Posted 12 August 2015 - 9:19pm by Katherine Dedul (President) (Katherine Dedul)
Bill #3:
The Technical Board (TECH)
Supersession of Previous Bylaws
?The bylaws known as SCSI (Edict Dipper 1 #31) and CODE (Edict Hemenway #26) are hereby rescinded and replaced by this bill.
All references to the Internet Department, Internet Director, and Coder in other bylaws will be reviewed as they are encountered and revised to refer to TECH. Any responsibilities delegated to the Internet Department or Coder in other bylaws shall now be the responsibility of TECH
Establishment of the Technical Board
A body is hereby established, known as the Technical Board (TECH).
TECH is responsible for the designing, developing, documenting, deploying, and maintaining all application code utilized by STF. It also manages all of STF’s real-world technological infrastructure, including but not limited to servers, domain names, and other network or technological constructs.
Composition?
TECH shall be constructed of four members.
New members shall be selected from open application followed by an interview with three members of TECH. This interview may take place either in a three-on-one group interview, or multiple one-on-one interviews as the situation demands. TECH may choose to subject applicants to a skill-based evaluation to determine the applicant?s technical competence. All new members of TECH are subject to Presidential consent.
TECH may also select an under-experienced member in as a Probationary Member of TECH. Probationary Members are described in the section, ?Probationary Members.?
Restrictions
?Members of TECH may not serve as Departmental Directors, Fleet Commanders or be President or Vice President. Members of TECH may hold Assistant positions, such as Assistant Departmental Director or Assistant Fleet Commander positions. They may also hold Executive Assistant and Executive Government Oversight positions.
Practices and Internal Policymaking
The Chairman?
The Chairman is responsible for TECH?s administrative tasks, including delivering reports to the President, at least one major report per year to the membership on system infrastructure and activity, and regulating server security access.
The Chairmanship shall be put to an internal vote every six months. Every member of TECH shall vote among the body to select a Chairman to serve the next six months. No person may serve as the Chairman two terms consecutively.
If for any reason a consensus cannot be reached, the President shall select a member of TECH to carry the role for the term, or remainder of the term as the case may be.
In the event that the Chairman is AWOL or otherwise not performing the duties of the position, TECH may vote to remove him or her and will immediately vote upon a replacement.
Development of Software
?TECH shall be responsible for creating, maintaining, debugging, and supporting STF?s Software.
All work on the Software must be tracked and documented on an official STF Source Code Repository, which shall be defined and maintained by TECH.
Major changes to the Software, such as a complete site redesign, or a change in the site?s platform, shall be voted on internally by the TECH board, with the prior notification of the President. Any changes affecting the the user experience, such as a site redesign or changes that would be visible to the end user, will require the consent of the President and notification of the membership before being implemented.
External Software
?Any member may submit software suggestions to TECH, however all submissions will be declined unless the submitter can demonstrate that the benefit to the users will outweigh the added complexity that comes with supporting additional code.
Should TECH decide to consider software being suggested, that software must be audited. TECH reserves the right to modify any submitted code to account for security and fit within the TECH Development and Documentation Standards. TECH reserves the right to decline any software for any reason.
Any External Software utilized by STF, including but not limited not limited to frameworks and templates, must be under a license which permits modification of the code and non-commercial use. Some examples of licenses like these are: GNU GPL, LGPL, MIT, and MPL.
Policies
?TECH shall have the authority to issue titled policies regarding the practices relating to the technical aspects of the club, including, but not limited to: TECH Training, MOTD Development, Privacy, Development Standards, Source Control, and any Style Guides.
Policies may be proposed by any member. Proposed policies are discussed publicly and will require the approval of the majority of TECH to be enacted.
Development Standards
?TECH shall write all code to the standards defined by internal policy, and keep all STF technology as secure as possible.
TECH shall, in order to maintain the operational integrity of the system, keep any changes to the Software off of the server until all members of TECH are satisfied that the code is ready for production use. Changes to the Software made live on the server are acceptable only in cases of an emergency, and must be reflected on the relevant repository branches as soon as possible. Any emergency changes shall be immediately reported to the other members of TECH and the President.
Documentation Standards
?All code produced and approved by TECH must be documented to a point where anyone with a basic knowledge of the relevant languages may accurately debug the code.
Any undocumented code submitted to TECH, be it from an internal member or an external source, will be rejected outright.
Release Standards
?Upon completion and deployment of new features, the Chairperson shall publicly post announcing changes. Feature posts will include the names of all contributors and Release Notes documenting the features.
Non-feature releases, such as bug fixes and optimisations, shall be denoted in monthly reports, and will include a list of all contributors.
Mandate for Internal Training
?TECH shall maintain an active training program at all times. How this program runs will be decided by internal policy.
External Utilities?
TECH will administer all external utilities, including but not limited to:
?TECH shall maintain the e-mail forwards utilized by STF.
Chat Platforms
?TECH may establish official real-time chat venues, such as IRC channels. TECH shall have exclusive authority over these venues, including the regulation of assistant administrators such as IRC Operators. These venues, unless otherwise stated, are considered public and open to all STF members who have not been banned from them specifically.
