As the board, we speak of running a bottom-up organisation where the lowest level members have the power and we are merely the facilitators. Stating that we're bottom-up is impressive, radical, and sounds like a great opportunity for new members to get involved - and it is. However, in reality this is not working in our party as we intended it to work for organisational, political and psychological reasons. A radical change of the organisation is needed to support a radical ideal.
Our board still operates as a body at the top of the organisation. We hold elections to appoint representatives to the board positions. These positions include the chairman (president, official party representative), the secretary (manager of secrets), and the treasurer (manager of finances). I strongly believe we are performing well in our roles, but I don't think these roles have any bearing on the board. If the board did not exist then these appointed individuals would not finder it easier or harder to continue to perform these roles.
The board currently carries the weight of all the decisions made in the party. Although we discuss most decisions in Loomio where other party members can contribute their own thoughts and opinions, we will ruthlessly overwrite a previously agreed upon decision provided there is quorum when the board votes. The positive is that we're at least voting amongst the board for decisions rather than one individual making all the decisions. The negative is that this not only defies the "bottom-up" mentality, since the general membership should have the power and their decisions should be binding, but it also means we're exercising representative democracy not the delegative or direct democracy that we advocate as a party.
When there's a small group with all the responsibilities and the power to make the decisions there becomes a feeling of exclusivity within the party. I joined the Pirate Party of New Zealand in November 2012 and was immediately welcomed into the semi-thriving community of fellow pirates. At this stage there was more of an interest in discussion of opinion, and politics amongst anyone who wanted to turn up to the physical meet-ups in Wellington or on the mailing lists. The organisational part of the Pirate Party was irrelevant at this stage since my beliefs aligned with the core party policies and the board seemed only to perform behind-the-scenes bureaucratic functions such as membership administration and organising board elections. However, as I became more involved with the party - at this stage I had made myself responsible to organising regular meet-ups of the Wellington chapter - I wanted to make changes to processes and tooling (e.g. introduce autonomy for the Wellington chapter and start using Loomio) that traditionally only the board had the power to decide. So in order to promote these changes I ultimately had to speak to the board and find a member that would be willing to support and stand up for my case - not unlike how the current New Zealand government runs or is meant to run. It was at this time that I began to feel that I could not contribute to the party at my full potential because the board had exclusive power of the organisation and I was an "outsider" to the board. As friendly as the board members of that board were, there was no way to shake the feeling that my opinions and ideas were not welcome within the party.
Consider the behaviour of the few people that have become members in the past year or so. Most have complained about the difficulty of signing up, getting involved, and the lack of discussion and general activity. The sign up process is known to be bad due to our track record of issues with website hosting and our alarmingly high ability to lose membership data. The difficulty with getting involved could be attributed to the large number of tools we use conduct our affairs - many of which the new members need to create new and separate accounts for (each tool has its own login) - and they become more tools that the members have to use in additon to the ones they use for other purposes. Realistically we are not going to find the perfect tool(s) to solve all of our problems so I believe we should look towards tools that will remove barriers to people actively engaging in our discussions. For example, we should consider embedding more discussion in social media since many people already have social media accounts and are more likely to stumble across our discussions. For people that want more hardcore discussion on better-suited tools or do not have social media accounts we should keep using one or two of our current tools (such as Loomio) to facilitate these people. However, I believe we should archive the tools that we are not actively using (e.g. the forum) - to reduce the burden of maintenance.
Listening is something that I do not think enough of us do (including myself) and I believe it is time that we make the effort to do more of it. We should take into consideration all of the feedback that these recent members have provided us and use it to help us incrementally improve the party. It is easy and rightful to say that we cannot make large changes overnight but there is no excuse to start small and grow towards our end goals. Furthermore, small incremental changes will give us time to review each change and ensure they continue to reflect our beliefs and objectives. If we decide to take another direction then can adjust our efforts towards the new goals with little time and effort lost, and increased agility.
