Reports 11May13

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Below are the Board, Staff and Committee action statuses and reports to the Board Meeting on 11 May 2013; see Agenda 11May13. (It is to be confirmed whether reports are requested for this board meeting or a later one. This report page does not yet include actions placed at the 9-10 Feb board meeting.)

Reports placed on this page will be provided to the WMUK trustees in advance of the meeting both/either digitally (via links to this page) and/or by paper (when requested by a trustee). The opportunity for other trustees to ask questions about these reports will be provided during the meeting. Anything that needs to be discussed, or needs a decision or resolution, should be included in the main agenda rather than being included on this page.

Please do not alter the 'outstanding actions' section except to update the current status of those. If you add or record any actions upon yourself that have not been raised in past meetings, then please add them under 'other actions'.

Please also see the in-camera reports and actions.

Templates for actions: {{done}} Yes check.svg Done, {{cf}} Go-next-red.svg Carried forward, {{canc}} X mark.svg Cancelled.

Please ask questions on the talk page.

Trustees

All trustees

  1. (17 Nov) All Directors to check if their details are current on the Register of Directors.
  2. (17 Nov) Board to clarify what reports are required for each meeting.
    Please can the location of this clarification be provided. Mike Peel (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
    Indeed: I don't think this has been done. Certainly, I'm still waiting for input from the trustees - I have removed the 'done' marker, I hope that's OK. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:53, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
    Personally, I have been a broken record on what is required for over 12 months. I suggest the CEO reviews all my past emails on this subject and my pointers in past board minutes rather than actioning me to keep on repeating them. Thanks -- (talk) 19:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  3. (17 Nov) Board to review the COI policy in the light of the recommendations of the governance review, due February 2013. Tentative Yes check.svg Done; the Governance Review did not recommend any further policy changes.
    1. MP has been actioned by GovCom with proposing a revision of this to cover staff COIs, and also WMUK-sponsored competition prizes. Mike Peel (talk) 19:29, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  4. (17 Nov) With SC leading, all to work on the general charter for committee with delegated powers from the Board of Trustees. X mark.svg Cancelled - superseded by the Governance Committee and Audit Committee charters.
  5. (8 Jan) All to look at unapproved board meeting minutes and make comments as necessary.
    See /Minutes review
  6. (26 Mar) All trustees to look at the Resolutions page for the 2013 AGM and consider if any more need adding. It was agreed that we would not seek to change the Auditors at the present time.

Chris Keating (Chair)

Report

My main work since the February Board meeting has been pushing forward the process of improving Wikimedia UK's governance. I'm pleased to say that most of the structural changes recommended by the Governance Review have been adopted - and those that were put to the EGM were adopted with significantly in excess of a 3/4 majority. Looking at Governance_review/Implementation, the areas where we now need to focus are on the structure of meetings and on enabling the Board to complete taking a step back from day-to-day matters, supported by an increasingly detailed and quantitative flow of information from staff to both the Board and the wider community.

I also presented the Governance Review's recommendations at the Wikimedia Conference in Milan recently, and was pleased to see that other chapters found Compass's review framework interesting and useful, as well as greatly appreciating that we were able to share what we'd learned from our own difficulties.

Outstanding actions

  1. (9 Feb) CK to sort out the FDC-related minutes of the board meeting of 17 November 2012, and post them on the appropriate wiki. Yes check.svg Done - I have moved the minutes of the discussion to the Office wiki.
  2. (9 Feb) CK to follow up with Greyham Dawes about his appointment, and to assemble an announcement for the blog. Yes check.svg Done
  3. (9 Feb) CK to prepare board report - Don't know what this means, sorry.
    1. This was regarding the board report for the AGM at WikiCon UK 2013. Sorry for not making that clear in the record of the action. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:31, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  4. (26 Mar) CK to ensure that the Governance Review implementation document remains on the Agenda until such time as all the issues are resolved. Symbol wait.svg Doing...

