ECF Reporting of Board meetings

[Roger de Coverly]

One of the points I made yesterday to Andrew Paulson was that the ECF needs to improve communications

Past experience has suggested that when the ECF Board go silent, they are doing something they don't want the chess community to know about, or at the very least, ask questions about.

[Peter D Williams]

Past experience has suggested that when the ECF Board go silent, they are doing something they don't want the chess community to know about, or at the very least, ask questions about.

Roger is correct here about the ECF. We had to go thought a freedom of information request from Hampshire Council to find out what had been wrote about Peter by the ECF to a school that my son was attending.We got the copy of the letter from the council not from the ECF now i can not believe the ECF did not want us to see the letter

[John Upham]

I would not expect the ECF board to publish private correspondance but I would expect minutes of board and other committee meetings to be made public in a timely fashion.

During the run-up to the election various candidates made it clear that the latter should be so.

Perhaps we are experiencing mid-term blues? Only eight months to the next election.

[Angus French]

I've had an email exchange with Phil Ehr, ECF Chief Executive. Phil says "The minutes for 22 November and 16 December are together in their final stage of formal approval". Phil will post on this forum when the minutes are published.

[Kevin Thurlow]

AP did say last Wednesday that he hoped the minutes would be out soon.

[Simon Brown]

I sit on the board of a number of companies, one of which sends the minutes to the directors before the meeting, so the meeting consists of a discussion about what changes, if any, we need to make. With a board usually in agreement, or dominated by one individual, it's not a bad model.

Seriously though, paying a presumably proficient minutes secretary then having nothing to publish ten weeks later suggests to me that a number of things in the first draft may never see the light of day.

[David Robertson]

The silence from the ECF Board, & its President and CEO, is impossible to justify. It's inexcusable and contemptuous of the membership.

The silence from any individual Board member is more easily explained: Andrew Paulson sits on their tongue.

One would have thought by now someone would have resigned, if only from principle, to speak out.

[Roger de Coverly]

The silence from the ECF Board, & its President and CEO, is impossible to justify. It's inexcusable and contemptuous of the membership.

In the opposite direction, a section of the ECF website is now devoted to consultations with questions for the candidates for the ECU Presidency being the first (and so far only) topic.

http://englishchess.org.uk/Consultations/?p=20

Jack Rudd has been tasked with being the moderator. So far the submissions, both of them, have been posted anonymously. I don't know if that is policy, or just the way it happened.

One submission is a series of technical questions about European junior events, the other points more to issues of integrity.

[Carl Hibbard]

Jack Rudd has been tasked with being the moderator. So far the submissions, both of them, have been posted anonymously. I don't know if that is policy, or just the way it happened.

The ECF did ask me if they could create a fully moderated section here for themselves, each post would have needed to be approved and they wanted full control over this new section.

They felt this would better allow a 'conversation' with members.

I declined, so I presume this is the current plan.

[Adam Raoof]

"Questions for Zurab Azmaiparashvili

1. People are concerned about your past conduct as a player, especially suspicion that you might have the results of a tournament. What do you have to say about that?"

I think they may have missed out a crucial word.

[Peter D Williams]

I would not expect the ECF board to publish private correspondance but I would expect minutes of board and other committee meetings to be made public in a timely fashion..

No minutes or notes where kept by the ECF Board over what was said about Peter and his family by members of the ECF board at the meeting everything else was recorded.

Time for tea and a a McVities chocolate biscuit.

[Phil Ehr]

Thank you for your scrutiny of ECF Board minutes. Minutes from 22 November and 16 December are now published. Your complaints here should not have been necessary.

The delay in publishing minutes is entirely down to me. I apologised to the Board and will apologise to Council in April. All of the Board members have been justifiably disappointed in my performance on this matter. Let me assure you that there is no motivation to keep the Board’s activity hidden, although there are topics that require confidentiality for legal, commercial and collegial reasons.

The Board gladly accepted an invitation to meet in December with FIDE Presidential Candidate Garry Kasparov. As it was not a formal Board meeting, minutes were not produced. This link refers: http://www.englishchess.org.uk/meetings ... andidates/. Minutes from a Board meeting on 19 January are in work.

Sincerely,
Phil Ehr
ECF Chief Executive

[Phil Ehr]

Jack Rudd has been tasked with being the moderator. So far the submissions, both of them, have been posted anonymously. I don't know if that is policy, or just the way it happened.

The ECF did ask me if they could create a fully moderated section here for themselves, each post would have needed to be approved and they wanted full control over this new section.

They felt this would better allow a 'conversation' with members.

I declined, so I presume this is the current plan.

The blend of an free-flowing debate on the EC Forum and a series of lightly-screened position statements (not conversations or debate) on the ECF consultation area should result in more effective ECF communications, as well as greater quality and productivity of ECF work. The first topic--soliciting input for a meeting--is a test for more meaningful subjects.

Carl and friends: In my view (sometimes a minority view), public debate on the EC Forum is essential. Thanks, again. Keep up the good work.

Phil Ehr
ECF Chief Executive

[Roger de Coverly]

The blend of an free-flowing debate on the EC Forum and a series of lightly-screened position statements (not conversations or debate) on the ECF consultation area should result in more effective ECF communications, as well as greater quality and productivity of ECF work.

But who are the position statements by? So far the ECF have the technical questions about European junior events, presumably by someone involved in the organisation of teams and players for these. Then there's the question of moral integrity and the only named question, David Sedgwick's about the apparent lack of Western European presence on the tickets.

[Phil Ehr]

Roger,
The imbedded paper is a Google Doc. It is my working copy of questions for the candidate. The input is from multiple sources.
Because I thought it was useful, I cut David Sedgwick's question from the comment he submitted and pasted into the imbedded document. In response to your comment, I added some words at the top of the imbedded doc to be more descriptive.