## Secretary's Report February 2024
#### Craig Allan : Secretary

We are using GitLab issues to track our work and it has been much more successful than the previous method of long trailing email chains. I will report today on our activities drawing from the latest issues on the Board GitLab.

#### Community Involvement
#580 #440 Arnalie is busy working on a number of community related initiatives to review and improve the way in which the foundation enrols associate members. She has made changes to the way the application procedures are described on the Wiki to add some much needed clarity to the process and hopefully to attract more people from developing countries to apply. She is also looking to possibly change the 42 days of activity requirement, but at this stage we haven't seen proposals.

#### Wikimedia Conference
#563 We are also looking to possibly send Arnalie to represent the foundation at the Wikimedia East and outheast Asis and the Pacific conference in May 2024. Arnalie is based in Manila so the conference is nearby. The conference is an opportunity to build relationships with the Wikimedia movement for co-operation around our quite similar missions.

#### SotM Latam using LimeSurvey
#586 The organisers of the State of the Map Latin America have requested to use the foundations copy fo the survey software LimeSurvey. We routinely allow local chapters to use the survey software subject to some conditions. The matter is before the Board today.

#### Community ban policy
#585 We are engaged in discussions about imposing a long term ban on someone who has been repeatedly and deliberately disruptive in various communities. The most serious of the community moderation issues do come to the Board for decisions. Fortunately these cases are rare. It is important that we do act against disruptive elements with a carefully graded response depending on the severity and persistence of the disruptive behaviour.

#### New budget process
#582 As you will hear in this meeting we have been working on updating our budget development process with the assistance of an accountant Harrison deVine who is also now an OSM USA Board member. There have been extra Board meetings to approve the process and the results as we go along. We now have in place a new industry standard budget format, a procedure, a set of rules to control spending and procurement and rules for writing contracts with suppliers. It has been a major project of the Board over the last three months. We do expect some teething troubles and adjustments but in all we are proud of the new system.

#### Translations of OSM content
#530 We have a project to translate the Mission Statement of the Foundation into many languages. We are very aware that OSM is a global movement and that we have mappers who speak hundreds of different languages. The previous version of the Mission was machine translated into 9 languages, corresponding to the countries and cultures where OSM is most popular and also including the major colonial languages which have been widely adopted in the developing world. The current version has been updated in English and the other languages must now be translated. Machine translation is fairly good these days but it can occasionally produce some very strange translations. Please bring any problems to our attention.

#### It is our Birthday!
#584 The OSM movement celebrates a big birthday this year. Twenty years of OSM. We are planning for communications and fundraising events to celebrate and we encourage all Local Chapters and the other big OSM using organisations like HOT and YouthMappers to also mark the anniversary.

#### Software Dispute Resolution panel
#531 We have a software dispute resolution panel, which is a variation on a moderation team for the community forums. Its purpose is to resolve disputes that arise about our own software. There have been very few problematic disputes in the last few years, so we are doing something right. Despite the low workload the panel needs to be refreshed with some new members. As there are few problems these days we have not been active enough in reappointing panel members. Our apologies for that - we're working on it!

#### Spending Policy and Controls
#570 We have developed a spending policy to control spending by the Board and its structures. The propsal is to split spending into three categories with slightly different rules. The trigger values for the rules are purchases under 500 euros, 501 to 10 000 euros and anything over 10 000 Euros. The policy is up before the board for approval today so I'll say no more on that.

#### Improve liaison with Working Groups
#568 Also before the board is a proposal to place one Board member into each working group to act as the board liason. The board member can participate in the activities of the group but is not allowed to be the Chairperson of the group. By doing this we hope to improve two way communication between working groups and the board, which has been lacking for long time.

#### Moving the date of Elections
#569 We are looking at moving the date of Board elections so that we are not running an election and preparing a budget at the same time. Budgets require the full attention of the Board members and the distraction of an election is not productive. The proposal by the Treasurer is before the Board today.

#### Sponsorships for SotM EU 2024
#560 State of the map Europe 2024 has approached us with a view to helping find sponsors for their conference. We have agreed to include SotM EU as an option for sponsors when we approach them, but have not at this time provided further support. The discussions are on-going.

#### Face to Face meeting 2024
#559 We are still working on setting up a face to face meeting of the seven board members. Working virtually has serious limits when there is a need to develop working relationships and we believe that mutual trust and understanding can be improved by meeting face to face for a working session. We are looking to meet in May but the venue is as yet undecided. Keeping the costs low has been a major factor in choosing a venue.

#### Appointing an Executive Director
#9 The question of appointing an Executive Director is still on our minds. There are a number of reports on this ready to be discussed but bandwidth and the budget have been blocking proper discussions on this.

#### Relocating to the EU
#271 The Board is still working on relocating the organisation to Europe. The current candidates are Belgium and Luxembourg. This item has probably the longest series of issue tracker documents. At the moment the decision regarding which country we will move to is top of the list of priorities as not having a decision on this blocks further developments.

#### Comments welcome
If anyone has any opinions about the format or content of these reports please send your comments to me at secretary at osmfoundation dot org.
Craig Allan