ITI Technical Committee Voting Procedures

Voting on committee activities

The following text describes the voting procedures used by the ITI Technical committee in its support of the Governance procedures adopted by IHE International in the Fall of 2007. In order to understand this page you must first understand the basic governance procedures adopted by IHE International. Please review the following links:

• IHE Member Organizations - lists all current organizations which have been recognized as members of IHE.
• IHE Governance - current version of the IHE Governance.
• Application to become IHE Member Organization - to become an IHE Member Organization. Its free so do it today!
• Voting - describes the process for having and maintaining voting rights on a committee
• Roster - high level description of the roster of a committee
• ITI Technical Committee Roster - to find your organizations current status in terms of voting rights.

Every participant on the committee must be a designated representative of an IHE Member Organization.

Review Voting for a description of how an organization acquires and maintains voting privileges. It is critical that those who have voting rights participate consistently. In order for decisions to be made we are required to have a quorum of 50% of the voting members participate. We have agreed to the following procedures to encourage strong participating from all voting members so that the work of the committee will not be delayed due to lack of a quorum.

Meeting types

• Meetings will be declared as discussion or decision meetings.
  • At discussion meetings there will be no voting or decisions made, it will allow only for technical discussion of the issues on a particular topic. Participating in a discussion meeting will not count towards maintaining voting rights. Minutes from discussion meetings will not be voted on for approval.
  • At decision meetings there may be votes or conclusions drawn. Minutes will be approved after the meeting by email ballot. Participating in the meeting counts towards maintaining voting rights. Response to the minutes approval email ballot counts separately towards maintaining voting rights.

Email ballots

• An email ballot is equivalent to a decision meeting in terms of consideration for maintenance of voting privileges. At present we have email ballots for: approval of minutes, CP ballots, co-chair election, IHE international board representative election.
• For email ballots all votes must be submitted by email and must be submitted by the due date.
• Email ballot due date will be two weeks from release.

Voting at Face-to-face and tcon meetings

• For face-to-face and tcon meetings only those attending may cast a vote. Those not attending may designate a proxy or abstain by email. For face-to-face meetings, attendance can be either in person or over the phone.
• Voting at face-to-face and tcon meetings will be:
  • orally by voice poll
  • submitted by email to the committee secretary at the time of the vote
  • through a webex poll
• The co-chairs will make the decision as to which voting process will be used depending on the gravity of the issue.

Proxy

• Each member may carry one proxy from another member. The proxy must be declared prior to the beginning of the meeting. It is declared by the bestower of the proxy via email to the secretary, by copy to the co-chairs and by copy to the receiver of the proxy. Proxies cannot be used for email ballots. The term "member" here refers to a member organization. The holder of the proxy will be a Voting or Alternate member, but no one member organization can vote more than one proxy. Any conflict of a member being bestowed several proxies must be resolved by the beginning of the meeting.

Abstain by email

• For purpose of maintaining voting rights for members unable to attend meetings, it is possible to submit an "abstain" email vote to the secretary prior to the beginning of the meeting. Any vote received after the beginning of the meeting will be discarded (i.e. an "abstain" email vote received on the second day of a one week meeting will not count for maintaining voting rights)

Closed Issues

• How to handle one person who represents multiple organizations. Answer: every person must be associated with exactly one IHE Member Organization for voting purposes.
• How to handle votes for people unable to attend meetings (because of time zone for instance). Answer: allowing proxy but limit it to one per member and allowing "abstain" email vote submitted prior to the beginning of the meeting.

Voting for board representative

Note: Although the following was agreed to in November 2007 the actual rollout of voting for a board representative followed a different process as requested by the sponsor. This section remains to keep a record of the original agreement. It does not reflect the actual process that was used.

Under the governance rules each IHE development domain selects one representative and one alternate to the IHE International Board. Prior to the adoption of the governance rules all co-chairs were automatically a part of the IHE governing body, called the Strategic Development Committee. The IHE International Board replaces the Strategic Development Committee and representatives are elected from within the IHE membership. The ITI domain will select its representative and alternate using the following process:

1. Sponsor canvasses co-chairs to see who is interested in serving on the Board. Co-chairs are encouraged to state if they are running for another position on the board for which they qualify.
2. Sponsor prepares a slate of remaining candidates.
3. Sponsor calls an email ballot of the ITI Planning and Technical committees. each member gets one vote even if they are members of both committees.
4. The sponsor tallies the vote and announces results. Top vote getter is board member, second vote getter is alternate.