Hello everyone,
This post contains important information about how to participate in votes relating to the constitution and formalising the set up of this community.
- The constitution has been prepared over the past 6+ months with input from a wide section of the community. Full details are included in previous posts in this forum. The constitution document is now available (see bottom of this post) along with responses to the comments that were made in the recent consultation.
- Ancillary documents are also available for the Social Contract, the Code of Conduct, and the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion policy; these will be posted later.
- A number of propositions have been developed in order to bootstrap the new governance structures for the community. There are five of these, detailed below.
Voting
Participation in voting:
Voting is open to all involved in the DataSHIELD community.
- For those present at the conference: voting will take place on Thursday afternoon during the session on governance.
- For those not present at conference: If you are not able to attend the conference, you may still participate in voting. Please email your votes to andrei morgan [at] inserm.fr (replace [at] with @). For each proposition, please indicate your preferred option.
Voting options
Each proposition will have three voting options: AGREE, DISAGREE, or ABSTAIN. All votes will be by simple majority. The Chair of the Advisory Board will be responsible for counting the votes.
Propositions
Proposition 1: Acceptance of constitution
This conference agrees to adopt the constitution version 20221012v1 for formal use by the [Community/Project]
Proposition 2: Founding Voting Members
Founding Voting Members are members of the [Community Project] who were members of the [Community Project] at the time the constitution was inaugurated.
A person who is a “member of the [Community Project] at the time the constitution was inaugurated” is EITHER someone who was present at the DataSHIELD conference in 2022 (either virtually or physically) OR someone who is nominated by two people who were present at the conference.
People who fulfil these criteria and wish to be a Voting Member should self-nominate by notifying the Advisory Board before the 16th November 2022, including in the message how they meet the criteria and which Themes they wish to belong to initially.
A list of founding Voting Members will be collated by the Advisory Board. All founding Voting Members will be confirmed on the 16th of November 2022.
Proposition 3: Initial Theme Leads and Core Groups
Theme Leads are chosen by consensus among the Voting Members in that Theme. If there are more than two candidates, then the Theme will organise a simple majority vote to select the Lead. Theme Leads should be chosen by the 30th November 2022. In case of failure to agree a Theme Lead (or two shared Theme Leads) by this date, that Theme will not be eligible to contribute to the relevant Core Group (and, thus, to the initial setup of the Steering Committee).
Between the 1st December and 14th December 2022, Core Groups will be responsible for nominating their members to the Steering Committee.
Proposition 4: Initial Steering Committee
Each Core Group will nominate 2 or 3 Voting Members to be on the Steering Committee. This should be done by 14th December 2022.
Any Voting Member of the community who is not a member of a Core Group may nominate themselves to be a member of the Steering Committee. This should be done by 14th December 2022.
If there are 3 or fewer non-Core Group Voting Members, they will all be appointed to the Steering Committee. If there are 4 or more non-Core Group Voting Members who wish to be on the Steering Committee, a vote will be carried out using the Vote Counting mechanism outlined in section 9.6 of the constitution. The deadline for votes to be made will be the 21st December 2022.
The Steering Committee will be responsible for electing a Chair and Secretary as outlined in the constitution.
NB, any Voting Member can be nominated to the Steering Committee; they may also hold a position on the Advisory Board during the transitional period.
Proposition 5: Management of transitional period
There will be a transitional period following the ratification of the constitution prior to all governance bodies being fully set up. During this period, the existing Advisory Board will be responsible for supervising the community, including overseeing elections or adjudicating any disputes, until a full Steering Committee is in place. This is anticipated to be by the end of December 2022.