What questions does a new governance model have to answer?

Meta Governance
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Hello, Jovyans!

Here is a brief update on our ongoing governance discussion.

During our team meeting in March, we wrote and collected responses to a survey to help guide us in our conversation.

One question we asked was: “What questions does a new governance model have to answer?”

We wanted to capture the smallest set of necessary and sufficient questions to answer in reforming our governance structure. The following list is a distillation and synthesis of our survey responses.

  1. What are the different governing bodies and what is their composition?
  2. How are the governing bodies related to each other?
  3. Including all aspects of governance (e.g., finance, hiring, design, dev, standards), what is the purview/authority of each governing body and what are its responsibilities and the responsibilities of office holders?
  4. What are the terms (of office) for office holders?
  5. How are office holders of each governing body added or removed, whether automatically, by choice, or by intervention?
  6. What are the eligibility requirements for office holders? How are conflicts of interest handled?
  7. What is the process for amending the governance model? How easy/difficult is it to amend governance?
  8. How are conflicts adjudicated and resolved?
  9. What is the official list of Jupyter projects and how do new projects become part of Jupyter? How are projects conducted and governed?
  10. How will the new governance model be approved and implemented?
  11. How do we make governance transparent to the community?
  12. How do we actively prevent implicit power dynamics or availability of resources from bubbling up and overtaking official governance?
  13. How do we include and protect minority voices in governance decisions?
  14. How do we manage gridlock and inertia so governance does not impede progress?
  15. How do we create project unity while supporting autonomous, smaller teams?
  16. What are the “shared resources” of Project Jupyter and how are they allocated among the projects?

As we talk with the community about governance, we are keeping these questions in mind as a guide.

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