Michael Peel (Secretary)

Report

General items:

  • Have been approving bank payments until Greyham and Chris get set up on Unity Trust. It's been difficult to tease out information about what the payments are for, and who has authorised them - this information has been held on the office rather than being provided online, but things are improving here. Note that my expenses can't be reimbursed until Chris or Greyham are set up on Unity Trust, and that my longest-outstanding expenses date back to June 2012.
  • Attended Train the Trainers in February 2013. Was impressed by the course content, and the amount of collaborative learning that went on throughout the event. The course was very well suited to the attendees, and vice versa. Given the cost of the course, careful thought should continue to be given to who should attend it, as it's definitely something for more experienced volunteers rather than newbies.
  • Have been working on Template:BoardApproved to try to make it clearer what documents have been formally approved by the board, and the history of that approval. This was based on Doug's work at User:RexxS/Approval notice. Hopefully this has been useful so far. The template needs to be rolled out to all board-approved documents at some point in the future.
  • Have attended developer progress update, tech committee; and governance committee telecons.

Development:

  • Will be wrapping up my operational involvement in hosting WMUK's website as of this meeting with the handing over of the website backups.
  • Have been very impressed by the work of our contractors, and Katherine as their contact at the office, during the handover process. I'm looking forward to seeing the next steps, which will be transitioning from migration and urgent maintenance, to proper project management and development. The work towards these steps has already started, and is going well so far. I hope that this can be constructively supported by everyone over the next few months.
  • A bit of board feedback (or clarity) is needed before the next steps of transferring QRpedia can take place; I hope that this feedback can be provided at this meeting.

Budgets:

  • Toolserver
    • To be discussed at a future point in time.
  • Travel grants:
    • Wikimania - 5 full and 2 partial scholarships awarded. One more than originally expected due to a strong candidate pool; this increase was run past the board on 9-10 April.
    • Wikisym Wikimania - both scholarships awarded.
    • Amsterdam hackathon - 2 of the 4 scholarships awarded. Insufficient applications were received to award all four scholarships.
    • Chapters meeting scholarships - unsure what the conclusion was here, am chasing the office about this.
    • Need to look for additional opportunities to support volunteer attendance at events. May be appropriate to provide additional Wikimania scholarships to those involved in organising Wikimania 2014.
  • Project grants:
    • A number of microgrants have been submitted or updated recently - see the monthly reports for details. Thanks to the office for providing more support with these recently.
    • Macrogrants are currently very underused, as project opportunities are being supported through other means. Need to rethink this process, and how it links in with our other work, some time soon.
  • Developer support
    • This has primarily been spent on the two IT contractors thus far, also possibly some other costs. I have yet to be actively involved in the management of this budget, though, aside from as an approver of bank payments. We are also providing some funding from this budget for Emmanuel's travel to attend the Amsterdam hackathon.
  • Board costs
    • Although I'm listed as a budget holder for this, I haven't been involved in any management of this budget so far. Raised as an urgent issue on the office wiki.

Outstanding 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.
    Symbol wait.svg Doing... see /Minutes review. Office support would be appreciated in preparing these... Mike Peel (talk) 21:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  2. (17 Nov) MP to assemble a list of unapproved minutes to be approved at the next board meeting.
    Symbol wait.svg Doing... see /Minutes review. Office support would be appreciated in preparing these... Mike Peel (talk) 21:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  3. (9 Feb) JD & MP to work on the General Committee Charter (taking into account Draft report on sub-committees) Go-next-red.svg Carried forward
    Still needs work before it's ready to approve. Mike Peel (talk) 21:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  4. (9 Feb) JD and RS to draft a resolution to change the voting system at an EGM, working with MP (secretary) Yes check.svg Done
    This was mostly done by CK. Mike Peel (talk) 21:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Fae

Report

My report has no time on the agenda, so I am keeping it short enough to fit the time given. I am happy to answer questions during the meeting, should anyone have any.

Actions previously had unique numbers based on meeting and sequential number. I am not going to scan through minutes by date to get the context, and try to work out the cross references for actions that have no unique reference. When we have an agreed system, I will happily review actions. As mentioned in the last report, I have switched off my bot from refreshing Board meetings/2012-13 List of actions by bot.

Post-meeting notes

As there was insufficient time during the meeting to cover these points, I am entering them into this report the following day (Sunday 12 May 2013) and have included five actions for consideration by the Board of Trustees:

WLM

I am unclear why WLM has been entered as a revision to 2013 Activity Plan under Outreach merchandise & publications, this does not seem naturally to fit within the intended scope of this budget line. As no budget has been proposed or estimated for WLM, it is unclear why it needs to be in this document yet.

