The letter below was sent by the Chair of our new Governance Taskforce to key activists on 19 August 2013.
As many of you know, decisions made at the Extraordinary General Meeting held in January 2013 led to motions being debated and passed at April's AGM, calling for the setting up of a Governance Taskforce (GTF) to review decision making, democracy and accountability in AIUK and between AIUK and the international movement. The first meeting of the GTF took place on 27 July. At that meeting, I was elected as the Chair and it was agreed that I would send updates to our activists. As we go forward, we will produce more formal reports but at the moment I just want to let you know that the work has begun.
We have set up four sub-committees on the following:
We have also agreed that each sub-committee and the GTF would consider the following cross cutting issues:
i) Facilitating ordinary members' role in governance.
ii) Human relationships and formal systems and the balance between these two.
iii) Tension between competency and democracy
iv) Lessons learnt from the EGM
v) Culture and values
The sub-committees are meeting and producing initial reports over the summer. These will be discussed at the next GTF meeting on 12 October following which we will be setting out the timetable for reports/recommendations/decisions and letting you know how you will be able to be involved in the review.
Sheila Banks
Chair, Governance Task Force