[Fsf-india] Moving on...

[Rajkumar S.]

Hi,

During the current flame fest in the list I was thinking about more
effective ways to organize the current amorphous FSF India list so
that we can be more effective as an organization. Our strength and
weakness is that we are mainly relying on email as a medium of
communication. strength in the sense that it makes the physical
distance irrelevant. weakness in the sense that if I have to do a
particular action at say Trivandrum, we need real person and logistics
present at the point of action. An action can be any thing including
conduction a tutorial, or helping an institution to switch to Free
Software. But some activities of FSF India can be done via net itself,
like web site management and project guidance for college students. So
the organization of FSF should be in such a form that along with the
country wide list each place should have small chapter that can
represent FSF in that place and respond to various local needs that
arise in that place.

In short we must think globally and act locally

As things stand their are many like minded groups around the country
that will be able to promote the Free Software across the country and
can act as local FSF chapters, like the various user groups etc. I am
sure their are many such groups around the country. But while these
groups are acting locally they are not currently thinking globally.
Their is a clear lack of co-ordination among various groups working in
FS area. Along with it their is no sharing of resources among the
various such groups. for eg a user group in IIT will have lots of
resource persons, while a user group in city will have facility to
conduct classes. If these two groups can be co ordinated then it is
easily possible to create a successful awareness programs and small
tutorials.

We have enough and more resources but what is lacking here is the
knowledge about the resource and effective coordination between them.

Looking at he present structure of FSF India, we have a board, a
working group. both of which are (almost) dead and both do not know
what is their role in the whole thing.

Any organization needs to have a vision and an executive branch to
implement that vision. It is like the parliament and the executive
that we have. It is the legislature that provides the vision to the
country and the executive that implements them.

The board should be the body that must provide vision to the FSF,
Board takes over all strategic decision while the wg implements
various programs on it's location. working group should be localized.
ie their can be a wg in Trivandrum another in Delhi and some other in
iits etc. It is the boards responsibility to identify active and
potential groups in the country and give them the help as and when
required so that the wgs can take up programs with assistance from
other wgs if required. Board should also have an idea of the amount of
resources that is able across the country.


Board should organize itself in such a way that for a particular task
their must be one person who is responsible. If everybody is
responsible then nobody is responsible. Unless some policy issues are
involved any responsible person should be able to take any decision in
that area quickly. This will clearly assign areas of responsibilities,
reduce confusion and improve overall response time. If the assigned
person is busy he can delegate it to some one else.

For example if I am conducing a GNU/Linux course in Trivandrum and I
need a faculty for mail server configuration. I must be able to ask a
particular person in the board or assigned by the board who should be
able to give me some pointers where such a resource can be found.

Board should also delegate as much as responsibility possible. Ideally
board should deal only with policy matters. It is the board's
responsibility to identify persons who are suitable for a particular
work and coerce or cajole that person to take that responsibility and
then make sure that things are going right in that area, with out
interfering into that person's autonomy.

When ever a request comes to the list, if the response is a single
line like "can any one take up this?" no one will come forward. It is
the board's responsibility to make sure that any particular job is
assigned to some person.

Board via it's communication should make sure that the every list
members feels that they are part of FSF and can contribute to it. For
this their must be clear, prompt and continuous communication from the
board members to the list and various working groups.

These are some of the thoughts about FSF that I was having in past 3
days. Please feel to comment about them. Let us keep the current
momentum and make FSF India an agile and nimble organization to
effectively spread the FS message across India.

raj