed actions (by the normal WMEE board meeting minutes rather than here). It would be useful if WMEE were able to link to evidence against these recommendations to track if they resulted in any outcomes, changes in policy, or were later rejected by the board for any short term action.

Comment: We'll be discussing it.

R1 Increased paid administration support.

There are opportunities for requesting grants from government agencies, however these require significant time that is hard to get consistently from volunteers with the right skills or experience. It may be wise to include a proposal for additional budget in the next GAC application to pay for some support to make this happen before the opportunities are missed.

The board is very small, and there is some administrative support for accountancy services, this might usefully be expanded to included more records administration, such as the legally required records of meetings being promptly published, and to assist with consistent monthly reporting of finances and activities in order to ensure adequate transparency of operations.

Comment: Indeed. To comply with the standards and best practices of chapter administration, we need to spend more energy and time on it. And we can't do it with the volunteers on the board only. Hence, we are considering professionalization in our strategy.

R2 Advice required for liability insurance.

Liability persists for the directors for the finances and assets of the charity for several years after they leave the board. This appears currently unlimited. It may well be that under EE law, NPOs have this as the norm, however it would be sensible to have some legal advice on record, and to consider how the WMF might assist with a commitment to underpin any future grant with professional liability cover. This will be essential if there is a future proposal for staff as it will become rapidly confusing as to the meaningfulness of the delegation of powers from the board of directors to a paid member of staff, should anything go wrong in the future, such as a case for damages raised against WMEE.

Comment: It might not be possible either because of the legal environment or local insurance market, or it may be untolerably expensive. That said, we shall study the possibilities.

R3 Records of training.

There has been training of directors. It would be useful to have a page on the EE public wiki, with a log of training and potentially this might extend to leading volunteers supporting the chapter. Consideration should be given to whether this is sufficient, and if a budget line for this should be in the next grant request as part of "professionalizing the board".

Comment: Indeed, we need a training plan to develop all necessary competencies.

R4 Declarations.

Declarations of Interest could be made on the public wiki. This would help assure the community and the wider public, that the board reviews their own interests and actively manages any that arise. A defensive approach would be helpful to increase confidence, and it is reasonable for directors to be expected to declare potential interests, even if no actual or current conflict of loyalties or conflict on any financial interest currently exist. The WMF policy on COI, or the one used by WMUK, may help decide how an internal policy might work. <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest>

Comment: As a small community, we have never discussed this subject. Still, it would be best if we made such DOIs.

R5 Reports.

Though finances are small, it may be useful to move from having only an Annual report, to having a Quarterly financial summary as well as a quarterly activity summary. Linking to these on <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports> will ensure that the global community recognizes that WMEE is consistently applying its own good practice and meeting our commitment to transparency and openness. This may be an increased burden of administration (per R1), however it is recognized that the quarterly reports would be easily rolled-up to help make the annual report.

It would be possible to publish a monthly summary from the member newsletters as open emails. If these could be on one of the open Wikimedia email lists, then links to their archived versions could also support the meta page for chapter reports. English is not a requirement.

Comment: Quarterly reports would be also useful for ourselves. We'll see what the expenses would be. For reporting purposes as well as for international transparency and communication would be best if we published all our reports into English, too. We have to consider if there is anything else that would need to be translated either way (English-Estonian or vice versa) and estimate the costs.

R6 Balancing board skills.

The current board is small, and as a consequence lacks some professional skills. As well as paying for advice when needed, the board should consider increasing its membership by recruiting professionals who may be interested in having a seat on the board (either as a director or a regular advisor). It is recognized that someone with a legal background would significantly enhance the overall board skills, however this may not be found within the current members or necessarily within the Wikimedian EE community. Consideration should be given to positively advertising in NPO related press in Estonia.

Comment: In Estonian laws, ordinary NPOs do not have boards in the sense of the Anglo-Saxon laws. Our board is not a strategic organ, but a daily management elected from amongst the members of WMEE. This means recruited professionals would either have to join WMEE and pass elections or be engaged as advisors. The second model would be more likely, but the potential incentive for voluntary work by a legal professional remains to be discussed.

