[LTER-im-rep] Organizational considerations re: LTER NIMO

[Remillard, Suzanne]

Hi Philip and others,

I have been thinking about this and Don and I had a conversation earlier in the week.  Today is Theresa's last day of week and things have been pretty hectic around here.  We're sure going to miss her!

I wanted to make some comments prior to the VWC's next week.  I'm not 100% sure where the current documents are located, if there are any. So, I'm going off of material dated prior to our IM meeting. I have to say that it sure seems like the Operations Committee (OC) will replace the nebulous tasks of NISAC.  NISAC really had no authority, was purely advisory and as PASTA came into the picture, it's role was sort of redefined.  I would think that the representation of scientists and IMs on this OC are really going to be providing the input that NISAC would have provided and seems to be a duplication in efforts.  Plus, we likely don't have enough volunteers to serve on more than one committee.

On the other hand, I feel that IMEXEC is still a valuable and needed committee.  There are things that IMEXEC would do that are not covered by the OC, like organizing annual meetings, working groups that haven't quite made the radar of OC (developing the 'service requests').  The TOR may need to be amended because roles and function will likely change somewhat.

Do others see it differently?

Thanks, Suzanne

From: Philip Tarrant [mailto:philip.tarrant at asu.edu]
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2016 7:24 AM
To: im-rep at lists.lternet.edu; Remillard, Suzanne <suzanne.remillard at oregonstate.edu>; Stevan Earl <stevan.earl at asu.edu>
Subject: Organizational considerations re: LTER NIMO

Dear colleagues,

Now that the NIMO proposal has been submitted, and on the assumption it will be funded, we want to start thinking about the future of our existing IM organization.

When we originally defined the NIMO we drafted the concept of a Governance Board/Operations Committee that would oversee and guide NIMO operations. This is the model used in the proposal and we have the commitment of the EB to find us our scientist (3) representation. One of the things we envisaged was that this new entity might supersede some of our existing organization and the time has come to discuss this idea in more detail. The two committees that this Operations Committee overlaps most significantly are NISAC and IM Exec, and while we do not have the authority to dissolve NISAC (we can, of course, recommend changes), we would like to explore the relevance of these two committees in conjunction with the new organization.


Please "reply all" to this e-mail and share your thoughts with the full IMC, so that we can have a more complete discussion at next week's VTCs. As a reminder, the watercoolers will be on Monday, February 1, 3PM EST and Tuesday, February 2, 12PM EST. If you haven't already signed up you will find the Doodle poll here:



http://doodle.com/poll/4dv8na97p7bwwm43

I look forward to an interesting dialog over the next few days.

Regards,
Philip Tarrant
Director, Informatics and Technology | Senior Sustainability Scientist
Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability | Arizona State University
  Sustainable data - use, preserve, re-use

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