Humanitarian OSM Team/Meetings/Board/25 May 2021
HOT Board Meeting May 25, 2021, 13:30 UTC
Attending
Kate Chapman, Felix Delattre, Rob Baker, Emmanuel (Maning) Sambale, Gertrude (Trudy Hope) Namitala, Miriam Gonzalez, Ben Abelshausen
Excused
Tyler Radford
Absent
N/A
Observing
Arnalie Vicario, Matt Gibb, Mikel Maron, Rebecca Firth, Will Evans, Monica Nthiga, Nama Raj Budhathoki, Natalia da Silveira Arruda, Samaila Alio, Pete Masters, Rory Nealon, Mary Liwhu Marcellinus
Chair
Miriam Gonzalez
Minutes
Inna Nogeste
Call to order
Meeting called to order at 13:34 UTC by Chair Miriam Gonzalez.
Quorum
Yes
Approval of Previous Minutes
Approval of the previous minutes (April)
Motion by Felix: Approve the April minutes.
- Motion approved.
Previous Action Items
- Clarification statement on the roles of committees and working groups (All) - Done
- Review OsGEO MOU (Miriam) - Pending
- Approval of staff contracts - report back at the next Board meeting (All) - Pending
- Review slides from Tyler and reach out to Governance Working Group (GWG) afterwards around advisory group structure for the board (Ben) - Pending
- Adjust and share the HOT-OSMF MOU draft - ask HOT Staff for assistance (who have worked with the MOU for OsGEO) (Ben) - WIP
- HOT Advisory Group slides from Tyler - after Board review, reach out to GWG around advisory group structure for the board (Ben) - Pending
- Board to review the draft of the whistleblower process (Felix,Tyler) - WIP
- HOT Europe registration - Schedule a meeting with Board members to talk about expectations and registration of HOT in the EU (Felix) - Done
- Board’s Statement on Committees and Working Groups - Ask technical staff to put this document on the website (Tyler) - Pending
- Discuss scheduling of the HOT Senior Leadership’s and Regional Directors’ presentation of their OKRs and plans for the coming months at the May Board meeting (Miriam) - Done
- Record the OKR presentations for Board to view before the May Board meeting (Miriam) - Done
- HOT Europe registration - Board to review all documents provided by HOT staff and provide comments and feedback (Miriam) - Done
- DocuSign Dec 2020, Jan and Feb 2021 Board meeting minutes (Miriam) - Done
- Follow up from Strategy Committee side and consolidate communication with voting membership (Rob) - Cancelled
- Put a Strategy Plan together with the Strategy Committee (Rob) - WIP
- Complete the group of the Code of Conduct (Trudy, Kate) - WIP
- HOT Europe registration - Send email to the membership telling them about this process of incorporation in Europe and ask for their feedback (Miriam) - WIP
Circular resolutions approved since previous meeting
- May 10, 2021: Motion by Miriam on Loomio to approve Community WG's new Terms of Reference. Motion approved.
- May 20, 2021: Motion by Felix on Loomio to change the start time of the HOT Board meetings to 13:30 UTC from May 25, 2021 until the Board election. Motion approved by 7 votes.
Contracts approved since previous meeting
None to report.
Agenda
Operations update
HOT Monthly Roundup - May 2021
Tyler was unable to attend the meeting.
Leadership team presentations
The slide presentation is available here.
Year 1 progress on the Community Team.
Rebecca Firth - Director of Transformation & Community
Nama Budhathoki - Regional Director for Asia
Monica Nthiga - Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Hub
Q&A from the Board and Observers
The Board thanked everyone for their presentations.
Q: Objectives and Key Results (OKR) need to be tangible and measurable, what does “In progress” mean as a percentage of work done? The Board would like clarification about the status of each OKR and know what needs to be done to achieve it and what has caused the major delays. There are alot of OKRs, Rebecca was asked to prepare a table to show the progress for each OKR.
A: Rebecca will share a report with the Board after the meeting which shows the OKR progress with percentages and the outstanding activities that need to happen.
Q: What has changed in the community strategy by moving to a virtual Hub Asia-Pacific?
