ACM President's Letter: ACM government

Having just f inished our own major election, and in our current atmosphere where so much attention is focused on the federal government, it is appropriate to devote some consideration to the government of ACM. Perhaps because there are no secret tapes, no horrifying revelations, and no scandal, the subject will be of less interest to you, but I hope not. The aspect of ACM'S government that I want to discuss with you and solicit your views on is the form it should take. In order to consider this matter it may be useful to briefly remind you of the structure that we now have and why I believe that it drastically needs changing in order to better serve the membership. The Council is the highest governing body in the Association and "shall formulate the policies of the Association and generally supervise their execution by the officers of the Association." According to the ACM Constitution, the 25-person Council is composed of four officers, the Past President, regional representatives ( cu r ren t ly 12), members-a t la rge (currently 6), and the chairmen of the Publications and Sla/SlC Boards• Because a 25-person group cannot deal with day-to-day problems, there is an Executive Committee which the Constitution states "shall in general manage the affairs of the Association between Council meetings•" The Executive Committee is perhaps a ponderous term for a group consisting of only three people, namely the President, Vice-President, and Secretary• In 1972 the membership defeated a p roposed amendment which would have enlarged the Executive Committee to seven persons. There is no very significant concrete evidence that the present gove rnmenta l s t ruc ture is v e r y p o o r , where very poor means complete inability to accomplish reasonable things and respond to the wishes of the membership. On the other hand there is significant evidence that it could be much better• Furthermore, in an era of limited resources, there is a constant battle between various subgroups which somehow feel themselves underrepresented in terms of having decision-makers who represent their interests. This argument is frequently raised by any or all of the following kinds of people: those with major interests in research and/or in academic institutions; those who are primarily users of computers; those who feel that the most impor tan t thing in ACM is chapters, or SIGS and SlCS, or publications, etc., etc., etc. I think that on a de facto basis all interests really are represented, but sometimes this is only by accident rather than by design. How should we deal with this problem? It is my intent to establish an ad hoc commit tee to invest igate the whole matter of potential restructuring of ACM'S governmenta l mechanism• I intend to ask the committee to consider some very fundamental questions, and in order to have the broadest possible input, I would like to pose some of them to you. Any of you who have views on any of these or related matters should write to me as soon as possible so that your input might be considered by this ad hoc committee. As in so many other organizations, the leaders cannot respond to the wishes of the membership if these wishes are not made known! The first questions to be considered are about the size and composition of the group which will have the ultimate authority for decisions in ACM (currently the ACM Council). Fo r example, how many people should be on it (e.g. 10, 25, 50, 100, • . . ) ? How should these members be chosen? Is there a need for people on the Council who have a relatively close geographic re la t ion to the members? On the reasonable assumption that the group indicated above is too large for day-to-day decisions, and that a "detailed decisions group" is needed, similar questions apply. For example, how large should this group be , h o w s h o u l d its m e m b e r s be chosen, what is its relation to the "ultimate authority" defined above, and what is its relation to the other subunits of ACM? With regard to the officers, how many of them should there be and should all of them be chosen by the voting membership at a large general election? What should be the duties and responsibilities of each? (How many of you are aware that the Treasurer is elected by the Council, not by the overall membership? The reason for this goes back to the early days when the Treasurer was not merely setting policy as he does now, but was actually doing bookkeeping for the Association and really needed concrete financial skills•) There are numerous other questions to be raised in a consideration of how best to structure ACM'S volunteer government to best meet the needs of our members. I hope to have some concre te proposals for you by the end of my term, and I welcome suggestions from you now. J e a n E. Sammet