CIRA Announces Results for 2007 Board of Directors Election.
21. Sep, 2007 
6 Comments
The CIRA 2007 Board of Directors election results were released today. I’m convinced based on the numbers issued in the news release, that CIRA’s leadership team failed to implement a resolution process for members having difficulty voting, or its members just don’t give a damn. I’m not sure which is worse.When I took it upon myself to advise David Hicks, CIRA’s Director of Marketing and Communications about my concerns about the CIRA election last week, he emailed to inform me that:
“…a large number of Members have already cast their votes, both online and in person at our Annual General Meeting last week in Toronto so the process is working for a vast majority of our membership. That said, in any large-scale activity like this involving a significant number of Members (currently, almost 15,000 strong) problems will occasionally arise. A small number of Members have contacted us with concerns or issues and whenever and wherever possible we have accommodated because the participation of our Membership is critical to us.”
Based on Mr. Hicks’ comments last week, personal dealings with CIRA staff, the numbers released today by CIRA and my limited knowledge about CIRA’s internal workings, I can make a guess (educated or otherwise) as to the problem:
- Apathy. 1,454 members cast their vote last week. Assuming the process was working as Mr. Hicks indicates, then CIRA members simply couldn’t be bothered to vote. If this is the case, CIRA has only 1,454 members “strong”. With a 9.7% voter turnout, that leaves 13,546 members “apathetic”.
- Lack of Customer Service. CIRA is supposedly a members supported organization. When its members had trouble voting, for whatever reason, it was CIRA’s obligation to resolve the issue. The lack of customer service leadership and direction within the organization was evident as I was told time and again I would not be able to vote because I didn’t have a token. It was only my persistence that I was finally assigned a new token.
How many of CIRA’s 15,000 members were unable to vote thanks in part to poor leadership in this election?CIRA has work to do either way: Find ways to increase membership participation (hint: it takes more than a membership card in the mail) and improve customer service within the organization, starting with training on the front line and smarter business processes on the back-end.
I’m squarely in the apathetic section. My dealing’s with CIRA has led me to believe they don’t give a flying fig about anything other than the cash from the registrars. Complaints about registrars that frequently break the rules they have promised to abide by go unanswered, there’s still no good way to amalgamate CIRA accounts, and it’s really unclear what the board actually does (besides taking a couple years to implement a new WHOIS policy :) )
Ben,
Perhaps living up to your earlier re-branding suggestion, I will apologize again for the difficulty you experienced with this year’s election. I understand that you did receive a replacement token in the nick of time; while not perfect, you were able to cast your vote for the Directors of your choice and be counted in the election.
As I stated in your previous post we are looking into the customer service issues you reported and will take steps to improve processes to increase Member satisfaction.
With regards to the election itself, we conduct a thorough review of the elections both internally and externally (through our independent election Returning Officer.) These reports are presented to our Board of Directors and recommendations made within will form the basis for changes and improvements to future elections.
The participation levels this year were very good…but as the cliché goes, there is always room for improvement. We had excellent participation at all stages of the elections with more nominations and candidates than in previous years. Voter turnout was also strong considering changes to the Membership population. The question of what level of participation is sufficient is difficult to answer as every organization has different constituents, mandates, and impacts on stakeholders. Rest assured that increasing Member participation is a high priority item and we will be implementing additional programs to stimulate participation in CIRA Member activities in the future; it is my hope that these programs will result in even more Members participating in our next election.
David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
CIRA
Kev: I know where you’re coming from and I don’t disagree with your argument. I was apathetic to begin with, but a friend made a convincing argument about the importance CIRA plays (or could play) in Canada. Once I’m interested in something, I suppose I can be somewhat of a pitbull, especially when it comes to operations and customer service.
Dave: I appreciate your involvement and your comments. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to wait to see what changes result and then I’ll pass judgment as to whether I believe people are really doing what they say they’re going to do.
Ben,
As the saying goes, ‘the proof is in the pudding.’
Ironically one of the reasons we opted for a letter mail delivery of voting tokens this election was due to complaints we’ve received in past elections that email was lost, deleted, or got caught in spam filters.
Your particular circumstances were not the norm – there was a keying error when we enetered your address which caused misdelivery of your voting token, and our processes didn’t handle your requests for another very well. I’m glad that you did bring the matter to my attention and that you were able to vote. I look forward to your continued participation as a CIRA Member.
David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
CIRA
Ironic indeed. As I’ve said before, I’m glad that my experience was not the norm.
The postal process may have been the right decision, David. My negative experiences were centered around the apathetic attitude of CIRA customer service and the lack of a resolution process.
No process is flawless… anybody with half a brain could say that a possibility exists whereby a member would not receive an email/phone call/postal mail and be correct.
But it was the organization’s responsibility to respond appropriately in the event of any procedural failure.
You already admitted that I fell under the minority. That’s great news! On the other hand, one has to wonder why I received such fowl support when I needed help with my token.
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce