Working group: Decision making

A couple of years ago we felt that we didn't have a good way of working toghether in meetings. A project was started where a group of people met on a regular basis to eventually come up with the current meeting guigelines that are used in the labs. ATM I feel there is a problem with making decissions within the ppbe. For that reason I'd like to see if we can get a similar thing going. The aim would be to have a way (or ways) to make clear decissions for ppbe.

Currently I know of three 'official' ways to make decisions within ppbe:

• Proposals can be done at general assemblies (GA's) and voted upon

  • Historically we seen that this can lead to frustration and friction as it brings an artificial deadline with no real way to resolve issues

  • They should be done on a yearly basis, but from memory I would say that the last one was three years ago. We didn't even had one for the last elections while we're supposed to have one then as well

  • Even if we'd use GA's to make decissions, it's a lot of work to prepare which means that we have a very slow process

• Decissions can be taken by the coreteam

  • The coreteam were a group of people voted by other pirats. This brought a heirarchical structure and all the problems that come with it.

  • We haven't had a coreteam since the elections of 2014 or so. We definitly didn't have one in 2016 or later, nor do I think people really want to bring that back

• There's the three-pirate-rule that sais that you can start a crew or project if you have at least three pirates supporting you

  • Personally I don't think it's always clear in what cases the three-pirate rule does and does not apply

It should be obvious that these are seriously lacking.

There has been other ways of making decissions recently:

• Decentralise decissions. What can be done on a crew-level doesn't need conformation from the ppbe level

  • I think this is a powerfull idea. It's also how we handled last elections.

  • Sometimes you can't really bring it down to the crews in which case this doesn't work any more

• Find consensus on both Loomio and in the labs.

  • This was an experiment we wanted to try for money-decissions.

  • This implies having to wait for a lab. Maybe some decissions shouldn't need this red tape.

  • The labs can only do so much, so if a proposal hasn't come to a subgroup, the decission is dead...

  • Labs are monthly at best. Not getting a decission from the lab means waiting at least another month.

I think it's clear that these are defenitly not bringing a full-stack solution either.

So my proposal is to make a working group, similar to how we had the internal democracy group

• Does any one oppose this idea?

• Who would like to join this group on a regular basis (meetings will always be open to everyone, but It needs some people that can commit to it).

• Do you already have ideas or insights or already see cases where there are problems? Feel free to leave them in the comments

Résumé en français : Ilja constate que les décisions au niveau du PPBe se prennent difficilement. Il souhaite reproduire une expérience qui a fonctionné (un groupe de travail sur les guidelines internes d'un groupe) mais cette fois-ci sur le thème de la prise de décision collective. Qqn s'y oppose ? Qui souhaite rejoindre le groupe de travail de façon régulière? (il sera toujours ouvert évidemment mais il faut des personnes pour le porter). Avez-vous déjà des suggestions/idées/cas concrets?

Wikipage of the project : https://wiki.pirateparty.be/Decision-making_process