All Party Administrative Meeting
From Pirate Party UK Wiki
The All Party Administrative Meeting was first announced to the Pirate Party's administrative teams in December 2012 and the first meeting was held on the 20th December 2011. It was decided in this meeting that future meetings would occur every 3-4 months to provide a constant update on the Party's progress. All teams were represented in the meeting
Contents |
Minutes
20/12/2011 Minutes
Attendees
- Gavin - Treasury
- Harley - NEC (and Conference)
- Andy Halsall - Campaigns
- Loz Kaye - Leader
- Steve Wilson - IT/Web Team
- Harry Percival - Press Team
- Jack Alnutt - ? and Board
- Will Tovey - Legal/Policy Adviser (contributed primarily through chat due to audio issues)
The Conference Team and Board failed to nominate a speaker to attend in time and were represented by Harley and Jack respectively
Leader's Update
Speaking: Loz Kaye
Previous and current tasks and efforts
- Working hard to engage with local community and taking on community roles
- Press interviews
- Expanding the range of issues he discusses
- Written numerous articles, including comments pieces in Guardian's 'Comment is Free'
- Facilitated improvements to the website
- Facilitated policy process
- Currently owns the twitter account with good success - e.g. more followers, most retweets ever, but is ready to hand it over
- Liaising with PP International, but noted the current structure makes it less useful for the Party's needs.
Future tasks and priorities
- 2012 elections
- Taking on lessons from the Bury elections
- Getting more candidates, both locally in Manchester and elsewhere in the UK
- "Future Everything" conference upcoming in Manchester
Campaigns Team
Speaking: Andy Halsall
Previous Tasks
- Noted that Andy joined in July and since has been helping out with a number of the admin problems the party has been experiencing
- Noted highlights included the Bury elections, press articles on education, protests, and a guardian article
- Noted his effort raising the profile of the party, through writing letters to the German Foreign Minister, conversations with various NGOs and MPs, etc.
- Took on unexpected administrative responsibilities with the aid of the NEC and Web/IT Team
- Helped pull together new way press office works
- Work on responses to Digital Economy Act 2011
- Work done on creating the new site, including backend, as well as setting up and administrating the 'team' site (feng).
Current/Future tasks
- Progressing the Policy Process in preparation for creating a new manifesto
- Creation of said manifesto
- Preparation for elections in may
- 6-monthly surveys, would like to broaden these
- Looking to find better ways of spending our money on, eg, advertising
Treasury
Speaking: Gavin Meredith
Previous Tasks
- Noted started 6 months ago
- Initial difficulties due to "missing" previous treasurer. Needed to make sure no funds were going missing - secured paypal account, moved to new bank account.
- Had to rebuild 2009 accounts as they were incorrect
- Then 2010 accounts, which have been submitted and are available on the wiki
- Liaised with HMRC on corporation tax, which the previous occupant failed to submit on time. Have had non-profit status confirmed, exempt from corporation tax for 5 years, awaiting refund from HMRC
- Noted - there was a formal investigation by the Electoral Commission into why the treasury team was consistently late with submissions. The EC has decided not to take things any further.
Current/Future tasks
- Want to have more ways for members to make contributions - more than just Paypal! Can already arrange direct bank transfers if members contact the treasury
- Ongoing legal responsibility to NEC
NEC
Speaking: Harley Faggetter
Previous Tasks
- Noted Harley is shortest serving member of NEC - started in November 2011
- Completing the handover of "data controller" role
- Submitted to ICO, awaiting confirmation
Current/Future tasks
- Working with web team to define how the party handles data
- Getting involved in conference team
- Continue to refine what role of "party secretary" will be, and then take it on as elected.
Questions on topics covered thus far
- On PPI - Duke notes that, when he's spoken to them, they've said that their main focus is on helping new parties to start, and recognise they can't be as helpful as they'd like.
- Duke mentions he's only informally in touch with them.
- Loz: we should nominate someone specific to be the point of contact for PPI
- Duke: what is the timescale for policy process and new manifesto?
- Andy: should be out in time for PPUK conference in March.
- Plan is for a person from each of the working groups will talk at the conference.
- Context: the crowdsourced policy process has led to a plan to have 12 working groups on policy. We want to now form those working groups by opening it up to everyone in the party.