R7 Performance reporting.

Even though the strategy is draft, it would be worth extracting a handful of top performance indicators relating to the mission of the organization. Indicators such as number and size of events, public impact or member satisfaction survey results, might easily be added to the Annual Report as part of the annual meeting process. If reported as a trend (over months or years), this may be particularly helpful in judging if the aims of the organization are being delivered through the activities supported.

Comment: Yes, a number of key performance indicators (KPIs) are definitely necessary. For that, we will need the experience of both other chapters and Estonian NPOs, as it is easy to confuse the performance of a Wikimedia chapter with that of the local Wikimedia community. While a chapter's work may and possibly even should have some influence on the number of articles in local Wikipedia, this connection is not direct and that number alone (or any similar indicators) cannot be used as a KPI.

R8 Whistle-blowing.

Both as general good practice and in preparation for employing staff, it would be helpful to have a clear policy/process for whistle-blowing. This would enable any member of the public, member of WMEE, or member of staff, to have a clear, easy to use and independent process for raising a serious complaint about WMEE, and be assured that it is recorded, raised for the attention of the board and dealt with independently of anyone who may be the subject of a complaint. For an example, refer to <https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Whistle-blowing_Policy>

Comment: Currently, all problems have been discussed either on the internal mailing list or on Estonian Wikipedia's talk pages. With professionalization, we're definitely going to need a clear policy.

Reporting back

To get the recommendations and any actions agreed by the WMEE board back to the community, it is suggested that a summary of the recommendations is reported via the regular WMEE newsletter and the report from this review is published on meta so that the wider international community may add it as a case study.

Comment: We're discussing the possible ways of publication.

Learning points on process

Technology

Technology was a problem. Around 25% of the peer review time was spend dealing with a drop-out from Skype, moving over to using Google Hangout, changing from a Mac desktop (where Hangout would not work under OSX) to a laptop with Windows. The learning point is that though a virtual meeting saves travel time, there is an additional cost in time or running the meeting and it is a sensible precaution to have a back-up plan for any technology.

Comment: It might be best if in the future, the participants of a review would create independent back-up channels - Skype/Google Hangout, Mac/Windows, Google Docs/Etherpad - as well as

Check-lists

Using the lengthy peer review check-list was useful. Having the titles and check-list as an aide-memoire, but not a restriction, helped the discussion and ensured an appropriate spectrum of questions were covered in a relatively short time.

Comment: To lessen the load of administrative work on chapters, it would be best if our peer review could be used also by other entities in the movement. The main parties here could be FDC and GAC. If we could formalize the structure of peer review a bit, so that there would be both flexible parts and some parts encouraged by FDC and GAC, they could be more useful for assessing the reviewed chapter's capabilities during the grant application process.

Language

Having documents in Estonian was less of an issue than expected, though it did decrease the value of an advance "paper review". Having the examples to talk against during the review was helpful, but this does demonstrate that a useful peer review can be conducted even when the sources are not all read-able by the reviewer(s).

Comment: Although even the existence and structure of documents can say a lot, it might be useful to have more documents prepared in some language comprehensible for the reviewer. The chapters to be reviewed might want to decide beforehand which documents they want to translate, and maybe even allocate appropriate funds for a professional translation, as it may not be always possible to have a good volunteer translator at hand, and we need to avoid complications with translation errors in legal and financial language.

Time

Comment: In setting up the time, there was a small confusion about the exact time of the review call. As WM chapters reside in different time zones, the time schedule should be agreed beforehand in exact terms, leaving no room for ambivalence or errors. Also, the actual length of the call might be discussed before it starts, as in different cases, the length might be significantly different.

Legal issues

Comment: In peer review, it is likely that several issues will come up that have to be handled differently in different legal environments, including in the reviewer's and reviewees. (In WMEE/WMUK case, there were at least two.) For such issues to be recognized, both parties should look for them and study the relevant legal information about them in both environments, creating a possibility of comparison. For some chapters and issues, it might be good to involve chapter's legal counsellor in the process, both in the preparation phase and post-review discussion.