Hi Adam, On Apr 21, 2009, at 3:58 PM, Adam Peake wrote:
I'd like to know what RALO members think about ways to judge ALAC members' performance.
Stepping back a bit, I think we need to begin with a job description, an agreed set of tasks and goals to judge performance against. At the moment performance is judged on participation <http://www.atlarge.icann.org/alac/performance.htm
using 3 measures: ALAC conference calls, ICANN conferences and ALS accreditation votes. Liaisons are also asked to submit liaison reports which are recorded.
Current indicators are quantitative - they tell you if person turns up, they don't give any indication of any work done (I could have a 100% record of attending meetings, calls and votes, but never comment on a list, sleep during the calls except for when I need to wake to vote, etc.)
How can we introduce more qualitative measures, while remembering ALAC members and liaisons are volunteers?
If social science history is any indication, it might be difficult to agree a fixed set of qualitative measures by working abstractly and deductively. But you could probably arrive at some by working inductively. Why not take a set of xyz important decisions (I guess this would have to include non-decisions, divided decisions, non- inclusive decisions, etc) ALAC has had to make in the past year, look at the discussions and process dynamics leading up to them, and see if you can identify some patterns, good/not so good practices, etc. that could enable you to define measures? Of course, it'd have to be done with some sensitivity, i.e. on a non-personalized basis, but unless you look at how the group actually functions or doesn't, defining contextually-relevant qualitative measures could be a frustrating exercise. Two cents, BD