Board
Speaking: Jack
Previous Tasks
- Work on constitutional amendments
- 2 disciplinary panels:
- One for former treasurer, who "went AWOL"
- One for irregularities in Scottish campaign receipts
- Gavin: expressed concerns that the NEC have not been kept well informed about these two disciplinary proceedings. Also concerns expressed that things seem to be taking a long time.
- Jack: main problem has been churn of board members
- Electoral commission were having an informal review of the PPUK due to our "general failure to hand in any paperwork" - that has now been concluded, they are reassured that we have things in hand, and have decided not to take it further.
- Gavin: how many meetings of the board have there been? Are they scheduled regularly?
- A: Notionally monthly, there are minutes available on the wiki for 3 meetings, and there were an additional 2 unminuted
Press
Speaking - Harry Percival
Previous Tasks
- Took on the job 6 months ago with 3 ambitions:
- Help get press releases out
- Take on press contacts, build relationships with journalists
- Start driving news agenda, anticipating stories
- Of these, only really achieved no 1. This is enough to keep our heads above water, but want to do more.
Current/Future tasks
- Continue to keep press releases process ticking over
- Try to enlist more help from those who have stepped forward so far, to work on improving our relationships with journalists and trying to be less reactive & more proactive about how we work with press
- Loz: expressed support that things are working, amount of press releases have gone up.
- Some discussion of whether we can improve visibility of the press team on IRC
- IRC is our most active internal discussion channel
- JackA notes that he is both a member of the press team and an active IRC user
- Need to spread the message that any suggestions for press releases are welcome to be forwarded to the "pressteam@" email address
- Discussion moved onto more general use of IRC, other communication channels within the party
- Agreement that IRC is insufficiently discoverable from the website
- Andy notes that there are plans for a party-wide discussion in the New Year about "Communications preferences". This is on the NEC agenda for discussion in January
Actions
- Andy: Will talk to web team about making IRC more discoverable
- Harry: Will have a go at hanging around on IRC, but may no be practical given job constraints.
IT / Web team
Speaking: Steve Wilson
Previous Tasks
- Noted Steve has been with the team 6 months
- Website updates
- Reddit policy discussion
- New server for dev/staging
- Security audit
Current/Future tasks
- Ongoing work on voting system
- Migration to new server
- Looking at new email solution, move away from Google Apps
- New framework for new website
- Harley: requests a write-up of the audit
- Steve takes action to send that on
Conference
Speaking: Harley Faggetter
Previous/Ongoing Tasks
- Concerned that venue not confirmed yet. One idea is British library, but expensive.
- Called for suggestions.
- Andy responds that he was able to get several quotes, and find a consultancy company that will research venues for us. Andy will send details on.
- Call for suggestions of who should speak
Legal & Policy Advisory
Speaking: Will Tovey
Previous Tasks
- Noted work split between " legal stuff" and consultations
- Extradition cases
- Bill of rights commission response
- Newzbin2, following the case
Current/Future tasks
- DEA, plan to attend judicial review in mid-January
- Ongoing Hargreaves consultation
- Police powers bill (insults & face-covering)
- Youth curfews
- ACTA in European Parliament
- Assange at supreme court in February
- Following US stuff - SOPA
- The 'Twitter Joke' trial, which "may pop up again", according to sources
- Q: Duke asks - where should I send information gathered to?
- A: Andy: send it to campaigns:
Global discussion & Wrap-up
- Q: Harry asks: "is anyone in charge of "new membership"?"
- A: No, general agreement that there should be someone nominated, one possibility is the party secretary
- Also noted that NEC elections are due in January, 14th-15th is opening of nominations, all positions are up, anyone can nominated themselves, 2 weeks nominations, 2 weeks campaign, 2 weeks voting.
- Discussion of whether we should schedule these regularly - every 6 months, or every quarter, or "trienually". Agreement that we should try and have another meeting at the conference (and possibly every 3-4 months hence depending on the success of next meeting)
Final word from Loz: "The most important thing anyone's said to me all year was Jim Killock from ORG: "you need to get elected". We've decided to be a political party, not a pressure group, so, well done to everyone for all their hard work, I think it's put us in a good position to move onto the next phase, which is to go out there, meet people and talk to the electorate."