The first incremental change that I propose to try and evaluate is the dissolution of the national board. The role of board member should be stripped from every current national board member in the party including myself. As stated earlier this should not affect the ability for the chairman, secretary, and treasurer to perform their jobs. However, as a secondary step I propose to remove the official capacities of these roles too. Only for purposes in which is required by the New Zealand law should people within the party be appointed these titles. Appointment into official party positions should occur on a per-legal requirement basis. For example, a chairman, secretary, and treasurer should only be appointed for the purpose of becoming an incorporated society, and a secretary should only be appointed when registering the party with the Electoral Commission. The appointments would bear no additional power to these individuals - instead only being the names that are written as required on New Zealand legal documents.
Each current board member should start a working group that pertains to the members' current role(s) and interests. For example, the current chairman has international interests and therefore should start an international working group. The secretary is responsible for membership administration and therefore should start a membership working group. The treasurer is responsible for managing the finances and therefore should start a finance working group. Our other board member has a strong interest in policy and therefore should start a policy working group. Each working group should have absolute autonomy and the freedom to use whatever tools are deemed appropriate for the working group and each working group should collaboratively (either directly or through delegation) assign responsibilities to individuals as seen necessary by the working group. It is unclear in this model how the party's secrets will be managed, however this should be discussed collaboratively in the event of the dissolution occurring. This model of working groups will allow new members to immediately start contributing however they see fit: either by joining and contributing to an existing working group, starting and contributing to a new working group, or by doing nothing if they only want to show their support or if they are too busy to make any time-consuming contributions.
If this proposition is to be implemented then an arbitration working group should be established to resolve any conflicts that occur within the party. The arbitration working group should not be considered the equivalent of a board, nor have the power of a top-level board. However, the arbitration working group should have the power to make decisions that resolve conflict between two conflicting parties (people on one side of the dispute, not political parties). There should be an official channel where disputes can be raised and addressed by the arbitration working group.
A working group that focuses on general tooling for the party should be created to manage and maintain a small number of tools that can be used by working groups if working groups wish to use them. The goal of the tooling working group should be to reduce the amount of time it takes for someone to start up a new working group and achieve a reasonable level of productivity. The group should also aim to make it easier for new members to start using the tools that are used by the party - to avoid the complexity problem that was mentioned earlier.
It's entirely likely that as the party membership grows the board-less, working group model proposed above will not scale with the size of the organisation. Therefore, the effectiveness of the model and the party in general should be regularly reviewed and improved where necessary. To allow a board or other high-level body to be formed in the future the constitution should define a process for such a body to be re-formed. However, it should require stringent approval from the general membership - at least a two-thirds majority of the general membership for example. Since the party constitution is currently due for a review this would be an opportune time to adapt the constitution for this new model.
The chapters of the party have been modeled in the likeness of the national-level structure which limits the level of autonomy that each chapter can achieve. In the new model the chapters will not dissolve, however they should continue to follow in the likeness of the national-level structure: no board, many working groups. Since many of the working groups at the chapter level will contain the same members of the equivalent groups at the national level - at least until the size of the party grows substantially - it may not make sense to form some types of working groups at the local chapter level, but this should not inhibit the work that the groups intend to produce nor should it render the local chapters redundant. Local chapters can still continue to focus on the social aspects of party activity and eventually with enough support the local chapters can coordinate the creation of working groups at any level.
To achieve the goals outlined in this document the party must be willing to engage in radical change. The constitution must be updated to support the "bottom-up" approach that is sought by the board. It should be easier to change the constitution when enough people support the change and the constitution should be made to be more flexible so that growth and innovation within the party is not restricted. The constitution should continue to support and enforce our core principles of transparency for organisations and privacy for individuals. The board should be dissolved to truely give the power to the membership. Members that demand change should take ownership of making the change happen. The party should become the entity that it believes it should be.