The board has yet to receive a proposal for WLM to approve, this should provide not just a link to the schedule available on Wikimedia Commons, but also:

  1. a credible estimate of the staff time this will require to support,
  2. costs associated with the programme including potential payments for contract support
  3. a fixed stage review plan where the Board of Trustees are assured that progress is reported to the Board, and there are opportunities to cancel the programme should it fail to meet its measurable targets (it currently appears to be running 2 months late according to the schedule on Wikimedia Commons)
  4. an assessment of the risks to be managed and reported against

It should be noted that this has been entered as progress on the published quarterly FDC report in advance of any budget approval. Program 13

ACTION: (Fae13.1) JD to put forward a proposal for WLM that addresses the above enumerated points before 8 June 2013.

GLAMtoolset

The steering group met on Friday (10 May 2013) and agreed to respond to the reduced funding plan by limiting delivery to this year and moving to a grant proposal through the GAC for around 65k euros to complete the testing and promotion of the institutional upload tool. Fae invited Katherine and Jonathan to sit in on the meeting and this proved useful for support and insight. There is a longer term opportunity for WMUK to work with other chapters to find another, potentially more economic, way to deliver the additional functionality of GLAM metrics and reporting in 2014. Should WMUK continue to support in-house development under the Technology Committee, the chapter may be potentially capable in taking a lead on this project.

ACTION: (Fae13.2) The Technology Committee to consider a chapter-based proposal for supporting future development and maintenance of the GLAMtoolset before 27 September 2013. This has been informally discussed with MP and DT, both members of the Committee.

OpenStreetMap partnership

OpenStreetMap have a server fund raising drive and the UK Board has been approached by email about sponsorship and potential active partnership. As background, a similar idea was raised last year and we missed responding to it.

ACTION: (Fae13.3) Fae to support Harry Wood (OSMF Communications Working Group) in a possible Macrogrant application and define appropriate outcomes. OSMF deadlines not clear, but from a WMUK perspective it makes sense to propose something before 13 July 2013.

Signatures and CEO Expenses

As noted at Talk:Agenda_11May13#Outstanding_governance_issues_to_be_raised_in_this_board_meeting, there are two governance related issues raised by email with the board that have been waiting for action for several months and more than a year, where actions have already been agreed. Revised actions here are being raised publicly for Board of Trustees to ensure they are being tracked and progress is being made:

ACTION: (Fae13.4) JD to report to the Board of Trustees on the completion of actions against the email of February 3, 2013 "Request: [Governance][Fae019] Digital scans of signatures are a security risk" before 13 July 2013.
ACTION: (Fae13.5) JD to report on the delay of nearly 18 months to publish CEO expenses as required by the Finance Policy (and before that, Finance Policy/2012) and JD to complete corrective and agree preventative action with the Board of Trustees to ensure this does not reoccur, before 8 June 2013. The relevant section states "Office expenses and the Chief Executive's expenses are published on the public wiki in summary form (Administrator)". Refer to email of February 28, 2013 "Action: [Governance][Fae021] Publication of CEO expenses"

Outstanding actions

  1. (30 Jun) Fæ/MP to add report deadlines to Board meetings.
  2. (30 Jun) Fæ and Doug to lead the assembly of the GLAM and education sub-committees respectively.
  3. (30 Jun) Fæ to update schedule of meetings to include telecons.
  4. (17 Nov) Fae to put forward supplementary rules for voting by the board of trustees and for committees to supplement the basics set out in the Articles of Association. (Post-meeting note: draft started at User:Fæ/Draft supplementary rules for voting.)

