Re: [Fwd: SUO: Gathering questions and issues with IEEE motion]
At 11:49 2002-01-21 -0800, Robert Grayson Spillers wrote:
> Frank,
> A disagreement about who would type a one page letter into a word processor held up the distribution of this information for two months?
Judy Gorman/Sue Tatiner insisted that the letter be delivered on letterhead ... according to them, Jim's retyping the letter (or even an MS-Word version) would be an unacceptable way to distribute it. You're right, had Judy/Sue given an electronic copy to distribute that would have sped things up ... but meanwhile, there are several ambiquities in the information that was distributed ... no need to go over that here since I'm sure we would disagree.
Again, I suggest you direct your questions to Judy Gorman and Sue Tatiner: why were they insistent upon leaderhead (i.e., merely tryping would do) and refused to give any electronic copy?
> No information like "a legal opinion has been given" or "the Board of Governors has passed a resolution" was passed to the SUO despite Jim's responsibility to do so - and his past assurances that he was tracking this situation and would keep us informed. It also seems clear from Judy Gorman's note of 12/27/01 and Lowell Johnson's note of 01/14/02 that they believed that Jim had already communicated this information to the SUO - although perhaps not effectively or specifically. It does seem they were unaware that no information had been given to the SUO.
FYI, I think it was the IEEE-SA Standards Board meeting, not the IEEE-SA Board of Governors (even IEEE folks say they are confused between the two). Only the IEEE-SA Standards Board was scheduled for 2001-12-06, so I'm guessing it wasn't the IEEE-SA BoG.
The problem with the IEEE-SA Standards Board meeting is that it was held in secret executive session (contrary to IEEE's policy on openness, due process, and fairness). In other words, very few people were aware of what actually happened (I've heard that even Lowell and other IEEE people were asked to leave the room) and there appears to be no public record of this resolution ... it has been very difficult to discover exactly what happened.
In this sense, the IEEE-SA Standards Board members violated the basic rule #1 of being a Board Member (see "http://standards.ieee.org/board/positiondes.html";):
1) Establish and maintain a consensus process that will assure openness, fairness, a balance of interests among materially affected parties, a right to appeal, and the timely dissemination of the standards and technical information through state-of-the-art media.
Clearly, they failed on all counts of rule #1.
> Jim was aware of significant events within the IEEE important to the SUO WG and withheld information he had a responsibility to distribute.
I believe Jim operated in good faith ... Jim asked for clarifications several times about IEEE-SA's confusing/conflicting messages.
Unfortunately, the IEEE people (primarily Judy and Sue) have been uncooperative in providing clarification on the conflicting aspects of the instructions.
Simply, had Judy, Sue, and IEEE-SA followed the rules (and provided documentation in a form suitable for distribution that was also satisfactory for Judy/Sue), and had they provided the explanation and guidance that would normally come with competent standards administration, then things might have been done sooner and better, but they didn't follow the rules, they were uncooperative, and they lacked comptentence in their actions.
-FF
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Frank Farance, Farance Inc. T: +1 212 486 4700 F: +1 212 759 1605
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