(****) supports the general tenets of Joseph Hardin's Sakai "Governance Straw Person v0.1" posted to the Sakai advocacy discussion group on April 18, 2005. In particular we believe that the proposed organizational structure including a Project Board responsible for the overall direction of the project and a Project Development Team responsible for the Sakai codebase provides appropriate representation of the interests of adopting institutions and the technical interests of the development community.
We propose that the project adopt as part of its mission statement an explicit alignment of Sakai's mission with the teaching and research missions of institutions of higher education. Like the declaration of a fundamental political right, this statement serves as a touchstone for future decisions.
We recommend this "constitutional" approach to the representation of interests over attempts to balance interests by the composition of the board, for example, by requiring representation from a R1 institution. Persons should be elected to the Board because of their judgment, experience, and vision rather than the particulars of their employer.
We agree that Sakai's core architecture and functionality should be the responsibility of the Project Development Team and that this Team should staffed accordingly.
While we believe that delegating to Discussion and Work Groups work that does not lie at the core of Sakai provides for "open contribution" and an reasonable path to enriching Sakai, we are concerned that some of this work is as important to adoption decisions and the successful deployment of Sakai for some institutions as anything that lies at the core. While we agree that DGs can be self-constituting and self-governing, we recommend that the Board be permitted to set performance requirements for DG activity where appropriate in its judgment and that the Board be permitted to act when these requirements are not met, even to the extreme of disbanding and reconstituting a DG. These requirements should be made clear in a DG chartering process the Board oversees.