Compiled summary of issues and discussion about OMF governance at May 2020 workshop

[cmbarton]

Discussion on OMF Governance Issues and Draft Charter

General

• RDA: Resource Description and Access. RDA Board (Executive Council), RDA Steering Committee (sort of a working group, with some overlap with the board)
• Project Jupyter. Benevolent Dictator for Life (Executive Director), Steering Council (Core Developers), Institutional Partners provide funding.
• Carpentries. Executive Director, Executive Council, and voting membership (individuals). Organizational members provide financial support.
• Open Geospatial Consortium. Much larger and more commercially oriented than we envision the OMF currently
• Open API Specification
• the other RDA: Research Data Alliance. Much larger and supported by an international non-profit foundation established by the EC, NSF, NIST, etc
• more to come

List of standards organizations at Wikipedia

OMF Membership

Who are members?

Members are organizations
What organizations can be OMF members?

• Societies and scientific networks to which modeling scientists belong
• Research organizations such as a National Laboratories
• Other potential members
  • Subgroups of large organizations. For example a large project with its own funding within a National Laboratory or a research center or institute within a university. This could make sense in terms of future funding expansion as well as distribute voting rights over large agencies based on project-level representation and the variable opinions and desires therein.
• Modeling science Journals

In discussion, I was very concerned that any form of tiered membership fees needs to be done very carefully.

• You don't want to dissuade other orgs from joining (many of which are also nonprofit/academic entities) or create equity issues where only orgs from certain countries end up participating.
• At this point you need to build the biggest tent possible.
• Also, you need to be very careful with any ideas of higher tiers getting privileged services -- this creates thorny ethical issues and problems with conflicts of interest.

How do members join?

There need to be criteria that potential members agree to in order to join. For example,

• Provide active support for OMF mission and goals
• Promote OMF standards and best practices among the modeling science community the organization represents
• Officially recognize, and professional reward where relevant, model developers who adopt OMF standards and follow OMF best practices

Members (organizations) could possibly pay an annual membership fee.

What are member rights and responsibilities?

Voting rights

Members approve OMF standards and policy.

Some (number undecided) can be elected to the Executive Council

Each member organization should get a single vote, regardless of size. Keep in mind that individuals may belong to multiple groups. So larger organizations may me made up of the same members of other smaller groups. Large groups probably have a lot of overlap with smaller groups and may not represent different people.

There could be voting and ex-officio members

The OMF should consider options to hold public and secret votes for different issues

Member responsibilities

• Attend annual meetings
• Organization would live with the standards and mission of OMF
• Actively participate and vote on standards
• See also criteria for joining above

Member benefits

What can be the assets and services that OMF provides for paying member organizations.

• Voting rights to approve standards and OMF policies
• Journal members could have access to source code reviewers familiar with OMF standards
• Repository members could receive model certification of some sort,
• Member organizations could have prioity access to classes for version workflow in research projects (e.g. based on Gitflow), coding camps, and workshops
• Member organizations could receive infrastructure hosting and help for model development and prototyping

If OMF offers 'services' to members, then there should be a "Facilities and Resources" document maintained and made accessible for use in proposals by members (e.g. a section that can be included in proposals)

Working Groups

Initially proposed working groups are:

• Standards
• Education and outreach
• Cyberinfrastructure
  Consensus is that this is a good start.

Individuals can join working groups. No process discussed yet.

Working groups should elect a chair but no other organization discussed. May be best to self-organize, at least at first.

Strong consensus that working group chairs should be involved in OMF leadership. Weak consensus that they should be voting representatives on the Members Council. May make more sense to have them as members of the Executive Council.

Workflow linking working groups with Executive Council and Members Council

• Proposed activities or feature requests may be submitted to the OMF by either individuals or working groups for consideration.
• These activities/feature requests will be assigned for consideration to a relevant working group for further definition and analysis or assessment.
• Working groups will decide which activities/features to advance and then present proposals to the executive committee so that the Executive Council can determine and vote to approve them and assign a priority.
• The EC will then add approved activities into an annual OMF Roadmap and present it to the Members Council, so that it is clear when and what is in development or actively being advanced.
• (not discussed) New standards or significant standars revisions, governance policy changes (except for minor corrections), and activities/features that require financial resources need additional approval of the Members Council.

Executive Directorate/Board

The OMF will need some kind of executive body to handle day to day management, especially if membership gets even moderaly large.
What should it be like? How do we populate an executive body?
What should an executive body do? What is the relationship between the executive body, membership, and working groups?

We did not discuss this much. A general consensus that there should be an Executive Director, several elected members from the Members Council, and possibly the chairs of working groups.

Executive Council comments

Should exec board members (some at least) be elected from member reps?
Should working group heads be exec members?
Some appointees?
Who else?
How is the executive directorate formed?

In line with the question of assets - membership on an executive council may be an important component of value for organizations. I wouldn't say they get more votes - but perhaps more power within the OMF.

Steering Committee

An external steering or advisory committee was suggested, to get outside view on how OMF is doing, what other initiatives are accomplishing, etc. (no voting rights, just as a recommending body).