Overview of strategic plan 2014-2019/General feedback page

Please leave general feedback regarding the Strategic Plan 2014-2019, and this consultation process, on this page.

Community feedback

"Open" is not the same as "free"

By adopting the (complex) OKF definitions and removing the requirement for free access, this proposal weakens the scope of the charity. If the intention is to ensure that our projects preserve knowledge in ways that are both open and free, then we must unambiguously use the word free. --Fæ (talk) 10:04, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Can we keep this discussion in one place please, this page is for general feedback. For discussion of the suggested Vision, Values, and Mission please see here Sjgknight (talk) 10:12, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Where is cost management or monitoring effective and efficient operations?

Plans are characterized by time, resources and deliverables. The language used in Strategic plan 2014-2019 means that outcomes are deliverables and time will be given by annual measurements. However I can see no limit on resources, even though I can see "process" goals under "Use best practice governance and resource management processes". Without any limit on resources (cost) or specific high level targets, this leaves operations free to increase costs of running the organization disproportionate to the benefits that the charity delivers or to continuously renegotiate any interim target year on year or throughout the year.

Considering that the administrative costs or internal costs of running the charity already uses 50% of the donated funds rather than being spent directly on outcomes, it would seen sensible to set resource targets that make the charity more efficient year on year (for example a target of making the charity overall 5% more efficient at delivering end outcomes every year). Looking at Progress on Outcomes I can see nothing that provides the trustees with measures they might need to hold the CEO to account on how effective or efficient the charity is by measuring the ratios for effectiveness and efficiency at the end of the year compared to the targets agreed at the beginning of the year. In most charities targets for being effective and efficient are key performance measures for their senior management. --Fæ (talk) 23:31, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this point. I'll reply with just a few points around our rationale but see para below re: high level targets:

• The board is currently working on the best means and presentation for 'reports to the board'. This will in part address the way the board has inputs (costs) and outputs (towards our charitable outcomes) reported.
• 'Resources' certainly are a factor - they are our 'input' in the model here and extend beyond direct incurred costs
• We cannot set limits on resources where we do not know our budget year on year. However, two things are certainly accounted for in working on activity planning: 1) we can be pretty sure our budget won't grow by over a certain percentage, and 2) any growth in operational costs should be reflected in our progress on outcomes
• To an extent I would expect to see such resource restrictions in our activity plan (which is operational) not our strategic plan (see points made at Strategic plan 2014-2019)
• What we're trying to do is create a model to track year on year progress. Without a model, we cannot do that (and outputs/their mapping to outcomes, etc. can vary), so we have no baseline measurement against which to chart our progress. (added 08:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC))
• Also, as a slight aside, we should not conflate performance indicators of the charity (i.e., how is the charity performing against its goals) with staff appraisal. The former relates to the latter of course, but our purpose here is to outline success for the charity.

With regard to high level targets, note Progress on Outcomes which does indeed define so high level targets. We would certainly welcome comment, solutions, critique, etc. here. These targets are on a year on year, so your point re: inputs should perhaps be clarified further in that document (otherwise we're open to the charge that one could simply disproportionately increase funds for activity in order to meet a target. Although note this would likely have knock on effect on other outputs, would be seen by the board in our reports, could only be done within the constraints of the budget and flexibility of the activity plan, and at times might be a desirable thing if a program is particularly successful, or some other reason as noted inStrategic plan 2014-2019). Cheers Sjgknight (talk) 08:08, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

This is very simple and does not need long justifications. The board can agree that the efficiency goal for the charity is to be 5% more efficient in 2014 compared to 2013. It is then up to the CEO to decide how to credibly measure and report on it. Any organization that cannot measure its efficiency is in hot water. --Fæ (talk) 11:31, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Consultation seems too late in the process

