Gov/en/Portal:Institutions/Steering-Committee

💡 In simple words: WikiDeal is watched over by three circles of people. A Foundation Council checks the big picture once a year.
A Steering Committee checks progress at least four times a year.
Small teams called commissions look after one topic each, like fair arbitration, money or research.
None of these circles do the daily work: they read, verify and advise, and nothing here is final yet.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): This page proposes a three-level supervision structure for WikiDeal under the Ynternet.org Foundation: the Foundation Council (annual meeting, receives the Steering Committee's reports, issues an opinion and where possible grants discharge for the accounts and management report), the Steering Committee (at least four meetings per year, receives the reports of the commissions and confirms the mandate of the general direction and of the direction of commissions), and thematic commissions (simplified arbitration, audit, funding and financial management, market deployment, open calls and research priorities, with more under discussion).
Council and Committee members would carry no operational responsibility (typically less than one day per month) and would receive no attendance fees for Council or Committee meetings; remunerated commission work would be compensated primarily in Rewards, with codified and capped attendance fees submitted to the Geneva cantonal and federal foundation supervisory authorities to preserve the Foundation's tax exemption and public-utility status.
In the long run, the structure could separate into a quality-verification body, community-appointed commission members, and a decentralized operational coordination group.
Status: proposal, offered as a basis for discussion.

On this page:

• 1. A three-level supervision structure
• 2. Commissions
• 3. Roles within a commission
• 4. Non-operational principle
• 5. Attendance fees and remuneration
• 6. Long-term outlook: two or three structures
• 7. Purpose: progressive transfer to the users
• 8. Appointment and composition
• 9. An organic constitution process
• 10. Current situation
• 11. Charter
• 12. See also

Steering Committee

The Steering Committee is the founding governance body of WikiDeal. It is currently in the process of being constituted: this is the very beginning of the project, and nothing is fixed at this stage. For the time being, this responsibility rests with the Council of the Ynternet.org Foundation.

Everything below is a proposal (initial hypothesis), offered as a basis for discussion. It is intended to feed a Foundation regulation that would complement the Foundation's statutes.

1. A three-level supervision structure

Proposed supervision structure (v0.1 draft, basis for discussion)

The proposed structure distinguishes three levels of supervision, from the most occasional to the most regular. In the proposed schema, the Steering Committee sits inside the Foundation Council:

Body	Meets	Role
Foundation Council	Once a year	Follows the Foundation's statutes. Receives the reports of the Steering Committee, issues an opinion and, where possible, as in any sound structure, grants discharge to the Committee for the accounts and the management report.
Steering Committee	At least four times a year	Receives the reports of the commissions. Confirms the mandate of the person or persons assuming the general direction and the direction of the commissions. This quarterly review is intended to remain light: progress reports and general quarterly reports, checked at a high level rather than in operational detail.
Commissions	According to their own rhythm	Thematic teams, each responsible for one subject (see below). The commissions reporting to the Steering Committee are mainly the WikiDeal commissions, alongside two other Foundation commissions: the TEDxGeneva commission and the European research projects commission.

2. Commissions

The following WikiDeal commissions are proposed or emerging. The list is open: further commissions could be added as the project grows.

• Simplified arbitration commission (emerging): supervises the first experiences of simplified arbitration.
• Audit commission: verifies accounts and processes. In a first phase, audit, governance oversight and simplified arbitration could be handled by a single commission, then separate over time. See also the Court of Auditors page and the Audit Committee charter (proposal).
• Funding and global financial management commission: fundraising and verification that funds are spent wisely. Théo Bondolfi, founder, proposes to assume this responsibility for the initial phase.
• Market deployment commission: marketing, commercial strategy and vision for the deployment of the WikiDeal markets.
• Open calls and research priorities commission: priorities of the open calls and of the applied research programs. The detailed working of open call commissions has its own page: Open Call Commissions.
• Governance commission (under discussion): would provide an annual report to the Foundation Council stating, with indicators, that the governance of WikiDeal and of the Foundation remains soundly managed. Being close to audit in nature, it could start inside the audit commission and become distinct later.

Many commission members would come from an election scheme: commission members would be appointed by the WikiDeal users, and preparing these elections, nominations or designations is intended to be part of the commissions' own work. The election system is intended to follow the Wikimedia Foundation elections model, where governance bodies are elected by the community of contributors. It would come into play once WikiDeal has at least a few thousand, and rather a few tens of thousands, of registered and subscribed contributors, not before; until then, appointments and designations would prevail. Setting up elections in institutions is a practice the Ynternet.org Foundation teams have carried out routinely in several institutions.

3. Roles within a commission

A commission typically involves at least four roles, and two or three of them can be assumed by the same person:

• Presidency: leads the commission.
• Secretariat: documentation and formal follow-up.
• Facilitation: smooth running of meetings and exchanges.
• Quality management: verifies that outputs meet the expected quality.

