Reports 17Nov12

Below are the Board, Staff and Committee action statuses and reports to the Board Meeting on 17 November 2012; see Agenda 17Nov12.

Anything that will need discussing at the board meeting for longer than a few minutes should also be added to the main agenda.

Please do not alter the record of actions except to update the current status of them. Also see the in-camera actions.

Templates for actions: {{done}} Done, {{cf}} Carried forward, {{canc}} Cancelled.

Please ask questions on the talk page.

Board

Michael Peel (Secretary)

Actions

1. (9 Oct) MP to assemble a list of public and in-camera minutes which are ready for approval or have previously been approved, and set up a voting page on the office wiki to approve them and decide whether they should be made public or not. New in-camera minutes will be posted to the board wiki for now, and moved onto the office or public wikis as the board decides. Office to assist MP wherever possible.

   Doing... In progress on the office wiki.

Fae

GLAM

Based on a direct recommendation for trustees heavily engaged in programme activities in Garfield Byrd's (WMF CFO) audit report, 10 October 2012, I have taken a step back from programme activities to spend more energy on governance and trustee duties, and will no longer be presenting the GLAM report. This will be delegated to the GLAMUK committee, which I remain a member of. The "budget holder" for GLAM is to be determined as far as I am aware.

In the near term I will encourage the GLAMUK committee to propose to the UK board a paid GLAM programmes manager (rather than volunteer coordinators) with key objectives of:

1. Ensuring GLAM projects follow standard good management and reporting working practices
2. Tools are available for UK GLAM programmes such as action and issue tracking and GLAM partner relationship management
3. Monthly (for WMF and general consumption) and Quarterly reports (for budget changes and board decisions) are professionally completed and supported by credible metrics and trends
4. GLAM programmes are governed and assessed to meet the values of the Wikimedia UK charity

Governance

Providing more time in my role as one of 2 trustees with no portfolio, I am asking the following to be addressed (and linked to the answering detail) in public November reports to the Board on behalf of the Chief Executive so that the Board can consider the evidence to support long term improvement plans:

(These requests for information were first publicly created on 18 October 2012 and emailed to Jon Davies on 24 October 2012 subject:"Request: [Fae006][Governance][Board] Information to support the November board meeting" — being 23 days in advance of the November board meeting.)

1. Midas Training Solutions is our supplier for Train the Trainers and have been used as general facilitators.

   a. As they may be our largest supplier in terms of money spent on programme related activity, please provide a summary of current cost breakdown of all spend (including expenses and feedback sessions, which are charged by the hour) since we started using them as a supplier in 2011 and specify what future financial commitments exist.

   b. Detail the the running cost per head of Train the Trainers including all expenses as well as Midas fees.

   c. Confirm how many and which volunteers that took part are interested in using their received training to gain personal benefit in their future commercial or career purposes (noting that being a paid WIR would be counted as such a benefit).

   d. It was recently confirmed that our agreements with Midas have no termination clause, meaning that cancellation or moving an event is impossible without paying the entire fee. Please confirm which contracts for future events have been agreed and if these on the same basis.

   For reference, emails to the Board discussing related issues and with supporting information can be found as: [1] "Request: [Governance] Interests related to events" 29 September 2012 @11:25, [2] "Re: [WMUK Board] Risk review" 1 October 2012 @09:51, [3] "Re: [WMUK Board] URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT" 10 October 2012 @12:18, [4] "Info: [Risk][Governance][Fae005] DOI and commercial interests for Train the Trainers on 27-28 October 2012" 17 October 2012 @11:34

2. The reported cost of business cards for 17 people was £1,335 and the reported cost for 4 ink cartridges was £291. These appear to be a failure to make the most effective procurement choices. Please specify what changes have been made to policy and process as a result.

   (supplementary) Please confirm the status of all business cards issued this summer with vanity titles, that run the risk of misrepresenting the charity, been removed from circulation.

3. There has been no agreed action plan from the Chief Executive's last performance review with the Board in April 2012. Please either provide this or explain how the previous performance review can be closed before the next performance review in November 2012, so that actions taken can be measured and the November performance review can be more evidence based?
4. There are a number of confidential and public declarations of interest made for Trustees, there are certain to be financial and non-financial interests that Staff or Volunteers have in relation to recent and future planned events that remain undeclared. Please provide a plan for how we will declare these in the future. Please provide declarations for the trustees where there are events with institutions where staff, trustees or involved volunteers have previously been paid by, or have volunteered with, in the past.
5. The office purchased 3 4 laptops for volunteer use. To assess the value of this capital expenditure, please provide a breakdown of how many days each month these been in use by volunteers to support the projects of the charity since their purchase.
6. Over the last year, we have been using legal firms quite a bit. Provide a cost breakdown against firm and purpose, for charged legal advice so far this financial year.
7. This financial year, please provide a very simple summary of the current proportion of administrative spend (including office rent, staff salaries, developer contract, legal fees, accountant fees etc.) compared to (UK) programme activity (event costs, venue hire, travel and accommodation for volunteers etc.) excluding in advance external grants such as to the WMF and for the GLAMtool with Europeana?
8. After questions were repeatedly raised by me over a period of more than eight months in 2012, it has recently been confirmed by staff that a significant number of emails were lost after the 2011 fundraiser.

