Month: January 2016

A Bad Idea

The following perspective was provided by John Vig, IEEE Past President (among other IEEE roles)
Under the proposed new structure, TAB and MGA lose power, big timebecause:
  • The major OUs will no longer report to the BoD
  • The VPs will no longer serve on either the BoD or the Assembly
  • The major OUs will report to the EB.  This implies that the EB can overrule the Major OUs.
  • The EB will have 10 volunteers (voting) and 12 staff (nonvoting)
  • The EB “Prepares IEEE budget…” This implies that the EB can overrule the TAB, MGA…budgets
  • Whereas TAB+MGA have >70% of the votes on the current BoD, they will have no votes on the proposed BoD, and they will have just 20% of the votes on the proposed EB
  • TAB & MGA will be just committees of the EB, same as the History, Tellers… Committees

Constitutional Changes in a Nutshell

From: Jim Isaak, 2003-2004 Member IEEE Board of Directors, 2010 Computer Society President, 2015 Society on Social Implications of Technology Vice President, 2014/15 NH Section Treasurer; (also active in IEEE-USA, and IEEE Standards) www.JimIsaak.com

  1. Moves definition of Board of Directors – Size, Terms, election, qualifications to the Bylaws
    This is really bad — Currently the IEEE Bylaws can be changed with minimal notice to the Board, and no notice to members. In short, moving this critical aspect of IEEE from a transparent, member managed model to a “behind closed doors”, executive decision model allows for serious abuse in the future.  The rules (bylaws) can be changed with 30 days notice to the Board to apply any criteria that a sitting Board might be lobbied into accepting (consider the 2015 constitutional amendments as an example of this) resulting in the loss of all international, diverse technical, or even volunteer experienced members from the Board of Directors.
  2.  Makes the ED a Board member (exOfficio w/o vote)
    This one is really Bad – I’ve been on the Board of Directors when we needed to initiate a change of the Executive Director (it happens regularly, for many reasons) — that would be much more difficult to discuss and execute if the ED had a constitutionally established right to be in the room.

But wait, there’s more!