Humanitarian OSM Team/Meetings/Board/24 August 2021
HOT Board Meeting August 24, 2021, 13:30 UTC
Attending
Felix Delattre, Miriam Gonzalez, Kate Chapman, Ben Abelshausen, Rob Baker, Rebecca Firth, Maning Sambale
Excused
Getrude (Trudy Hope) Namitala
Absent
N/A
Observing
Matt Gibb, Can Unen, Rory Nealon
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 July minutes. Motion by Kate: Approve the July minutes. Discussion: Ben will summarise the OSMF agenda item. Amendment to the motion by Kate: The Board will use Loomio to approve the minutes. Motion approved.
Previous Action Items
- Board policy document - Review the document and raise any concerns during the next week. (Ben) - Done
- HOT Advisory Group slides from Tyler - after Board review, reach out to GWG around advisory group structure for the board (Ben) - Done
- Adjust and share the HOT-OSMF MOU draft - ask HOT Staff for assistance (who have worked with the MOU for OsGEO) (Ben) - Done
- Approval of staff contracts - report back at the next Board meeting (Felix) - Done
- Board to review the draft of the whistleblower process (Felix,Tyler) - WIP
- Approval of Staff Contracts - Amend the Bylaws to include “material contracts” (Felix) - Done
- Review Bylaws amendments with the Board, Voting Membership Chairperson, Governance Working Group, lawyer and then bring back them to the Board (Felix) - WIP
- Delegation of authority form for contracts - Raise this at the next GWG meeting (Felix) - Done
- Code of Conduct Committee - Reach out to Matthew Gibb before sending the email to the Voting Members to coordinate emails sent to sthe membership (Kate) - Done
- Risk Management Committee - Kate to ask her husband if he knows someone in his network to assist with additional knowledge and experience (Kate) - Pending
- Annual Report - Coordinate a statement from the Board of Directors (Miriam) - Cancel
- Approval of Staff Contracts - The Finance Committee is to review the Operating Budget and the range of salary adjustments - Rob to contact LIz to review the hiring and strategy moving forward (Rob) - Pending
- Complete the group of people in the Code of Conduct Committee (Trudy, Kate) - WIP
- Share the list of Regional Hub countries with the Board (Tyler) - Done
Circular resolutions approved since previous meeting
- August 16, 2021: Motion by Felix on Loomio to approve the June 2021 HOT Board Meeting minutes. Motion approved.
Contracts approved since previous meeting
- July 19, 2021; Letter of Intent with the IFRC; Missing Maps MOU.
- July 30, 2021; Staff contract; Ibrahima Cisse - Regional Director, West Africa - Start date 16 August
- July 30, 2021; Service contract; Nathalie Hobeica, Charitable giving investment analysis and donor mapping
- July 30, 2021; Service contract; Alessandro Pasotti, C++ Engineering Services.
Agenda
Operations update
Presenting: Rebecca
Rebecca provided an overview of Year 1 of the Audacious Project. There have been challenges recruiting remotely and onboarding during a pandemic. Different parts of HOT have grown at different rates and there is a need to both grow and deliver on the Audacious version of HOT. Leadership is assessing what level of change will be best without negatively impacting existing teams. There are dependencies across teams and the cross-pillar coordination is challenging.
The Board will receive the staff plan and budget for HOT as an organisation.
HOT is currently involved in the Haiti earthquake response.
The Annual report was published to the Audacious donors last week.
Events in and around HOT this and next week are:
- Open Mapping Hub Eastern&Southern Africa - launch event
- Open Mapping Hub Asia Pacific - map and chat hour
- Community Working Group webinar - Local OSM Community Building: Tips, tricks and challenges (two timezone sessions)
- Open Mapping Hub Asia Pacific Hub - Nama is presenting the Hub to the OSMF Board next week.
Notes/Discussion:
The Board was pleased to hear about the current situation and said that it wants to hear both the positive aspects as well as the challenges and what needs to be prioritised. Topics which were discussed were the budget, hiring, HOT’s organisational structure and the 3 organisational wide objectives.
