Hi, Still employed, and this is still just my personal opinion. On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 01:26:50PM -0400, Michael StJohns wrote:
The question was about how someone would make a confidential comment to the Nomcom that was not shared with the Liaisons.
That boils down to a question, "How do I address the parts of the nomcom I want to address and be sure that other parts of it don't hear about it?" I submit that this is very much an improper thing to want. There is no reason to suppose from the text of BCP10 that you can have an official chat with only part of the nomcom. The liaisons are part of the nomcom. QED.
That suggests that there's a need to do so or at least someone believes there is a need to do so.
With all due respect, I might believe that there is a need to commune with the Great Creator Banana, but that doesn't make my belief reasonable or true. BCP10 simply doesn't have the distinction that is implicit in this question, and therefore I don't see any reason why there should be a mechanism for it. You are and anyone else is free to talk to individual nomcom members of any kind (or even each of them) if you like, and give your comments to them and ask them to treat the matter in this or that way. But you have to make your own judgement about how said members are actually going to handle the material you give them, because there are no rules about this in BCP10 that do not boil down to, "You are talking to the nomcom, which contains others beyond just the voting members."
So maybe let's address that rather than extolling the commitments of the liaisons to confidentiality.
I am not extolling the commitments of liaisons; I am pointing out that under any plausible reading of BCP10 they are in fact under the very same obligation as any other nomcom member. If you don't trust the confidentiality of the nomcom, then I guess you have a complaint about the nomcom process and I suppose I'd urge you to propose a replacement of BCP10. It might well be that the process as it exists is flawed and needs to be fixed. What people should not do, I say, is attempt to tape on to the side of BCP10 a bunch of _ad hoc_ distinctions that are not already included, according to the concerns of the day.
The US military and intelligence communities (and I would expect many other countries) differentiate being cleared for information (and signing all the binding oaths) from have a need to know. It's unclear to me that the non-voting members (with the exception of the chair and past chair) have a universal need-to-know.
That's great. Also, the respective Parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada have a King, and the US government has a President. Respectfully, the way various other organizations arrange themselves is completely irrelevant to this. The rules are in BCP10, not BCP10 plus whatever random analogy someone happens to think is relevant at the moment.
I wish we could track every bit of information flowing to/from the Nomcom, both from voting members and the others, and compare the information flow to past years. It would be interesting to see if there's more or less leakage as the group of non-voters increased in size.
You could, at least in principle. It would constitute an open process, however; and that's not what the nomcom is designed to be, for better or for worse. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
