Loomio
Sun 1 Dec 2019 6:14PM

Working group: Decision making

I Ilja Public Seen by 32

A couple of years ago we felt that we didn't have a good way of working toghether in meetings. A project was started where a group of people met on a regular basis to eventually come up with the current meeting guigelines that are used in the labs. ATM I feel there is a problem with making decissions within the ppbe. For that reason I'd like to see if we can get a similar thing going. The aim would be to have a way (or ways) to make clear decissions for ppbe.

Currently I know of three 'official' ways to make decisions within ppbe:

  • Proposals can be done at general assemblies (GA's) and voted upon

    • Historically we seen that this can lead to frustration and friction as it brings an artificial deadline with no real way to resolve issues

    • They should be done on a yearly basis, but from memory I would say that the last one was three years ago. We didn't even had one for the last elections while we're supposed to have one then as well

    • Even if we'd use GA's to make decissions, it's a lot of work to prepare which means that we have a very slow process

  • Decissions can be taken by the coreteam

    • The coreteam were a group of people voted by other pirats. This brought a heirarchical structure and all the problems that come with it.

    • We haven't had a coreteam since the elections of 2014 or so. We definitly didn't have one in 2016 or later, nor do I think people really want to bring that back

  • There's the three-pirate-rule that sais that you can start a crew or project if you have at least three pirates supporting you

    • Personally I don't think it's always clear in what cases the three-pirate rule does and does not apply

It should be obvious that these are seriously lacking.

There has been other ways of making decissions recently:

  • Decentralise decissions. What can be done on a crew-level doesn't need conformation from the ppbe level

    • I think this is a powerfull idea. It's also how we handled last elections.

    • Sometimes you can't really bring it down to the crews in which case this doesn't work any more

  • Find consensus on both Loomio and in the labs.

    • This was an experiment we wanted to try for money-decissions.

    • This implies having to wait for a lab. Maybe some decissions shouldn't need this red tape.

    • The labs can only do so much, so if a proposal hasn't come to a subgroup, the decission is dead...

    • Labs are monthly at best. Not getting a decission from the lab means waiting at least another month.

I think it's clear that these are defenitly not bringing a full-stack solution either.

So my proposal is to make a working group, similar to how we had the internal democracy group

  • Does any one oppose this idea?

  • Who would like to join this group on a regular basis (meetings will always be open to everyone, but It needs some people that can commit to it).

  • Do you already have ideas or insights or already see cases where there are problems? Feel free to leave them in the comments

Résumé en français : Ilja constate que les décisions au niveau du PPBe se prennent difficilement. Il souhaite reproduire une expérience qui a fonctionné (un groupe de travail sur les guidelines internes d'un groupe) mais cette fois-ci sur le thème de la prise de décision collective. Qqn s'y oppose ? Qui souhaite rejoindre le groupe de travail de façon régulière? (il sera toujours ouvert évidemment mais il faut des personnes pour le porter). Avez-vous déjà des suggestions/idées/cas concrets?

Wikipage of the project : https://wiki.pirateparty.be/Decision-making_process

RVE

Renaud Van Eeckhout Mon 2 Dec 2019 12:59PM

Résumé en français : Ilja constate que les décisions au niveau du PPBe se prennent difficilement. Il souhaite reproduire une expérience qui a fonctionné (un groupe de travail sur les guidelines internes d'un groupe) mais cette fois-ci sur le thème de la prise de décision collective. Qqn s'y oppose ? Qui souhaite rejoindre le groupe de travail de façon régulière? (il sera toujours ouvert évidemment mais il faut des personnes pour le porter). Avez-vous déjà des suggestions/idées/cas concrets?

RVE

Renaud Van Eeckhout Mon 2 Dec 2019 1:14PM

I would like to help, be part of the regular members of that workgroup.

Some random thoughts for now :

  • I think it would be a good idea to have the objective to improve what we currently have ; not imagining an ideal situation that would probably not work as planned anyway 😛 => otherwise we might "erase" what is now working for something unknown

  • in the same vein : I think we should try to find something simple that people can easily understand and apply. If it's complicated, either nobody will do it, or it would require a huge amount of effort to "update" the new members all the time

  • when you mention decentralization, I think that every workgroup is a decentralized place of decision, not just the crews. IT-squad, crews, Internal Democracy group, etc...

  • all the workgroups that aim to implicate ppbe should work with transparency and openness (by respect and to give everyone as much information as possible, and the possibility to participate)

  • I don't think it's possible to have a "one set of rules for all the decisions", because decisions can have so many different shapes, some are urgent, some not, some require a huge adherence of members, some just require the adherence of those who participated...

S

sdm94 Mon 2 Dec 2019 7:50PM

Vous devriez regarder du coté du PP FR avec leur assemblée permanente où ils votent tous les mois sur congressus

tout est décrit dans les statuts : https://wiki.partipirate.org/Statuts

complété par le règlement intérieur : https://wiki.partipirate.org/R%C3%A8glement_int%C3%A9rieur

et pour exemple les votes de l'AP de novembre sur congressus c'est là : https://congressus.partipirate.org/meeting.php?id=571

I

Ilja Sun 26 Jan 2020 1:30PM

Alright, we had kind of a 'kick-off' in the last lab (sa 25/01/2020). the notes can be found on the wiki at https://wiki.pirateparty.be/Pirate_Lab/Meeting/25_01_2020#Decision-making

We started with a mindmap, a digitalised version can be found at https://wiki.pirateparty.be/File:Decision-mindmap-digital.png

If you have feedback on the mindmap (or feedback in general) please provide it!

One thing I noticed is that we started by saying it should be KISS (Keep It Simple [CENSORED]), but it wasn't added to the mindmap (which it probably should).

We also didn't set a date-time and place for a next meeting. February will be to crowded for me already, so let's decide a date on the next lab. I think for place the same bar as we did for the meeting subgroup would be a good place. (l'Esperance – Rue du Finistère 1-3
1000 Brussels)

We should also think about updating the wikipage https://wiki.pirateparty.be/Internal_Democracy/ because decision making fits under this.