Procedures Handbook
From Los Angeles ACM Chapter Wiki
Contents |
Introduction
This Procedures Handbook was developed for the Council of the Los Angeles Chapter ACM (LA ACM). It is intended to provide the Council members with a set of procedures that will help them achieve the operational goals of the Chapter. The Handbook was generated by the Government Committee with the help of Council members. Inputs to the Handbook came mainly from the Chapter bylaws, the current office holders, the current committee chairs and, to some extent, the imagination of the Government Committee. We, the members of the Government Committee, realize that this edition of the Handbook is incomplete, and hope that as the future Council members realize the necessity and usefulness of this Handbook, and with some arm-twisting by future Chapter and Government Committee Chairs, this Handbook will be revised, improved, and completed.
This Handbook was written in 1981. All pages were scanned and saved to diskette in 2001, so there are electronic copies of all procedures. A few procedures were revised over the years, and major revisions were made in 2003 and 2004.
Handbook Organization
The Handbook is organized into three main sections: Elected Officers (Section 10), Standing Committees (Section 50), and Ad-hoc Committees (Section 80). Each section has its own introduction. Within each section, there is a procedure for each office or committee. Each procedure describes a set of goals, and each goal is followed by the information necessary to accomplish it.
Handbook Maintenance
In 1981, when this Handbook was written, the Government Committee expected that it would undergo changes. They hoped that the people using their procedures and accomplishing their tasks would realize that operations could be improved and indicate these improvements by revising the procedures. They recognized that future resolutions or bylaws changes might require changes to certain procedures. The primary responsibility for maintaining these procedures is with each officer and committee chair and with the Government Committee charged with coordinating and verifying the changes.
In 2004, as of this revision, these expectations remain. However, it has become clear that the Government Committee Chair must review the procedures periodically and recommend changes as necessary. History has shown that most Council members are not interested in revising their procedures; most changes were made at the instigation of the Government Committee Chair.
In 2007, the contents of the handbook and most (if not all) of the other Chapter documents have been transferred to this LA ACM Wiki. This will preserve the data in a platform- and application-independent fashion, and will allow full document version history to be maintained for ourselves and our posterity. Some additions, corrections, or revisions may have been made in this transfer process (such as this paragraph); however, any such changes are to be considered minor and should not be construed to imply change of original accepted intent of any entry or document.
Language Usage
Because this Handbook was developed and has been maintained by various people, each with his own style, there may be some inconsistencies in language usage. Some of the more obvious ones follow.
- Interchangeable usage of: chairman, chairperson, or chair; officer, committee chair, or office holder; executive council or council, and by-laws or bylaws.
- Capitalization of certain words: Chair, Council, Chapter .
- Usage of gender in pronouns: he, his, him, he or she, his or her(s), s/he, and him or her. The general term (eg, he or she) is assumed.
Assumptions about Data Continuity
Each officer and committee chair is expected to maintain all the data files required by his position. We refer to this collection of data for each office as a Position Notebook. Upon completion of the officer's or committee chair's tour of duty, it is his responsibility to pass the Notebook to his successor, or to the Government Committee Chair if the successor is not known. In some situations, the amount of data collected which cannot be discarded will exceed the capacity of one binder. Older materials can be stored in additional binders or well-labeled boxes, with their contents listed in the Notebook. One possible way to organize the material is to keep current records in Volume 1 of the Position Notebook and move older records to additional volumes as the amount grows.
Electronic data (soft copies of some documents in the binder) should be kept on diskettes or CDs in the Position Notebook. This electronic data is in addition to, and cannot replace, the paper; because of possible incompatibilities or future obsolescence of electronic data, hard copies must be kept.
Each Position Notebook should contain a procedure for that office. That procedure is the same as the one in this Procedure Handbook. It is the duty of the Government Committee to maintain the collection of procedures in this Procedures Handbook and the duty of each office holder to update his procedure as appropriate. A sample blank form (Figures 1a1 for the first page of a procedure and Figure 1a2 for subsequent pages) is provided for this purpose.
Acknowledgment
I want to thank all who contributed to this effort. Special thanks go to the members of the Government Committee (Council year 1980-1981) Roger Mills and Morgan Morrison and to Marsha Hopwood and Eliz Manderfield for their helpful suggestions in reviewing this handbook.
Addendum 2008-12-12
Since the original Procedures Handbook was written and the processes herein were documented, a number of advances in technology have made some of the above mandates obsolete; particularly, the development of such technologies as this Wiki have made possible the storage of non-proprietary materials in soft-copy form without the need for floppy disks, CDs, or DVDs. The advent of "Computing in the Cloud" has also allowed us to bypass such problems as the duplication of data inherent in a partially on-line/partially hard-copy storage solution. This situation is especially prominent with respect to the Position Notebooks, as well as the storage, distribution, availability, and "passing on" of the information contained in them.
For these reasons, the Position Notebooks for the LA ACM have been migrated to an on-line format contained in this Wiki. They are accessible from the Position Notebooks links on this page, as well as from any of the procedure pages for specific LA ACM officers. The original hard-copy notebooks have been scanned into PDF documents, and these scans are also available on-line directly from this Wiki.
In the original versions, notebooks for each officer contained pertinent information required by that office, as well as copies of Chapter and National ACM documentation which was needed by each officer. Much of that information was and is common, creating a duplication/redundancy headache whenever one of these common documents was updated or modified. The new Wiki methodology will present a Position Notebooks Main Page, on which links to the common notebook information can be found, as well as a link to the position notebook section of the Wiki page for each of the officers. This architecture will cut down greatly on the amount of duplication, will place the data on-line for secure, robust, permanent storage and easy access, and will ease the maintenance and verification tasks for all involved.