   a. Please report the current average and maximum monthly response time for email, phone and written enquiries to the office.

   b. Please confirm where emails are being logged/archived and how these available for later audit or access in line with our value of openness.

   c. Taking response time as a key metric for the charity (from received user request time through to time of user confirmed resolution), please provide a graphic of the improvement trend for the last six months.

9. QRPedia has been under negotiation in some form since summer 2011.

   a. Please an explanation of why the Wikimedia Foundation have been invited to reviewing the agreements when they are not a party to the agreement and confirm if they are considered to have a power of veto over this contract. Please confirm that the WMF under a non-disclosure agreement to protect the interests of all parties to the contract during the negotiation. Please confirm and itemize if the WMF have access to other WMUK contracts and agreements to which they are not a named party and where copies of such agreements have been provided to the WMF.

   b. Please detail why other key stakeholders, such as other Chapters with GLAM programmes that fully rely on QRPedia, not being similarly invited to take part.

   c. Please provide the forecast costs throughout 2012/13 for the charity in hosting the service for QRPedia.

   d. Please explain and define the boundary between related services that Roger Bamkin and Terence Eden might offer in the future and the charity's promotion of QRPedia as an open knowledge service that we offer for free, with advert-free non-commercial access, no personal data compromise and in perpetuity.

10. A contract for development and security related consultancy was recently awarded to one of the active volunteers for the charity. Please detail how their interest is being managed and declared. Please confirm the costs for this consultancy.
11. Several times in recent board meetings, the level of staff overwork has been raised and remains a serious concern for the trustees. The CE estimated staff working hours to be between 40 to 45 per week, though this might have been an underestimate (the UK average is over 41 hours per week[1]). Past requests to track working hours by simple weekly time-sheet estimates, or similar, were rejected by the CE as a waste of staff time. Please report the weekly trend in working hours over the last 3 months to provide a firm measure that this problem of poor human resource management has now been addressed, or provide the effective corrective action plan.

Wikimedia Chapters Association

I am the Chair of the WCA but I am writing here as WMUK's Council Member representing the UK's interest.

• I approached WMUK as the WCA representative on 27 October 2012 (email: "WCA location beauty contest") with regard to supporting the UK as a future location for the WCA both for legal registration and for office location. At the moment the Netherlands and Geneva have drafted proposals for the associated resolution and it is unlikely that the UK will be presented as an alternative.
• A resolution to start the recruitment process for a Secretary General failed to pass (or be rejected) and this will be delayed until choice of location is complete.
• A Bulletin is planned as an official summary of activities, decisions and other communications for the WCA.

GLAMtool project with Europeana

I am on the Steering Group of the GLAMtool project to provide oversight for the UK chapter's contribution.

• Europeana's project is well under-way though initial tranches have been more focused on setting things up rather than code delivery.
• 31 October was the first Steering Group telecon, notes were taken live at http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/GLAMtool (many relevant links are embedded in those notes), some conclusions were:
  • Community engagement would be better on :Commons rather than :Outreach and so pages already created will be moved to :Commons and Europeana will take advantage of the Village pump to attract user group volunteers for sprint reviews.
  • Sprints were unrealistic at 3 weeks, so 6 weeks is planned for sprint reviews with user engagement.
  • Europeana has yet to start invoicing the chapters, this needs to be prompt to avoid any confusion.
  • The GLAMtool Steering Group has a mix of community and chapter focussed people, there will be more separation between activities so that the Steering Group's priority is financial governance and ensuring the value of end outcomes rather than advising on project approaches and alternatives. Volunteers will be encouraged to establish an advisory group, better to engage with the detail of sprint reviews.
  • The envisaged GLAMtool is highly dependent on the Commons {artwork} and {book} templates and engagement with key community advocates of these templates and their design is critical.
• I provided Europeana with some WMUK volunteer contacts to advise on potential UK GLAM partners with useful alternative examples of metadata structures that might be available to test the tool. Europeana has little experience with UK organizations.