Steering Group

For the UK TRE Community, the Steering Group is the body through which community decisions are ratified, transforming discussions into strategic direction and actionable initiatives. The group may offer advice, monitor progress, allocate resources, and address challenges to ensure successful outcomes and effective implementation of plans.

As the UK TRE Community’s primary focus is to act as a signposting and convening body for the TRE space in the UK and beyond, the role of the Steering Group is crucial to ensure fair representation of ideas and perspectives.

This document lays out the responsibilities of the Steering Group, as well as how members can join and leave their position.

Responsibilities

Official review

The Steering Group is primarily responsible for using community feedback to make an official decision on community endeavours.

This includes but is not limited to:

When performing their role, the Steering Group will predominantly meet online. The notes from the meeting will be made openly available, as will any decisions that are made.

The Steering Group will make decisions based on Community Consensus by considering the existing discussion relating to an initiative, and Community Principles.

For details on how these decisions are made, please see the Consensus, Review and Objection Management process document.

Structure

The Steering Group is made up of a minimum of 3 and maximum of 7 members of the community, and members within the Steering Group are referred to as co-chairs.

The initial Steering Group has been set up with co-founders/early members of the community in order to get the community up and running.

Formal election of Steering Group members take place during September - see details for the process below.

Decisions within the Steering Group are made deliberatively, and, where required, by majority vote.

Current members

All co-chairs of the Steering Group share equal status and decision making authority. They are listed below alphabetically by last name:

Membership

How to get elected

Anyone wishing to be elected to the Steering Group must be a member of the UK TRE community. See the Membership and Roles document for more details.

Members must submit their intention to run for a Steering Group position by the time of the September quarterly meeting. They can do this by contacting any current member of the Steering Group, or by writing to uktrecommunity@gmail.com.

At the September meeting, all members running for election are announced. At the meeting, they will give a short speech on why they should be elected. This meeting will be hybrid with candidates able to participate either in person or online. Speeches will be made available on GitHub and the UK TRE Community webpage. Candidates who cannot attend the meeting in-person can deliver their speech online, or ask another community member to give their speech for them by proxy.

If there are less than 3 members running for the position, applications will remain open until at least 3 members are running.

If there are between 3 and 7 members running, a vote will be taken on the day with the majority vote determining the outcome.

Members can vote:

If there are over 7 members running, vote will be taken by Ranked-choice voting. This will be facilitated by the Community Management Working Group. This vote will take place on the day, with announcements made within 1 week of the vote being taken.

Non-anonymised votes will be collected and processed by the Community Management Working Group, who will check the voting process followed our Community Principles. Anonymised breakdowns of the votes will be published on the community website.

Elected members will serve a term of 1 year, starting from October 1st each year. Current members may run for another term.

As part of being elected, members will need to ensure they are available for up to 3 months after their term ends (up to January 1st) to answer questions and provide reasonable support to new chairs.

How to step down

If there are more than 3 co-chairs within the Steering Group, any member within the group can step down by formally writing to all other Steering Group members. Once confirmed, the Community Management Working Group will communicate this with the rest of the community, and update relevant documents and references.

If there are 3 or less members within the Steering Group, members of the Steering Group and the UK TRE Community will have to nominate potential replacements. Once the nomination(s) have been made, a vote will be held for the vacant position(s), asynchronously and online. The vote will be open for a period of 7 days.

If the total members of the Steering Group including incumbent members and nominated replacements is less than 7, for each nominated member, members of the community can vote:

With the majority vote determining the outcome.

If the total is over 7, votes will be taken by Ranked-choice voting.

The Community Management Working Group will circulate results of the vote with the community. Successfully elected replacement members will start their term immediately, and this term will run until September 30th.

Outstanding discussion & objections

The above is the current live and used process. Any ongoing discussions about amendments to this process will be linked here!