The process for consultation with members and volunteers seems geared to resist change, as the full five year sets of goals and their measures have been proposed before the radically re-written mission and values have been agreed (radical as they have changed from a half screen to 2-screens worth on-wiki and several more screens of new off-wiki definitions). As the strategic plan, goals and measures are supposed to flow from the mission and values, the fact that this is still undergoing change yet the entire structure has been finalized, would seem to make it now resistant to change, as presumably both trustees and employees have invested significant time in it before unpaid non-trustee volunteers or the general membership have had a chance to look at a draft, or take part in any community discussion of priorities and goals for the future of the charity. --Fæ (talk) 23:31, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Fae as I'm sure you're aware, the difficulty of writing such documents is that the various levels are all associated and some substantial time needs to go in to the conceptual task of understanding how the bits relate and what that means for operations, etc. We did not have a 'model' before (see Strategic and operational models), and creating one requires working through the levels.

The documents have not, however, come out of a vacuum. As described in Strategic plan 2014-2019#Resources we have used we made use of Charity, Foundation, and other resources including the various earlier strategic plan drafts and the discussion around those (although they're not listed there).

Re "As the strategic plan, goals and measures are supposed to flow from the mission and values, the fact that this is still undergoing change yet the entire structure has been finalized," I don't really understand what you mean, what is still undergoing change? Do you disagree with the structure (it's a very standard model and seems to me to work well in our context)? On this (contrasting) point "community discussion of priorities and goals" we're absolutely open to suggestions and discussion. I hope we've built on the earlier work of the community (both WMUK and wider) to write something that appeals, but that's certainly not to say we won't take discussion on it. So, while to some extent a discussion about whether this is "geared to resist change" might be useful, I'd rather have a conversation about whether it needs to be changed, and if so, how. Sjgknight (talk) 08:20, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

You are asking if I disagree with a raft of documents and a new structure that has been revealed to the community as a completed bundle. This misses the point, if the board wanted to know if the members disagreed with, say, dropping the value of "free" from our Mission, or creating a strategic plan without any specific targets for being effective in delivering the outcomes (for example a target than guarantees we do not fund an operational system that spends 50% of the input funds before the remaining 50% is spent on outcomes to beneficiaries), then these are questions that should have been asked when it was under discussion, rather than put on the table as a complete body of work.

The board has allowed a 4 week window for members to read this raft of new documents and think about whether it can realistically deliver against our expectations and whether it still satisfies the mission we originally set for the charity that now appears to be being re-written in a far more complex form. I can't imagine putting in the hours needed to do that properly in February (especially as this process was not explained to members in advance) and I doubt that many members will read through everything and be able to make cogent comments, particularly considering the confusing lack of flow down/navigation between the documents, for example the Strategic plan 2014-2019 is not a strategic plan, it appears to be an introduction to the Strategic Goals and the goals are not written as goals to be delivered, so there is no sense of timeliness and they are not easily qualified in measurable terms. Certainly what no longer appears available to members is rejecting the aims or goals as too woolly and replacing them with new aims and goals that are SMART rather than just claiming to be SMART.

A case in point:

• "G3.3 Legislative and institutional changes favour the release of Open Content." This is not a goal for the charity as it is almost entirely dependent on external forces. Nor is it expressed in a deliverable form. In terms of structure, the "aim" is an apparent parent to this goal "We understand that with efficient use of technology we can significantly increase our own impact. But we want to go beyond that by supporting technical innovation more broadly to allow others in the Wikimedia movement and the Open Content sector to benefit as well" but this aim is even more vague with classic red flag terms like "increase our impact" and "supporting technical innovation" that have no underpinning measures as demonstrated by the fact that Progress on Outcomes attempts to measure the achievement of the goal by "narrative" alone. Had I and other members been invited to comment on this level of detail at the beginning we might have met the aim with specific goals such as creating case-books, targets for lobbying specific organizations, having representation on named external bodies, all of which could be measured, rather than believing that wordy reports without any hard targets are an acceptable way to spend large sums of donated funds.

--Fæ (talk) 11:22, 4 February 2014 (UTC)