A: The decision to move to the virtual hub has been made only recently. The Hub needs to think about the implications of what changes this might bring to the Community Strategy.
Q: Are there too many OKRs? Some aren’t impact focussed and are more procedural so is it easier to track to have only a couple of OKRs? What are the timeframes for the OKRs - yearly or quarterly?
A: The HOT wide OKRs are annual and the Team OKRs are quarterly. Alot of the OKRs which have been presented span over 2 quarters and shown from January to June. Moving forward the OKRs will be presented quarterly which will be a more communicable way with shorter, more precise goals. A consultant has assisted with setting up the first stage of OKRs, of which some are Boolean yes/no, which is a less philosophical approach than targeting statistics/percentages. Moving forward, this won’t be as black/white and be more impact focussed and short-term. There are alot of teams and the ideal is that each team will each have a maximum of 3 OKRs.
Comment from the Board: Wikimedia uses OKRs and has a quarterly reporting template so it is easier to see what is being reported on a yearly level at the organizational level and how the quarterly OKRs feed into the yearly OKR report. Such a report would make the OKR report more consumable as a board member. An example of Wikimedia’s OKR quarterly template is here.
Q: How does the West Africa Hub work? Has it started?
A: This Hub hasn’t launched yet, hoping to confirm a Director candidate in 4 weeks after which a skeleton team will be built.
Question to Nama: If the Hubs are moving to a virtual model, what is the impact on the hiring strategy and how the Hubs build up their team?
A: Yes, there is some change in the way of thinking. We want to see our staff distributed in different countries and need to make some hard choices and attempt to not have too many people from the same country. Part of the hiring strategy is to ensure that the cultures within the regions are represented in the Hub and to hire from multiple regions within the Hub. One of the goals is to have a broader diversity of language and culture in the Hub team so that it reflects the region that they serve more accurately. A small team of key, skeleton roles has to be in the country of registration, for example, HR, operations and finance.
Q: Is the Eastern and Southern Africa Hub going to develop a strategy and what will be the process?
A: The Hub is going to develop a strategy that will build off the ongoing navigation guide discussions and will consult with key Voting Members, OSM communities and humanitarian and development agencies within the hub team network. The Hub team is doing desktop research to understand the priorities for the different countries. The Hub will have Year 2 strategy developed by the end of July 2021.
Q: What are the main risks or challenges for the Hubs and how they can impact you in achieving the OKRs?
A: Eastern and Southern Africa Hub - the biggest risk is delays in securing legal registration in Kenya. This has an indirect effect on staff hires and contracts. Options to navigate this include:
- Employing regional staff through HOT Global so that the hiring process can go ahead.
- Parallel registration to register as a trust (which takes 4 months).
Until we have a registration certificate, the hub will reprioritize activities in Kenya and focus on implementation/engagement in other countries in the region.
HOT Europe registration
Presenting: Miriam
We have reviewed the documents that Rachel has shared with us. A draft email explaining the reasons for registration and asking for Voting Members' feedback is to be shared with the Board for comments. After the Board’s review it will be sent to the Voting Members.
Notes/Discussion:
The Board has a deadline of June 4 to provide feedback. If all Board members agree with the draft email then it will be sent to the Voting Members asking them for their feedback.
HOT Regional Structures
Presenting: Felix
This is a similar issue to HOT Europe and the question is how to move forward with this. HOT is expanding a lot with the Hubs and going to a lot of places in the world. Is there a clear path forward? Felix and Ben want to start a conversation with some input from staff, there has been no input from the Voting Members yet. How do we want to go down this road?
Notes/Discussion:
The Board discussed whether they should set up a separate meeting to discuss this before or after the election, should it be delegated to the Strategy Committee and is it realistic to discuss this before the election. It was decided to table this agenda item until after the election.
Motion by Miriam: Move to table agenda item HOT Regional Structures until after the election.
- Motion approved.
Board policy document
Presenting: Ben”
The board policy document is here and has progressed well. Comments from the Screen-to-screen meeting have been included. The Board was asked if it had any comments about the current state of the document and if they could ratify it now?
