[Osmf-talk] Board term limits and term lengths

[Rory McCann]

One advantage of OSM (and the OSMF) is that you don't need to be on the
OSMF board to work with OSM. If you make things for OSM, you can still
continue to make things after you leave the board. Work is done (mostly)
in the open.

For a civil servant, it's different. Someone no longer working for the
civil service can't contribute and help any more.

On 21/04/17 01:31, john whelan wrote:
> There is a trade off between keeping people for along time and having a
> turnover.  Over time you build up expertise and experience so it is
> normally considered that a senior civil servant needs at least six years
> in the job to pick up all the nuances.
>
> The trade off is if Frederik is hit by a bus then we lose a lot of
> expertise and experience.
>
> Personally I think we are fine as we are but we should make some sort of
> certificate in crossing the road safely mandatory for all board members.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On 20 April 2017 at 19:16, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org
> <mailto:frederik at remote.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>        as you might remember, we had a vote on term limits a couple years
>     back. A majority of the OSMF members who voted (56%) were in favour of
>     somehow limiting the maximum time someone can be a board member, but the
>     resolution failed to reach the threshold of 75% required to change our
>     Articles of Association.
>
>     At the time, the OSMF board was against holding this vote at all, and
>     the fact that a resolution was forced could well have made some members
>     vote "no". A well-considered proposal that had the board's support could
>     have a chance of garnering 75% of votes.
>
>     The main motivation for having term limits is that currently, a person
>     can be re-elected as many times as the voters like. If someone does (or
>     appears to do) a good job, this can lead to them dominating the
>     organisation, cementing their personal influence and being a hindrance
>     to renewal.
>
>     The main counter-argument is that if voters want to re-elect someone
>     repeatedly for a long time, why shouldn't they be allowed to? There are
>     organisations run by the same people for very long and it can work well.
>     With strict term limits, situations could arise where the board loses
>     many experienced people at once due to them reaching their term limit,
>     which would undesirably weaken the organisation.
>
>     Another point that plays into this and that may or may not need a rule
>     change is our current term lengths. The Articles of Association say that
>     in every election, those two board members whose election was longest
>     ago have to retire (but may stand for re-election). This rule means that
>     voters never know for how long they're actually voting someone in - it
>     might be anything from 1 to 4 years depending on who else is quitting.
>
>     We discussed the matter in our recent board meeting and while we're not
>     generally opposed to term limits if the membership wants to have them,
>     we don't have a good idea that would elegantly deal with all these
>     issues.
>
>     How important are term limits for you? Do you think board should revisit
>     the issue? Do you perhaps even have a concrete suggestion? Or are things
>     ok the way they are and we can shelve the issue?
>
>     Bye
>     Frederik
>
>     --
>     Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org
>     <mailto:frederik at remote.org>  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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