ConCall-20070320

T3F - Transitional Technical Task Force

Tuesday Mar 20, 2007 12:00 PM (US Eastern Time, GMT -5)

Attendance

Present Beeler, Buitendijk, Case, McCay, Parker, Lorenzi, Hammond

Minutes

Approved minutes of meeting of 06 March 2007

Agreed Agenda

1. Roll Call & Accept agenda
2. Review of TD Composition (Lorenzi diagran)
3. Discussion of sub-group makeup (Case comment)
4. Decision points listed in home work

TD Composition

Virginia Lorenzi had provided an updated chart of the TD composition (the members, their constituency and voting privileges). This diagram formed the basis of discussion, with notes being captured on the diagram. The following points summarize the points of final agreement by the T3F:

• The TD will be made up of elected representatives, the TCO, appointed members and support staff.
• Four members will be elected to represent the committees in each of the four sub-groups. For each such position, the nominations will be made by the committees, with the expectation that most nominees will be co-chairs of one of the represented committees. The elections will select a primary representative on the TD, and an alternate who will attend and vote when the primary is unavailable. The four sub-groups are:
  • Foundations and Technology
  • Structures and Semantic Design
  • Domain Expertise
  • Support Services

This group is made up of committees that are presently Board-appointed but the T3F agreed that in future these should be TD-appointed. They include Publishing, Education, Electronic Services and, perhaps, Marketing. The T3F agreed that a new group "Project Services" should be created to continue the work of the Project Life-Cycle team, and to provide an interface between the "PMO" and the Working Group projects. Discussion suggested there might need to be a "Product Management" committee established in this sub-group, as well.

In discussion we agreed that McCay would contact the current "Product" transition team to solicit their ideas for continuing that work, and that Case would contact the Project Life-Cycle group in regards to a prospective "Project Services" committee.

• Two members will be elected to represent the HL7 affiliates (including the US affiliate). The nomination and election of these representatives will be managed by an Affiliate Council representing all affiliates.
• The CTO/TCO will be selected by a recruitment process managed by the Board in collaboration with the TD.
• One member appointed by the Board to serve as Board Liaison to the TD
• Two members appointed by the TD. One of these will be a representative of the ARB, which group will continue as a TD-appointed committee. (The representative may be either the ARB Chair, or a member, in the circumstance that the Chair is already a TD member.) The second TD-appointment will be established as a limited-term appointment to allow the TD to co-opt the participation of particular individuals or expertise that the TD requires.
• Staff support participation would include a Reporter/Scribe for the TD, and staff liaison from such areas as PMO, Publishing, Electronic Services.
• In general, all but the support staff will be voting members.
• The chair will vote only to break ties.
• All positions should have fixed, but renewable terms of two-years, and the start-up process should proved for staggering these terms either by having half the appointments be for half-terms, or half of them being for initial three-year terms.
• In general, the representatives from the four sub-groups should be selected first; then the affiliate representatives should be selected, and finally the appointed positions should be named. This allows the appointment process to help balance the TD representation.

TD Sub-groups

The group continued discussion on the make up of the sub-groups with particular attention to the relative roles of "committees, SIGs, and projects." The T3F has some sense that SIGs are created to accomplish a project, while other projects, such as Clinical Statement and TermInfo, thrive on their own. Further, the current "rules" for meeting room assignments make SIG status an essential element for success -- "if you can't meet, you can't work."

The T3F agreed that a first step towards addressing this would be to provide meeting-room assignment priority to selected cross-committee projects. The priorities for meeting-room assignments should be assigned by the TD to Committees, SIGs and projects, and that a process of actively tracking the effective use of assigned meeting space should be in place.

TD Meeting Style

As a final item, the T3F discussed the "style" of TD meetings. We agreed that the meetings should be open. Participation of non-members in the discussion at the meeting should be controlled by the chair and/or the adopted agenda. This is similar to the current pattern followed by the Board.

Role of CTO/TCO

The chair asked the T3F members to send him a note about which strategy they favor for the CTO position. Specifically, should the CTO be recruited to serve as the TD Chair, or should the CTO be recruited to be an active (voting member) of the TD whose responsibility is to support the TD while the Chair is elected to fixed terms by the TD.