Doug Taylor

Report

  1. The Education Committee met on 16 April 2013 by teleconference. (Minutes)
  2. Audit & Risk Committee (ARC) held its inaugural meeting on 29 April 2013 in person at the Office. (Minutes)

Outstanding actions

  1. (30 Jun) Fæ and Doug to lead the assembly of the GLAM and education sub-committees respectively. Yes check.svg Done
  2. (8 Sep) MP, DT, RB, SB to work through the outstanding issues with the Gibraltarpedia MoU. X mark.svg Cancelled
  3. (17 Nov) The working party of JB, DT and SC to provide recommendations to the Board as to how to proceed with Wikimedians in Residence.
  4. (8 Jan) DT to find an independent volunteer to perform a short review of the TtT issues in time for Midas to be contracted for the event. Yes check.svg Done
  5. (8 Jan) SC and DT to continue discussions about QRpedia with RB Yes check.svg Done

Saad Choudri

Report

Outstanding actions

  1. (17 Nov) SC to include his declarations in the Declarations of Interest before the next meeting. Yes check.svg Done
  2. (17 Nov) The working party of JB, DT and SC to provide recommendations to the Board as to how to proceed with Wikimedians in Residence. Yes check.svg Done - the recommendation of the 4 institutions to take forward in the first tranche (the aim of this working party) has been produced in November 2012.
  3. (17 Nov) SC to take a look at the Trustee DOI Review and soften it where needed.
  4. (8 Jan) SC and DT to continue discussions about QRpedia with RB Yes check.svg Done
  5. (9 Feb) SC to review WMUK/Bid Team MoU over the next few weeks. Yes check.svg Done

Greyham Dawes

Report

Outstanding actions

  1. (9 Feb) Treasurer & RS & JD to prepare Financial Report
  2. (26 Mar) GD to respond to all of Fae's comments (about the Scheme of Delegation) by the next board meeting.

Staff

The Chief Exec is responsible for the reports under this section.

Reports

Staff reports

  1. Chief Executive report on-wiki version
    Chief Executive report original PDF file
  2. Communications update PDF file
  3. Office Manager's report PDF file
  4. Fundraising manager update PDF file
  5. Programs update PDF file
  6. GLAM update PDF file
  7. Education update PDF file
  8. Volunteering update PDF file

Other reports

  1. Living Paths report, May 2013 on-wiki version
    Living Paths report original PDF file
  2. Review of volunteer policies on-wiki version
    Review of volunteer policies original PDF file

In-camera reports (not available to members)

  1. GLAM-WIKI budget to date on office wiki
  2. Risk report PDF on office wiki
  3. Management accounts PDF on office wiki and attached cashflow sheet
  4. 2013 Working Budget on office wiki
  5. Cashflow on office wiki
  6. Traffic light summary PDF on office wiki
    A more detailed document is available on this wiki

