Mechanics

ACM and its SIG Governing Board (SGB) started to discuss a process, whereby small, minor changes could be made in Bylaws with review by ACM and the SGB Executive Council.

• The formal revision process for bylaws is expensive: perhaps $5,000 for a membership-wide ballot.
• ACM and SGB suggested that this historical update in voting might qualify as a small, mnor change.
• It took a couple years for ACM and SGB to refine their new process.
• In the meantime, the SIGCSE Board continued a review of items to refine.
• Ultimately, ACM and SGB did put a new process in place, BUT
• the SGB Executive Council decided the SIGCSE revision did not qualify.

Opportunity for Refinements

• The 2001 bylaws change indicated language should be gender neutral, but ACM's copy of the approved bylaws did not have all updates made. (The nature of the inconsistencies is not clear — ACM, SIGCSE, others?)
• ACM suggested that the area of Technical Committees made our bylaws cluttered and messy, and SIGCSE has never had Technical Committees. ACM recommended that this unused artifact be dropped.
• ACM policies and procedures have evolved. For example, now the Treasurer rather than the Chair is responsible for financial reporting.
• The previous format for bylaws, as suggested by ACM, used to organize tasks by function, rather than by position. Thus, functions of the SIGCSE Board or Chair were scattered throughout the document. More recently, it has seemed clearer to organize the functions by Board or position. In such cases, the responsibilities are largely the same, but the organization of the document would be different.

created 6 March 2009 last revised 6 March 2009

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