ABPSC — Develop a well-formed replacement for ongoing 'open' Working Groups.

The OMG P&P ( https://omg.org/pp/ ) makes clear that OMG Member communications are to be kept Member only. Non-Members may be invited to join Subgroup meetings as Guests, on a case by case basis, but OMG communications are one of the benefits that Members pay for. We archive them for later reference, and they are a community resource.

ALL official OMG groups – and therefore their mailing lists – are members-only. Period.

Working Groups snuck through as an undefined case. Seriously, take a look in the Bylaws and P&P, they do not exist in those documents. They were only ever intended as a convenient fiction for Subgroup Chairs (Task Forces, Subcommittees, Special Interest Groups) to organize their OWN​ members into groups to perform work on behalf of the Subgroup, and to be dissolved upon completion. Without an official process, it was felt that this gave Chairs the flexibility to spin up a subset of their Subgroup, direct them, and have them report back in a more nimble fashion.

Unfortunately, things got a little out of hand. Somewhere in the past few years, Working Groups took on a life of their own, and have been operating without meaningful process or boundaries, including inviting non-Members into OMG Members-only spaces and communications as a regular part of their operation.

This was never the intent, nor the purpose of Working Groups, and the practice needs to be curtailed. Working Groups that continue to operate as strict subsets of the Membership are fine, and MARS DTF's Working Groups are good examples of these. (Remember, non-Members may​ be invited in, but please refer to Section 2 of the P&P for the definition of Invited Guest. It is not open season to CC or BCC at whim.)

However, those Working Groups that are intentionally comprised of Member and non-Member individuals pose a problem. They blur the line between Member and the public, and weaken the benefits of being an OMG Member, as well as our ability to ensure adherence to the OMG IP policies that govern our communities.

They can, of course, also serve a meaningful purpose in outreach and generating interest in OMG operations, and because of that we have been trying to find a way to support these endeavors without continuing to bruise the OMG Membership obligations that we have.

The compromise was that newly formed WGs could – by request and approved on a case-by-case basis – be set up as open for a one-year time period, to engage with the public and generate interest, as long as the mailing list was the primary form of communication for the WG. At the end of that year, they would join the remainder of the WGs in being closed to the public, and available only to Members.

Not all WGs have been bound by even this, however.

We need a well-formed replacement for such cases, or consider simply enforcing the original intent of WGs, and keep them 'closed', and Members only.