Outstanding actions

  • (30 Jun) JD to ensure all trustees understand DOI policy, and that there is a statement of this on the UK wiki. As far as possible. Issue for new board. Yes check.svg Done
  • (30 Jun) JD and staff to assemble a list of the key metrics for assessing the performance of the organisation. On quarterly report.Yes check.svg Done
    Where is this? Mike Peel (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
    On the quarterly reporting document. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 08:20, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    What quarterly report? There's no such document linked to in *Reports above. Please could you provide a link here? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:13, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    If this relates to the column "metrics" in the 2013 programme planning grid (at the time of writing, not in the above list of reports), please note my comments on the talk page under this subsection title. In particular not everything in that column could be used as a metric (as they are not quantified) and they were prepared for measuring staff related processes and projects, not for the overall performance of the organization, hence key top level indicators are likely to be missing. -- (talk) 09:14, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  • (30 Jun) RS to report on Per Diems in September, as to if there have been any over-claims or any abuse of the system. Yes check.svg Done
    Where is this report? Mike Peel (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
    As this was more than six months ago, can we have a revised report? -- (talk) 09:16, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
    My report on this was a one-line summary several months ago, reporting (as I recall) that there had been no problems with per diems but that I would keep an eye on it. I am happy to report that there have been no changes to this, and subsequently there's not really enough for a separate report. 10:53, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
    I have searched for 'per diems from:richard.symonds' and I cannot find anything relevant. Could you re-send it? It would be useful if the new financial reporting design and categorization included the ability to give a simple breakdown of expense claims that were receipted, un-receipted and per diem payments. Considering the need to reconcile expenses and justify our position on un-receipted expenses, this would be a practical report to be able to produce rather than using staff time assessing the situation by eye, or whatever process has happened here to date. If nothing else, future trustees might be comforted to know that if un-receipted expenses were more than 25% of expense claims, or greater than £1,000 per month, they might get alerted to that fact.
    As a general principle, where actions are agreed with deliverables being a report, then it would be good practice if we could close down these actions by linking to an on-wiki report (preferably a public report on this wiki), rather than saying the action is 'done' without providing any link to verifiable evidence. -- (talk) 12:15, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
    It was reported on in September, as part of my report to the board: See the (confidential) file 'September 8 Office Manager Report' attached to my email 'Board Papers' to the office list on 10 September 2012. I don't really have the time to write an separate report on Per Diems (or indeed, on the breakdown of receipted vs unreceipted volunteer expenses) in addition to my current tasks, and would much prefer to continue assessing the situation using my experience and common sense (as you put it, 'by eye'), and reporting to the CE on any anomalies. Perhaps Greyham can offer some insight on this at the meeting: I will be happy to follow his direction. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
    I have uploaded this report to http://office.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/File:September_8_Office_Manager_Report.odt to support evidence of the closure of this action. The report does include a report of an invalid claim, and I suggest this is worth picking up at the Saturday meeting when Greyham can have an input, along with the rest of the Board of Trustees on what might be improved in our financial reports. -- (talk) 13:20, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
    Thanks Fae - I thought it had been uploaded, but apparently not. When you talk about invalid claims, I agree that this would be good for a short, generalised discussion, rather than individual examples from six months ago. Certainly, a general discussion would be something that Greyham would have some useful input on. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:41, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
  • (8 Sep) KB, KC to work on a joining pack for new members. Being done Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 08:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • (8 Sep) JD to add section to the Representing Wikimedia UK policy about volunteer liability insurance.Yes check.svg Done
  • (17 Nov) KB to review whether vetting of members is needed, assess how other organisations do this, and provide a recommendation to the Board.
  • (17 Nov) RS to implement the system of having a wiki page saying how much money is left in each budget and what is going to be coming out according to current plans in terms of projects and corresponding amounts.
  • (9 Feb) JD to ask trustees to opine on which parts of the Risk Register are sensitive, and to report back to the board on which parts should be released. The Register should be released by the 18th February.Yes check.svg Done
  • (9 Feb) JD & MP to work on the General Committee Charter (taking into account Draft report on sub-committees)Yes check.svg Done
  • (9 Feb) JD and RS to draft a resolution to change the voting system at an EGM, working with MP (secretary)Yes check.svg Done
  • (9 Feb) RS to send out a call for tellers Yes check.svg Done
  • (9 Feb) Treasurer & RS & JD to prepare Financial Report Yes check.svg Done
  • (26 Mar) JD to add the risk of sock members to the risk register and evaluate it accordingly. KB reported.
  • (26 Mar) JD to update the Governance Review implementation on an ongoing basis. Yes check.svg Done
    should be Symbol wait.svg Doing...? Mike Peel (talk) 21:13, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    Probably should not re-opened as an action as there is enough work involved for a plan to be required rather than a single SMART action. I have no doubt many of these items will not be satisfactorily closed until the end of 2013 or into 2014 if we include the longer term validation of implementation (which spans up to 18 months after the review). -- (talk) 09:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Ex-treasurer actions

  1. (24 Jan) JB to talk to RS about the technical setup required for Sage. Information to be communicated to the WMUK tech list. RS is handling/has handled I think.
  2. (24 Jan) JB to report about changes implemented based on the last management letter and Garfield's letter at the next board meeting (in the treasurer's report).

Committees

Audit and Risk

  1. (26 Mar) Fae's suggestion of a Procurement Review be looked at by the Audit & Risk Committee. Yes check.svg Done

Governance Committee

Conference

  1. (30 Jun) HJM to provide a list of members of the Conference Committee. Yes check.svg Done See Conference Committee.

Education

  1. Education Committee meeting 16 April 2013 for the Board's information. No items require Board decision.

GLAM

The GLAM Committee has been inactive since the end of 2012 with the last set of published minutes in June 2012. The basics of the draft charter have yet to be met. (talk)

  1. Women's Library @ LSE decided to defer their Wikimedian in Residence to 2014, when the institution has consolidated the Women's Library into the institution.

Technology

Grants