Board of Governors

From Pirate Party UK Wiki

The Board of Governors is the body responsible for proposing amendments to the Party's constitution and is also the final body of arbitration, appeal, and discipline for the Party. The Board is comprised of 12 members who serve a term of up to five years and are elected by a poll of all party members using STV.

Personnel

Chair/Deputy

• Chair: Stephen Ogden (2013-01-30 +)
• Deputy Chair: Andrew Robinson (2013-01-30 +)

Previous Chairs/Deputies

• John Barron (Chair 2012-04-18 -> 2012-07-04)
• Ed Geraghty (Chair 2012-08-16 -> 2013-01-02)
• Stephen Ogden (Deputy 2012-04-18 -> 2013-01-30)

Governors

• Stephen Ogden, July 2010 - present
• Will Tovey, July 2010 - present
• Peter Brett, July 2010 - present
• Andrew Robinson, August 2011 - present
• Phil Hunt - July 2012 - present
• Jack Allnutt, July 2010 - 6th January 2013, 24th February 2013 - present
• Harley Faggetter, 24th February 2013 - present
• Liam Dolman , 24th February 2013 - present
• Craig Garsed, 24th February 2013 - present
• Sam Clark, 24th February 2013 - present
• Andrew Norton, 28th April 2013 - present

Previous Governors

• Andrew Tindall, July 2010 - 25th January 2011
• Lucas Abedecian, July 2010 - 13th March 2011
• Loz Kaye, July 2010 - 13th March 2011
• Graeme Lambert, July 2010 - 6th June 2011
• Will Macdonald, July 2010 - April 2012
• Graham Hope, August 2011 - April 2012
• Chris Monteiro, August 2011 - May 2012
• John Barron, August 2011 - 7th December 2012
• Shaun Dyer, July 2010 - 10th December 2012
• Andrew Lyons - July 2012 - 11th December 2012
• Mark Wood, July 2010 - 20th December 2012
• Finlay Archibald, July 2010 - 13th February 2013
• Ed Geraghty - July 2012 - 2nd March 2013

Constitutional amendments

The Board is currently using the wiki and the forum to organise its work on the constitution.

Code of Practice

Board Meetings

There will be monthly Board meetings, which all Governors will be expected to attend or to make apologies for. The meetings will usually be held in either the Board's mumble channel on the PPUK mumble server, on IRC or via another medium which the board will transmit to the membership in advance.

The quorum for meetings are half (rounded down) of the sitting Governors +1. A decision by the majority of those present is binding. Votes are decided via a plurality, a voting requirement of more ballots cast for a proposition than for any other option.

Examples:

  So with 7 Governors present how do the following votes turn out?

  Yes/No/Abstain
  4/3/0 (passes)
  3/0/4 (passes)
  1/0/6 (passes)
  0/1/6 (fails)
  1/1/5 (stalemate, so fails)

Decisions made on Mailing List

Binding decisions may be made by Governors outside Board Meetings through the Mailing List. For a decision to be made through this process, it must be emailed to the List and clearly labelled as requiring a vote. Votes are decided by a plurality of total Governors, more votes for that option than any other option (other than abstentions). Votes not cast do not count as abstentions. A vote is taken to have passed when it cannot fail and failed when it cannot pass. A vote will end 7 full days after it was proposed, and if it has not passed by this time, it will fail.

Examples:

 So with 12 Governors on the Board how do the following votes turn out?

 Yes/No/Abstain
 7/5/0 (passes as soon as 7th "Yes" vote submitted, as majority of total Governors)
 1/0/11 (passes as soon as 12th vote submitted as cannot be defeated)
 5/0/3 (passes - as soon as 8th vote submitted as remaining votes cannot defeat)
 0/1/11 (fails - as soon as 12th vote submitted as cannot be won)
 2/2/5 (stalemate, so fails ater 7 days)
 3/2/5 (fails after 7 days - the missing 2 votes do not count as abstentions)
 6/0/0 (fails after 7 days - as a plurality of total Governors has not been reached, and the missing 6 votes do not count as abstentions)

Governor Resignations

Within 24 hours of the Board receiving a Governors resignation, the Board will inform the Nominating Officer and head of IT services.

Making constitutional amendments

The process for making a constitutional amendment has seven steps:

1. Proposition of amendment to the Board. Anyone can do this* at any time!
2. Internal Board discussions.
3. Consultation with the NEC.
4. Post-NEC consultation internal Board discussions.
5. Consultation with members. This will usually occur via the Board of Governors forum.
6. Post-member consultation internal Board discussions.
7. Member vote.

These steps can be quite slow, but have seemed to work quite well so far.

*Just email board@pirateparty.org.uk with your proposals.
You may, if you wish, discuss in advance with other in the members forum.

Accessing member data as part of an investigation

When a Governor is involved in an investigation that involves accessing member data the Governor is required, at the very least, to inform the Board that an investigation is taking place requiring access to member data. Further details should be provided to the Board upon completion of the investigation. This is in addition to any and all requirements to inform the Data Controller.

Upon conclusion of an investigation requiring access to a member's data, the member whose data was accessed must be informed that an investigation took place, as well as the nature of their data that was accessed.

Discipline and arbitration

Disciplinary Panels

Disciplinary panels shall consist of 5 Governors, and any other individuals, selected at the Board's reasonable discretion. Any panel member determined by the Board to have sufficient interest or bias in matters related to the panel shall not be permitted to vote.

Members or officials may request from the Board of Governors that an Arbitration and/or Disciplinary Panel be formed to deal with an issue. Where other forms of mediation or resolutions have been attempted, please provide details of these when requesting the formation of a panel. The board will create and brief the board on the basis of information provided, but reserve the right to request additional information prior to forming the panel. This information will be used in forming the brief to the panel which will scope, without limiting the area of investigation of the panel.

The panel will investigate all of the available facts, and come to a decision. The panel will act independently of the rest of the Board and of the NEC.

Decisions of the Board shall be binding on all members in the case of disciplinary matters, or on the appellant in the case of arbitration matters. The Board cannot be bound by decisions of a disciplinary or arbitration panel.

Panel Completion

When they have completed their investigations and reached conclusions, disciplinary panels will finalise their reports and present them to Board for approval. Once approved by the board the reports will be sent to the NEC for publication, and the NEC will be invited to add any comments. If a panel decides that redaction is necessary before publication, they will make this clear to the NEC, and provide both a redacted version and an unredacted version to the NEC.

When is someone absent as per 4.4?

The Board defines being absent as having no Party-related communications in any of the recognised internal Party communication channels. For an elected official to be declared (by the Board) as absent for the purposes of 4.4 of the constitution, a majority of Board members must agree.

Minutes

Minutes of the Board's monthly meetings can be found on the wiki

Meetings

Register of Meetings & Events attended by Board Members