The proposal is that the facilitator and the secretariat would usually be remunerated and external (outside the Steering Committee and the Foundation Council), while the presidency and the quality management would usually be internal.

Commission presidents would be members of the Foundation Council: each commission would have one or two delegates who are members of the Foundation Council, and thus potentially members of the Steering Committee.

4. Non-operational principle

The proposed Foundation regulation would specify that the members of the Foundation Council and, by inclusion, the members of the Steering Committee carry no operational responsibility. They would invariably devote less than one day per week to these functions, and almost all of them less than one day per month. Their mission is not to execute: it is essentially to read and to verify that execution is correct.

When they are mandated to participate in commissions, they would subcontract the operational realization of the commission's work to service providers, consultants, or employees of the Foundation or of third-party structures, without getting involved in operational execution themselves.

5. Attendance fees and remuneration

The proposed financial rules are the following:

• Members of the Foundation Council and of the Steering Committee would receive no attendance fees for taking part in Council or Committee meetings.
• When their participation in a commission is more substantial, they would be remunerated through attendance fees, primarily in Rewards and secondarily in money.
• Given limited means, the aim is to reduce cash payments as much as possible. Some cash payments would nevertheless remain unavoidable where quality expectations demand it, for example for piloting the first open calls or the first simplified arbitration experiences.
• Attendance fees would be codified and capped, and submitted to the supervisory authority of the canton of Geneva (ASFIP Geneva) and to the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations, in order to preserve the Foundation's tax exemption and public-utility status.

6. Long-term outlook: two or three structures

The proposed regulation would include an inset mentioning that, in the long run, the structure is intended to evolve towards two, possibly three distinct groups:

1. A quality-verification structure: composed mostly of members registered in the commercial register, Swiss or European, with signature authority limited to verifying quality and requesting complements in a gentle and arbitrated way (arbitrated so as to avoid strong power games). These are the Foundation Council members.
2. Commission members appointed by the community: members of commissions (not commission presidents) appointed by the WikiDeal community, and remunerated.
3. A neutral operational coordination group: efficiency-oriented, it would manage the collection of subscriptions and of transaction commissions on WikiDeal, and guarantee the technological functioning and the application of the rules defined by the Foundation Council, the Steering Committee and the commissions. It would have no say in decisions, being exclusively operational, and would probably not be centralized: rather a coordination structure of many independents and micro-providers. This day-to-day management layer is the part that would require a more detailed regulatory study.

7. Purpose: progressive transfer to the users

The fundamental mission of the Steering Committee is to guide the emergence of the WikiDeal project and to progressively transfer decision-making power to the users.

At the beginning, the governance would be managed by the Ynternet.org Foundation Council and the initial Steering Committee. One of their primary joint missions is to transfer the responsibility of selecting who participates in governance (both the Steering Committee and the Foundation Council) directly to the community of WikiDeal users.

This intends to follow the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees model, where board members are elected by the community of deserving users who have earned voting rights through the quality and quantity of their contributions. The Steering Committee aims at ensuring that WikiDeal structurally prepares for this transition to a user-elected governance model. Over time, the Committee is also intended to hand over its responsibilities to thematic committees (Technology, Market, Governance and the other committees listed in the policies index), as those committees come into existence.

8. Appointment and composition

The Steering Committee would be appointed by the Council of the Ynternet.org Foundation.

It would be composed of:

• members of the Council of the Ynternet.org Foundation;
• members of the Scientific Council of the Ynternet.org Foundation;
• experts invited by the Ynternet.org Council, recognized for their previous added value in equivalent projects on digital commons.

9. An organic constitution process

The constitution of the Steering Committee is intended as an organic process:

• Members are invited to give their opinion and advice.
• They are invited only once enough Donations have been received for funds to be genuinely distributed.
• At the beginning there would be one, two or three people; progressively, more members would join.
• Progressively, the Steering Committee would pass the baton to the thematic boards (technology, market, policy and the others), as they come into existence.

10. Current situation

The Steering Committee is currently being constituted. Because this is the very beginning of the project, nothing is settled yet. For now, this role is in the hands of the Council of the Ynternet.org Foundation:

• The members of the Council are registered in the Swiss commercial register.
• The Council meets periodically, according to the progress of the various projects of the Foundation. WikiDeal is the main project, but not the only one: other projects can be seen on the Ynternet.org Foundation website.
• The operational director of the Foundation is Athanasios Priftis. See his TEDxGeneva talk: "Ever tried to open a government?" (TEDxGeneva 2014).

11. Charter

The formal charter of the Steering Committee lives in the Policies namespace. It records the charter status (proposal, to be adopted) and its remaining open points (meetings, quorum, review and amendment), and defers to this page for the substance:

→ Steering Committee charter (proposal, to be adopted)

12. See also

• Institutions
• Governance
• Decision-Making
• Open Call Commissions
• All policies (index)

Reference language: English. A French synthesis will link here.