From
the President
From
the President
As some of you may know, there has been a great deal of upheaval in the IEEE recently, particularly on matters concerning finances. Questions such as, "Do the reserves of the societies and councils belong to the S/C or Corporate IEEE?" has been debated over and over last year. And what about the interest earned from investment of the reserves? And because of its fiduciary responsibility, should the IEEE Board of Directors take control of all IEEE finances? Shouldn't IEEE empower the volunteers in the societies and councils to take initiatives to the benefit of their members?
This issue was debated during the recent NNC ADCOM meeting in July at
Como, ITALY. The ADCOM passed a motion for me to appoint an Ad Hoc Committee
to draft up a resolution for ADCOM approval and for me to communicate the
message to the Presidents of the NNC Sponsoring Societies once it is
approved. I subsequently appointed the following individuals to the
Ad Hoc Committee:
T. J. Tarn
Ron Waxman
Piero Bonissone
Laurel Kaleda
Dan Wilamouski
Mike Smith
The Committee has drafted the following resolution, which has been approved
by the NNC ADCOM and has been communicated to our sponsoring society
presidents. Comments from you are welcomed.
A Resolution By the Neural Networks Council Administrative Committee Regarding financial matters and empowerment
The 12/1993 strategic plan of the IEEE specifies that decentralization
of control of entities is desired: "OI3 -- Strategies Seek to limit
the demands that the IEEE places upon its volunteer leadership by streamlining
the governance and management of the organization. Reduce the levels of
management in the organization and adopt policies that empower volunteers
and employees, MOVING DECISION-MAKING RESPONSIBILITIES CLOSER TO THE POINT
OF PROGRAM EXECUTION." The current strategic plan (ISF98), although it
does not explicitly state that strategic vision in terms of organizational
structure, does emphasize empowering the societies and councils, under
"STRENGTHENED CULTURE AND IMAGE -- SC1: Improve cooperation, communication,
interaction and trust among IEEE entities. TAB Objectives: TSC1.1: Clarify
the concept of empowerment of Societies."
It is becoming clear that several BoD actions this year have been to take power/decisions away from organizational entities, contrary to the strategic vision of decentralization of control. For example, the aggregation of financial control, the "power of the purse", in the central organization, does NOT empower volunteer leaders in their various roles in the societies and councils.
We propose the following principles in concert with the IEEE Strategic Plan to enhance decentralization. We believe these principles will encourage the growth of the Institute and all its entities:
(1) The Institute should exercise due prudence in managing its finances
so as to minimize any adverse impact on the entities.
(2) Each unit within the IEEE organization which has established a
reserve and its associated budgeting including income and expenses shall
be responsible for the prudent financial management of the unit, under
general guidelines on such prudent management.
(3) When consistent with the mission of the Institute and current budget
parameters, including reserve policy, each unit should be able to fund
initiative activities it deems appropriate to serve its members.
(4) Investment income should be accrued to the specific unit responsible
for the funds (both operating and surplus/reserve) on which the income
is based.I send my greetings to all of you neural networkers. By that I
do not mean just those whose interests are in neural networks. I include
all those who are interested in neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary
computation, computational intelligence, and all related fields.