Any and all STF Terms of Service shall apply, in addition to any additional rules published by TECH.
TECH has no authority over chat venues created by other STF members, so long as they do not operate under the guise of an official STF resource.
Administrative Access
?All Administrative Passwords to official STF Resources, including but not limited to the STF Server, Official Chat Venues, and any Software, must be held at all times by the Chairperson, President, and at least one other individual selected by the Chairperson. That individual need not be the same for all passwords.
At least the Chairperson and one other holder of the relevant password must agree in order to change the password, and it must be provided immediately to all other authorized holders, unless the change was specifically made to address a security issue.
Other government officers may request administrative access to various STF resources if they can show that it is necessary for the performance of their duties. These requests may be rejected if the Chairman is not confident in the requestor?s ability to maintain the security of the resource.
The Chairman is the final authority on who may or may not have administrative access, and no one but the Chairman may authorize additional individuals to hold administrative access for any reason. A recommendation from the President to consider providing access to a certain government officer should be given due consideration.
TECH will have access to all web applications installed on the server.
At no point may the password for any official STF resource be held by fewer than three people, but should at all times be kept only to those authorized by the Chairman and President.
Resignation and Replacement Procedure
?Should a member of TECH tender resignation, the Chairman - or in the case of the Chairman?s resignation, any other member of TECH - shall post an open call for applications.
Applications chosen as candidates for the position will go through the same process as described in ?Composition.? When an applicant is selected, they will be given all appropriate flags and access required.
Previous members of TECH need not undergo an official interview, but are not guaranteed selection.
In the event of multiple resignations or any event in which TECH is reduced to fewer than three members, the Chairman may directly install the number of members required to fill TECH back to its standard four members, with the authorization of any existing and active member of TECH, or the President if there are none. Past members of TECH should be considered before the Chairman may install new members to TECH, but they are not required to be selected.
In the event that TECH is fewer than three members, without a Chairman, and the remaining member(s) cannot come to a consensus on who shall be the Chairman, the President may select one directly.
TECH may not operate at a deficit of four members for any longer than 45 days. At the end of 45 days, if TECH has not returned to its required four person quota, the President will directly appoint, using whatever criteria they may, the number of members required to fill TECH.
Probationary Members
?Any member brought into TECH whom is not adequately trained or experienced will be referred to as a Probationary Member.
The ?Probationary? title will last for six months while the other members of TECH train them. The ?Probationary? title may be removed at any time with the unanimous approval of TECH. At the end of the initial six month probation period, TECH will evaluate the probationary member. If it is decided that the member has learned enough to forgo the title, it will be removed. If the member has not made enough progress, TECH may decide to either extend the probation period an additional six months, or remove the member from TECH.
Probationary Members hold the same voting rights and access as other regular members of TECH, but may not hold the Chairmanship, and must have their contributions audited by a more experienced member as they train.
Accountability?Members of TECH may be removed by unanimous internal vote.
TECH may, by unanimous vote, formally request that the President bar someone from re-entering TECH. This action, handled entirely by the President, should only be requested for cases where the person in question has demonstrated a danger to the site’s systems, but has not behaved in such a way that deserves a temporary or even permanent ban from the club as a whole.
If a member of TECH violates the Terms of Service or any other STF Law while performing their duties as a TECH member, the Chairman will refer the issue to the President and offer a complete report on the incident. The Chairman will also remove any access from the violator until the situation is resolved.
The President has investigative authority over TECH when ToS and STF Law violations arise, and may enlist the help of other members of TECH as necessary to complete the investigation in an educated way. If the investigation can demonstrate negligence or malicious activity, only then may the President directly remove someone from TECH.
In the event that the Chairman is the perpetrator, the Chairman shall have all administrative access revoked and the title removed and given to an interim Chairman selected by the President.
Violations punishable by a temporary or permanent ban result in an immediate removal from TECH and a revocation of all administrative access.
Transition
?Upon this bill?s enactment, over a period of two weeks, the President will openly accept applications for the four spots on TECH. In consultation with the outgoing Internet Director and Coder, the President will review all applications, interview any potential candidates, and assemble the first Technical Board.
The Internet Department and Coder shall be dissolved with the formation of TECH. The Internet Department Board will be depublished and replaced by the TECH Board within seven days.
TECH will perform a site-wide Access Level check within seven days of establishment to ensure all necessary changes have been performed.
Review
?TECH shall be reviewed thirteen months after the date of this bill’s passing. The review will take the form of a public discussion held within Command, with the President having the final ruling on whether or not TECH has been operating in a successful manner. The discussion must run for a minimum of two weeks. The review criteria is to include:
Has TECH been operating according to its structure?
Has TECH succeeded in providing timely, accurate reports?
What projects has TECH accomplished in its founding year?
Is the state of the club’s systems in significantly better or worse shape than the year before the bill’s passing? Has it remained the same?
Should TECH be found to be failing any of these criteria, the President will then decide to amend the bill to address the issues raised, or if the issues are so numerous and large, discuss an all out replacement to TECH.
Should TECH be found to operate as expected and planned, it shall be considered a facet of the club and will continue operating indefinitely.
-Kat, President