Concall-20080407

TSC - Technical Steering Committee

Monday, April 7th, 2008 11:00 AM (US Eastern Time, GMT -5)
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back to TSC Minutes and Agendas

Attendance

Expected

• CTO: John Quinn
• Domain Experts: Jim Case (primary), Austin Kreisler (alternate)
• Foundation & Technology: Ioana Singureanu (primary), Woody Beeler (alternate)
• Structure & Semantic Design: Calvin Beebe (primary), Gregg Seppala (alternate)
• Technical & Support Services: Ken McCaslin (primary), Helen Stevens Love (alternate)
• Affiliate: Frank Oemig,
• ARB Chair: Charlie Mead
• HQ: Karen Van Hentenryck

invited

• Charles Jaffe (CEO); Ed Hammond (HL7 Chair); Chuck Meyer (HL7 Vice Chair)

Agenda

1. (5 min) Meeting Admin
   1. Roll Call - Quorum was estabished with the following individuals participating on the call: Jim Case, John Quinn, Charlie McCay, Austin Kreisler, Gregg Seppala, Ioana Singureanu, Calvin Beebe, Ken McCaslin and Karen Van Hentenryck. McCay called the meeting to order at 11:05 am ET.
   2. Accept Agenda - McCaslin asked to have the Project Services Committee discussion removed from the agenda. Freida Hall would like to discuss this issue at the working group meeting, not on the conference call. McCaslin requested that we add the May WGM planning as the first agenda item on today’s call. The agenda was unanimously approved as modified.
   3. Approve Minutes from concall-20080331 - MOTION by McCaslin: To approve the minutes as corrected (Case has a few minor corrections that he will email to Van Hentenryck); seconded by Case. The motion passed unanimously.
   4. Ballot Transition Issues - McCay reported that this is an opportunity to discuss the recent email exchanges regarding concern over two changes to the ballot rules: (1) the possibility of normative documents passing after a single ballot, and (2) ballot pools closing two weeks before the ballot close date. McCay reported that people were surprised by the new rules, although McCay did a great job reporting the benefits of the changes. Clearly, we need to communicate these changes broadly and then decide whether we will strictly apply them for the current ballot cycle. Kreisler understands that normative ballot pools are closed following the initial round of balloting but asked whether that rules also applies to informative and DSTU ballot pools. Chuck Meyer responded to Kreisler’s comments, noting that conceptually, a DSTU or informative document should be a single cycle. We did not make a specific statement regarding closing the ballot pools after the initial round of balloting for review levels. The intent of the GOM is that if there are repeat cycles for the review ballots, the ballot pool would be limited to those who previously joined the pool. Kreisler expressed concern about the quality of ballots that are limited in this manner. He also noted that people have expressed concern over being removed from the voting ballot pool if they submitted an abstention. Some individuals have suggested that they will automatically negative vote ballots for quality issues. McCay noted that a suggestion made by D. Markwell would prohibit any ballot that fails three times in a row to be balloted as is again. Instead, the document, including its scope, should be re-thought, and, if appropriate, brought to ballot later as a new and improved document. Kreisler suggested that scope changes in subsequent ballots should definitely require a new ballot as a different document. If we can drive down the number of ballots we should see an improvement in quality. Committees tend to rush to make the next ballot cycle and in the rush to meet the deadline, quality suffers. There was a suggestion that co-chairs sign off on the quality of their ballot. McCay suggests that committees be given the option to withdraw a document and open a new ballot if they feel there is insufficient interest/representation in the current ballot pool. The TSC could also re-open a ballot pool. Re-opening ballot pools for review items is straight forward. It is trickier to re-open a ballot pool on a normative document that has been withdrawn from ballot, and particularly difficult to manage the paperwork/documentation as it relates to ANSI and projects.

The call adjourned at 11:55 am ET.

1. Standing Committee Reports/For Review Only
   1. CEO Report -
   2. CTO Report -[1]
   3. ARB report -
   4. Affiliates Report
   5. Domain Experts -
   6. Foundation & Technology -
   7. Structure & Semantic Design -
   8. Technical & Support Services -