Notes/Discussion:
The Board was pleased that this document was close to being completed before the election and requested time to review the document again. Any concerns are to be raised during the next week. The document will be ratified at the next Board meeting
Strategy Committee update
Presenting: Rob
There was no update because the committee did not meet in May.
Notes/Discussion:
The scope of the committee was raised but not discussed further.
Executive Committee update
Presenting: Felix
The main points from the latest committee meeting were:
- The HOT Strategic Plan needs to be updated within the Strategy Committee. The next Board is to focus on this.
- Researching the legal basis for online voting is in progress
- MOUs with OSGeo and OSMF are being reviewed
- Operational matters and today’s Community Presentation were also discussed.
Code of Conduct committee update
Presenting: Trudy, Kate
The Committee has met and is reviewing some documents.
Notes/Discussion:
The Committee needs to provide a recommendation of what needs to be done. The Code of Conduct Committee needs to be set up yearly by the Board when the Board is elected.There are two Codes of Conduct: one is for the Membership and the other for the whole organisation, however, no one seems to know the history of these policies. The importance of having a functioning CoC committee before the election was noted and Felix offered to help the committee. The committee was asked to provide an update at the next Board meeting.
Financial committee update
Presenting: Rob
The Committee has met and had a presentation from the HOT Finance Director, looking at current funding and expenditure so far. With regard to the hiring process, a discussion was held around hiring carefully in stages, allowing sufficient time for absorption of new staff. The pros and cons of extending timelines for a Year 6 was discussed given the realities of travel and movement restrictions in 2020-21. The committee needs to look at how to think about any significant changes to the Audacious project spending and how to proceed. Substantial changes will need to be presented to the Board (and donors) for approval.
Another committee meeting will be held this month before the next Board meeting.
Rob will be reviewing the Tech team expenditure.
OSMF MOU
There was not the time required to discuss this.
Notes/Discussion:
Motion by Ben: Table this for the next Board meeting
- Motion approved.
Community presentation
Presenting: Miriam
Introducing YouthMappers’ Everywhere She Maps program and activities - presented by Natalia da Silveira Arruda Natalia’s slide presentation is here.
Notes/Discussion:
The Board was very positive to the presentation, the sharing of this information and asked if Natalia had any recommendation to ensure diversity on the HOT Board.
- Natalia suggested that HOT continue to promote women in every activity and level of the organization. She mentioned that women are not underrepresented because they are not interested in mapping, but because they may not have the time. In addition to their work responsibilities, women have the burden of domestic work compared to men. She suggested that HOT should think about how to encourage women to volunteer and how volunteer hours can be more productive. The work environment needs to be women-friendly and promote areas other than volunteer mappers.
Other business
No other business was raised.
Questions from voting members
Community WG
A webinar is being held on Friday May 28 The Importance of Data Quality in Humanitarian Mapping.
There are 2 sessions which will each have a 1 hour panel discussion + 30mins breakout rooms (total of 1.5hrs session). Speakers include mappers/validators, NGO and private sector data users, among others.
Tabled topics
The following are not reflected in the notes because there have been no action since the last Board meeting.
- Risk Management committee update (committee did not meet, will do Risk Management workshop)
- Role of local boards (waiting for feedback from Governance WG)
- Approval of staff contracts (planned for upcoming board meeting)
- Strategic plan 2022-2025 (waiting for feedback from strategy committee)
- Whistleblower process (needs input; it is in the action items)
- HOT Regional Structures (table this topic until after the election)
- OSMF MOU (tabled at May Board meeting due to time required to discuss this).
New Action Items
- HOT Europe registration - Kate to send the draft email to the Board for review - June 4 is the deadline for Board feedback. (Kate) - Pending
- Board policy document - Review the document and raise any concerns during the next week. (Ben) - Pending
Next board meeting
June 22, 2021 13:30 UTC
Adjournment
Chair Miriam Gonzalez declared the meeting adjourned at 15:16 UTC
Minutes approved
These board meeting minutes were approved on 22 June 2021.