HOT’s Impact Areas
Presenting: Rebecca
The "Articulation of HOT's impact areas 2021 draft concept" document explains and lists the proposed 5 impact areas. HOT currently has 11 impact areas, which have been challenging with a lack of focus and shallower impact. The number of projects per impact area varies from 2 to more than 100. The proposal is to have 5 impact areas instead of 11, which will be reflective of HOT’s work and are based on the bulk of HOT’s work:
- Disasters & Climate Resilience
- Sustainable Cities & Communities
- Public Health
- Gender Equality
- Migration Displacement
Benefits of this new list were mentioned as well as the need to assess how to operationalize this. Communities can still use HOT’s tools and training to map outside these impact areas.
Notes/Discussion:
The Board said that this is a great move because it will be easier to focus and use resources efficiently. It was further explained to the Board that groups will be classified within the 5 impact areas, for example, Public Health will include Vaccinations and Infections Diseases.
The Executive Committee made a recommendation to the Board to approve the new impact areas today.
Motion by Felix: Approve HOT’s Impact Areas. Motion approved.
Executive committee update
Presenting: Felix
Topics discussed at the last meeting were:
- HOT Impact Areas was to be approved
- Strategy Committee is suspended until the end of the election period
- Google Shared Drive migration has raised some issues.
Code-of-Conduct committee update
Presenting: Felix
There is a period of transition in the run-up to the election and Kate will hand over to Trudy and Felix.
Bylaws changes
Presenting: Felix
The proposed Bylaws amendments have been reviewed by the Governance Working Group and is now with the lawyer. The Board is to eventually make a formal recommendation to the membership.
Election Committee update
Presenting: Matt Gibb
The committee is preparing to share election procedures with the membership this afternoon. The election will be using the Single Transferable Vote system (STV). The following topics were presented:
- Election Sub-Committee
- Number of vacant seats, Voting members and Conflict of Interest, Q&A period
- Lessons learned from the January Election
- Important dates from Nominations starting in September to Election Announcement results in October
- Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be on October 7, 2021.
- Notable changes - Questions, Voting, Timeline
- Platform - OpaVote will be used
- Requests to the current Board - help recruit candidates, availability for Q&A session from the Voting Members
Notes/Discussion:
The Board thanked Matt for the committee’s work. It is good that the nominations and elections don’t coincide with OSMF elections.
The Election Primer is being drafted and spells out what is expected of the election committee, how we handle elections and the schedule. It is important to codify the election procedures.
Executive Director’s Performance Review
Presenting: Miriam
The Executive Director (ED) was asked for a self-assessment six weeks ago which was shared with the Board. The HOT Leadership was asked for an assessment of the ED’s strength and points to improve. This was shared anonymously with the Board. There are alot of positive points about the ED. The ED has been asked to prepare a 3 year plan to improve some points and will be good for the next Board to have this point of reference. This will also be shared in the face-to-face meeting with the leadership team in September.
Notes/Discussion:
There was a discussion about approving the salary adjustment.
Community presentation
Presenting: Miriam
Leon Lizon Romano from Practical Action, Bolivia, presented their project which was the recipient of a 2020 Microgrant.
Due to the forest fires that affected the region (Eastern Bolivia), we proposed to implement a community based mapping system. The mapping assists the humanitarian entities and helps to take better plans and leave no one out of the map.
Notes/Discussion:
The Board congratulated Practical Action, Bolivia, on the great mapping and initiative.
Other business
No other business was raised.
Questions from voting members
The meeting was running over time and no questions were raised.
Tabled topics
The following are not reflected in the notes because there has been no action since the last Board meeting or there was insufficient time to discuss the topic at a 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)
- Finance Committee (not convened since last meeting)
- Strategic plan 2022-2025 (waiting for feedback from strategy committee)
- Whistleblower process (needs input; it is in the action items)
- Strategy Committee (not met yet)
New Action Items
- Code-of-Conduct (CoC) committee - write a handover email to the CoC Committee (Kate) - Pending
- Bylaws changes - suggest changes to the proposed Bylaws changes document (Ben) - Pending
- Executive Director’s Performance Review - share requested information about the salary adjustments and propose a motion to be handled via Loomio (Rob) - Pending.
Next board meeting
September 28, 2021 @ 13:30 UTC
Adjournment
Chair Miriam Gonzalez declared the meeting adjourned at 15:07 UTC.
Minutes approved
These board meeting minutes were approved on 28 September 2021.