2003 SAB Vitality Survey Findings and Recommendations

Participants  802 Paul Nikolich ~1300 Members  DASC Paul Menchini ~48 Members  SESC Paul Croll 1500 Members  SISO Mike O’Conner 1700 Members  SSSC/IASC Jack Cole 12 Member in each

Perceived Effectiveness Please rank how effective you feel the SAB has been in disseminating Computer Society policies and decisions to your committee/ working group: 4 - Somewhat Effective 1 - Very Effective

Perceived Effectiveness - Comments  The SAB does not actively promote the computer society policies and procedures. It would be nice if a representative could perhaps come to a plenary and provide a tutorial/updates about changes.  Never received any orientation about what is going on in SAB. If you go to the IEEE standards web site they have that standards process at a glance, it has been very useful. If SAB had something like that for the P&P and how SAB operates, that would help improve communication.

Perceived Effectiveness - Comments  SAB does not have the professional support staff that may be required to update the web site and keep it current. Maybe have an SAB office for Webmaster so that support is consistent.  Need to cut down on duplicate messages where possible. Currently getting direction from multiple sources. For example, a message might come directly from IEEE SA and then SAB. There are multiple mailing lists and sometimes individuals are on more than one and we get multiple messages. When the SAB is passing along something from SA, make sure that it has not been previously disseminated.

Policies and Procedures Does your committee/working Group have its own policies and procedures? 4 - Yes 1 - No

Policies and Procedures – Comments  Pre-dated the SAB procedures, or the SAB procedures were in flux, and wanted to make sure unique problems were addressed.  There is nothing currently in the default that would cause us to adopt our own P&P. Incidentally, in the default/draft P&P there is a clause that enables sponsor chairs to have their own balloting services, currently this is not allowed. We should settle on the clauses that we want to embrace; keeping independence of the sponsor chair as an example.

Standards Productivity  The improvement of the relationship with the IEEE SA would help improve our productivity.  The administrative burden of raising funding to support ourselves is probably our biggest distraction.  There is difficulty in maintaining high levels of volunteer activity under the present economic conditions. There is a need business/marketing to community for industry support of volunteer activities.

SAB Face-to-Face  The meetings are useful because I get to share and exchange views with other CS sponsors.  Much of the agenda is not related to the needs of the sponsors.  Perhaps we could start having net meetings for those unable to attend in person.  A lot more communication takes place in face-to-face meetings. Network with individuals who may be on other IEEE committees (i.e., TAB). This networking can help when looking for support.

SAB Face-to-Face Suggestions for Improvement  Stick more closely to the agenda. Ensure that the agenda items and length of each are appropriate to the amount of money that is effectively being spent by people attending.  Better meeting management/time management over the SAB agenda. More read-ahead material so that participants are better prepared.  The agenda and procedures are valid, but there should be a period where free-wheeling discussions are encouraged.

SAB Oversight Support – Added Value?  It is really not too important for our group to know what else is going on. We have a significant amount of work just with the our standards set and this is not a priority.  SAB needs to be more of a support body for sponsors than a regulatory body. SAB is most useful when it acts as an advocate for sponsors and a buffer between sponsors and IEEE SA.  I haven’t seen a whole lot of it, I think it is good idea in principle, but have not seen a lot in practice.  In every organization there are gaps and overlaps and the SAB performs this oversight function for the WG/committees.

Suggestions for SAB Improvement  I guess I do not know what the SAB mission is, in the final analysis, so this is hard to answer. The SAB has helped me with some P&P stuff in the past but not too much else frankly. I look at the SAB meetings as a cost of doing business. I feel that my committee could be run without the SAB. I would love it if the SAB would give our committee a small budget just to offset some of the expenses of running the committee.  Budget support for sponsor activities would help take some of the burden off the volunteers. For example, meeting support for twice a year face-to-face meetings. Lately, SAB has been very supportive in this regard. But we do not have a budget nor treasurer. For the next sponsor meeting, I am going to have to place the hotel conference charges on my personnel account. If SAB were to sponsor this, they would be charged with IEEE staff support. If the funds were at the sponsor level we could actually save the society some money by handling the arrangements with volunteers.

Suggestions for SAB Improvement  SAB does not have its own (useful) web site. Notices of minutes and agenda at are released, but without specific links there is no surfing there for members to view old items or just reference current items. Arriving at this site, you see that SESC is hosted there. How about this being a general site where SAB members could go to see the current documents sent to the reflector, the meeting schedule and locations, other useful stuff?  "Standards" activities are grossly under-represented (or not represented at all) at "Technical Activities" meetings of TCs and TFs, at TAB conferences. Standards activities have to be just as outgoing as "Technical Activities" (as if standards activities were not also technical activities). The bottom line is this: the lack of visibility contributes to the perception that standards are worthless. SAB needs to be very active in press releases, in conferences, in publications (beyond standards being published).