Re: "Director" mentioned in "External funding at W3C"

Hi Coralie,

Thanks for raising this.

For 3.1, this is a description of what is in the Process, and that has been updated to not depend on the Director in the proposed 2023 Process. The External funding at W3C document will need updating to match the Process once approved, but on that front, we should be good. Practically, I think you can just delete "that is proposed by the Director and is reviewed by the Advisory Committee”: this gives details on how groups are created, but this document isn’t establishing these details, just describing what the Process has to say about them. The less you paraphrase the Process, the less likely it is to get out of date when the Process changes. I’d say that the fact that this is about Chartered W3C Groups seems good enough, and we can let the Process worry about how those come into existence. 

For the other two parts, this is a little out of scope for the Process-CG itself, since this isn’t part of the Process, and may be more of an AB question, or maybe a Board and AB question, since it’s both about money and about the technical program.

The simplest thing would be to simply fold this under how any other contract/agreement is handled: generally, agreements are under purview of the Board, with a degree of delegation to the CEO or Team determined by the Board, but as this is about the technical program of the consortium, this could reasonably fall under https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/#technical-agreement

That said, while that’s the simplest thing, I don’t know if it is the right thing to do. As you point out, we did have a dedicated policy special-casing this scenario, so it’s no obvious that it should be folded into the general case.

Another question: this "External funding at W3C” claims to have been established based on discussions with W3M and the AB, and is signed by the CEO. Who has authority to change it? (I am afraid this is a question we’ll need to ask for many “Policies”).

—Florian

> On 26Feb 2023, at 23:32, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> The document describing "External funding at W3C” [1] mentions the W3C Director in the following places:
> 
> * 3.1 "W3C Group that is proposed by the Director and is reviewed by the Advisory Committee.”
> * 4.3 "The Director MUST have personally approved it before any such contract is committed to.”
> * 4.5 "When W3C is the Prime Contractor, the Director should be personally asked to review whether the contract proposal work should proceed.”
> 
> Can anyone confirm whether the director-free process adequately covers External funding at W3C?
> If not, I’ll need guidance as to how to update this document and who to work with on it.
> 
> Thanks!
> Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Marketing & Communications
> 
> [1] https://www.w3.org/2017/05/external-funding.html
> 
> --
> Coralie Mercier  -  Head of W3C Marketing & Communications 
> mailto:coralie@w3.org - https://www.w3.org/People/Coralie/
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