[atlarge-discuss] FW: Provisional Membership Committee- REPORT Part 1

[Joanna Lane <jo-uk@rcn.com>]

I apologize in advance for this boring but important post. This is Part 1,
which covers my review of the PMC Report as submitted to the Panel. Part 2
is my own analysis of verifiable information received by the PMC as a whole
and follows this shortly.

_____________________________________

Unfortunately I was unavailable Saturday June 6th when the Provisional
Membership Committee "met" to undertake the ID verification of the top 11
Candidates and 7 replacement candidates of the 2003 Panel Election, on which
the report to the Panel was based.

However, as a Member of the Committee, I did receive all copies of the
private exchanges and reviewed these later, together with a copy of the
report submitted to the Panel, which draws various conclusions and claims
consensus of the Committee, with exceptions noted by some members.

The result of my review is that I found no conclusive evidence that a
consensus decision was reached amongst Committee members to substantiate
some of the claims being made or implied in the report. Furthermore, while I
found that the majority of Candidates had indeed been verified to be who
they claimed to be beyond reasonable doubt, there are some notable
exceptions. That is not to say these candidates could not be verified to
satisfy remaining doubts given more time, but it does mean to say that
doubts remain with respect to some elected Panelists, as well as replacement
candidates, which can be attributed largely to the very limited response
from the candidate themselves.

In addition, I found that while those members of the Committee who had
objected to some of the claims being made in the report, had their
dissenting voice added to the notes at the bottom of the report, the names
of others who had not even seen the report, were added to the bottom as if
they had somehow followed the process from start to finish and signed off on
the final document. So those who had not responded either negatively or
positively to the conclusions reached, were nevertheless added as if they
were endorsers to the report, but without their knowledge or consent. I
consider this aspect of the report to be misleading the Panel. Even though
it does say the names relate simply to participation in the committee, the
distinction between those who had participated for some of the time and
those who had participated fully and reached a consensus agreement was not
adequately made. Since the report was published, one member who did sign off
on it, has indicated they found it difficult to follow, and are now perhaps
having second thoughts.

Having myself now reached the conclusion that not all the Candidates were
verified beyond reasonable doubt (which I repeat is not to say they could
not be given more time) I have my own analysis of the data and sent a draft
of this more than 12 hours ago to all PMC members for comments, errors and
omissions, prior to publishing on the public list. I suspected I had missed
something because my conclusions did not agree with the published report.

In order to be sure to reach as many PMC Members as possible, I allowed
considerably more time for comment on my draft than was allowed for the
total Saturday work session on which the PMC Report was based by the PMC. At
the time of writing I have not received a single amendment to my draft, so I
am posting it "as is" for the membership to draw their own conclusions.

Just before I do this, let me stress that I think the PMC is a *very good
thing*, and that whatever the shortcomings I may be exposing, it is not done
with the intention of laying blame on anybody or intended to demean the
standing of the PMC. On the contrary, as I have stated previously, this is
one area which is new territory to explore for the At Large Movement and
even if this first attempt is not the perfect result we all wish to see, it
is certainly a step in the right direction. Public Recognition of ID
Verification as a step necessary to the well-being of this organization, is,
in my view, a *huge* step forward, whatever the result of that process on
this occasion.

Let's use this experience to develop a process which cannot so easily be
pulled apart next time.
Peace,

Joanna




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