Resource Allocation Committee
General Information

• Recommended Composition of the Committee
  
• Size of Committee; nominations; and 'good standing'
  
• Committee Responsibilities
  
• Standard method(s) of communication
  
• Committee Decision Making
  
• Linkage Policy (Administered by the DCN Web Team)
  

• Local and regional affairs
• Community electronic networking (including practical, philosophical and ethical issues);
• Cutting edge development in Internet technologies;
• Specific aspects of the social / cultural / educational / political / environmental / business and economic fabric of Davis and the region - and a willingness to help represent such interests on the committee;
• Public dialog on electoral or public policy issues;
• Libel and intellectual property issues in relation to the Internet;

1. The RAC should have a minimum of 5 and no more than 15 members.
   
2. Prospective members may be self-nominated or may be proposed by any DCN Board or committee member or by DCN staff. Such nominees for RAC membership will be approved by the RAC at a regular committee meeting.
   
3. The Board is asked to ratify Committee membership from time to time as new members join the committee.
   
4. To retain membership-in-good-standing committee members must avoid having two consecutive absences.
   
5. To regain membership-in-good-standing a committee member must attend two consecutive meetings and will regain standing at the second of these.
   
6. One or more members of the Web Team should be members of the RAC. Web Team members are encouraged to attend RAC meetings.
   
7. Visitors are welcome to attend regular monthly meetings.
   
8. Prospective members will be encouraged to attend an RAC meeting before joining.
   
9. To apply, please send an email to
   dcn-projects-committee@mailman.dcn.org
   with your name and a very brief explanation of your interest in becoming a member of the RAC.

1. Ensure that DCN projects and applications are selected to be sponsored in such a way that the community's needs are broadly represented, taking into consideration DCN goals, current grants and other projects.
   
   a) Most projects are of a type we call mini-projects. In these cases sponsorship implies that DCN will make certain resources available and will make every effort to assist groups to use them. DCN's intent is to give these groups a push-start in the use of Internet Technoologies with the expectation that they will use their initiative and energies to develop their usage.
   Applicants for mini-project sponsorship must use the RAC Project Form
   
   b) Occasionally DCN will enter into a major-project partnerhip with a not-for-profit group or entity. In this case DCN sponsorship implies that DCN may be willing to assist with grant and other funding for the project; help to look for resources like volunteers and vendor matches; that the DCN network infrastructure would be available (accounts, training, user support, etc.), and that the DCN would help evaluate the project. Sponsorship of this type will depend on the human and other resources that DCN can bring to bear at the time.
   Applicants for major-project sponsorship should make an initial application on the RAC Project Form.
   
   
2. The Committee reviews the DCN web content on an ongoing basis and, with the Web Team, endeavors to maintain a fresh (current?) useful, model, community web site

• for open information/open meeting/public documents use DCN committee web page;
• for semi-private discussions (including meeting agendas), use moderated list-processor called dcn-projects-committee@mailman.dcn.org. (Chair is administrator of the list);
• Use private e-mail aliases and phone for private discussions;
• Use documents attached to e-mail (Eudora) for graphics documents and portions of sponsored project applications which are graphical in nature

• This mailing list is used by the committee for committee discussion between meetings. Subscribers to the list can include DCN Board members, members of the Resource Allocations Committee (RAC), and legitimate members of other DCN committees. DCN subscribers or others whose involvement with the list discussions brings a benefit to DCN and the RAC may request inclusion on the list. In general the justification for inclusion on the list must involve some benefit to DCN and specifically to the RAC. Such non-automatic requests are considered on an individual basis by the RAC at a regular committee meeting
  
• August 6, 1997 - The committee approved a "do not forward" policy for postings to the committee mailing list, a note to that effect to be automatically generated at the foot of all messages:
  -------------- Automatic footer ------------
  The above message was posted to the DCN Resource Allocations Committee Restricted List. Per RAC e-mail policies, you have agreed to not circulate messages beyond the list as a condition of being a member of this internal list.

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  Decision-making process:
  The following statement was affirmed by consensus November 5, 1997.
  
  1. A simple majority of members-in-good-standing shall be the quorum to allow the conduct of committee business.
  2. The committee will strive for consensus with fallback - under unusual circumstances - of a 66 2/3% majority vote of the committee-members-in-good-standing who are voting on the issue.
  3. In exceptional circumstances as for example when an urgency exists and a quorum was not available at a regular meeting, electronic e-mail votes may be accepted. The motion must be clearly expressed, with statements pro and con if any, and distributed by e-mail to every member of the committee. The message must state that lack of a response from an RAC member in good standing denotes approval. Votes must be returned prior to a stated deadline to be counted. It is understood that when an issue is non-controversial the RAC chair may take expeditious, unilateral action
  4. The count of votes for and against any motion is included in the minutes.
  5. Proposal decisions are made on the basis of consistently-applied, documented and pre-defined criteria (evaluated annually), based on a resource budget set annually by the Board (with input from various committees). Budget includes funding resources as well as items such as disk space, overhead associated with training, documentation and support by individual user (i.e., total # of users DCN can afford to add during the year).