ConCall-20070717

T3F - Transitional Technical Task Force

Tuesday July 17, 2007 12:00 PM (US Eastern Time, GMT -5)

Attendees

Beeler, Case, McCay, Lorenzi, Parker

Minutes

Approved the minutes from the Conference Call of June 26, 2007.

Status of Restructured TSC formation

Discussed the status of the TSC elections. The election of Steering Division representatives opened last week, as did the nomination period for the Affiliate Representatives. In discussion the T3F members noted that they expected signs of broader interest. Although there is a solid slate of candidates, only one Steering Division has more than four candidates for the two positions they are filling.

TSC Issue: Steering Division Election Procedures

The discussion also turned to the questions of the appropriate process for committees to follow in carrying our their responsibilities with regard to nominating and electing Steering Division representatives.

In its recommendations to the Board, the T3F provided "rules" such as: Any Co-chair may nominate, and the votes are cast by the committees. However the T3F did not address issues of the appropriate process to be followed by the committees. This led to differences in process that are listed below. The TSC should review these differences or questions and determine whether a more formal process should be put in place to address these.

Example Nomination/Election Process Differences

1. Some committee Co-chairs sought advice from the committees before offering nominees, whereas in other cases, the Co-chairs simply took individual action.
2. Since the Steering Divisions are part of an expanded TSC structure, and since the previous TSC was made up only of committee Co-chairs, should the voting decision be addressed as a matter for the Co-Chairs to decide, or should the committee vote as a whole?
3. Some committees have two of their Co-chairs listed as candidates, and it would appear that in those cases a form of electronic vote by committee members should occur.
   1. A process is being used in some committees in which a "dis-interested" member or Co-Chair has been designated as the "teller" to receive e-mail votes, tally them and report the result to the committee.
   2. If an e-mail vote to a teller is used in the future, it would probably be preferable to ask HQ to provide "teller" services.
4. With e-mail votes, some committees felt it was important to limit voting to "active participants" defined as those who have posted discussions to the committee list, those who have participated in face-to-face meetings and those who have participated in conference calls. All of these can be determined by scanning committee meeting rolls and the list.

Issue Resolution

Interaction Issues in Normative Edition 2007

The chair raised an issue that has been found in attempting to publish the next Normative Edition. The issue is that there is a set of interactions that are "Normative" (have been approved as a DSTU or Standard) but for which the content cannot be implemented as specified. About 1/2 of these cases can be addressed as Technical Corrections, or by careful QA annotation of the material. These will be corrected with the changes carefully documented in the Edition.

However, the other half of the problems arise from a disparity between the normative query wrappers and the normative query response wrappers. Although the affected groups have discussed this problem, they have not reached agreement. Further, HL7 Canada has asked one of the groups to provide the appropriate wrappers but has, so far, been rebuffed.

It was noted that these issues should be detected before a ballot is complete, and the QA tests that led to their discovery for the Edition are beginning to be applied to all ballots. Although the flaw can be documented, the V3 Project Team Leader (Beeler) would prefer to be able to offer a solution, albeit non-normative, as part of the published Edition.

Issue Resolution Process

The T3F believes that this type of issue will continue to arise. Although improved QA review at the ballot could have corrected this issue, there will be other, as yet unforeseen, issues of a similar ilk. For the TSC to be effective it must have a process to address such questions when they arise. The T3F believes the following principles should be followed:

• The TSC should not be directly involved in defining a solution, but needs a recommendation brought forward that offers a choice among a set of two or more solutions.
• The process of creating those solutions should be delegated to a committee or to a group with a designated leader
• Where the issue arises from differences of philosophy or opinion between two or more committees, the process must include participation by the interested parties.
• A deadline for reporting back to the TSC should be established and tracked.

Trial example

As a trial, Beeler was asked to follow this process and consult with I&M, HL7 Canada and Financial Management, seeking their guidance on several publishing alternatives that were discussed today. If at all possible, these should be brought back to the T3F within the next two weeks, in order to allow the Edition to go forward.

The meeting adjourned after 58 minutes.