GÉANT Special Interest Group – Management of Service Portfolios (SIG-MSP)

Charter

I. Context and principles

1. GÉANT Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are established under the auspices of GÉANT in order to create an open forum where experts from its community exchange information, knowledge, ideas and best practices about specific technical or other areas of business relevant to the research and education networking community.

2. Motivations, aims and objectives:

The GÉANT SIG on Management of Service Portfolios is the successor of the former TERENA / GÉANT Task Force on Management of Service Portfolios (aka. TF-MSP). The main aims of the SIG are to:

• promote collaboration between research and education networking organisations in Europe and other regions on the topics of strategic, business and cooperative management of services. Example areas of interest include but are not limited to:
  • strategic approaches to management and the management of services;
  • product and service lifecycles;
  • customer support;
  • service level agreements;
  • procurement;
  • promoting the implementation of the Green Agenda;
  • user engagement;
  • efficiencies in economies of scale through e.g. aggregating demand, service sharing;
  • growing the business – which groups to target.
• provide a forum to promote the development and execution of best practices in planning, sourcing and delivering services to customers. This will be achieved through group meetings, the use of online collaborative tools, collating and dissemination of information or organising pilot projects;
• provide inputs, discussions, ideas and feedback that ultimately help participants in their business as usual with their own target groups, users, other target communities and individual stakeholders;
• liaise with other groups through joint meetings / workshops / projects / specific tasks on areas of overlapping interest or common need, in particular SIG-Marcomms;
• try to build up active participation in the group;
• provide feedback on initiatives that can serve as inspiration or recommendations for follow up within the GÉANT Project or other projects and initiatives.

3. The SIG will be known as SIG-MSP (Management of Service Portfolios)

II. Initiation

1a. “At least 3 NRENs or other organisations support the creation of the SIG and are willing to actively participate.”

b. “An initial Steering Committee (SC) of 3-5 individuals nominated by the supporting organisations is established by simple agreement of the requesting NRENs or other organisations.”

The following individuals agreed to be the first members of the SIG-MSP Steering Committee and were approved on the mailing list and by a show of hands at the April 2016 meeting in Ljubljana:

• Martin Bech (DeIC – Chair)            
  
• Walter van Dijk (SURFnet)
• Harri Kuusisto (CSC/Funet)
• Alberto Pérez (RedIRIS)
• Mark Tysom (Jisc)

c. “The SC informs GÉANT about the creation of the SIG by submitting the detailed Charter document.”

This document was submitted on 15 April 2016 for review by the GÉANT Community Committee on 26 April 2016.

d. “If GÉANT agrees, the new SIG has been created.”

Approval for SIG-MSP was given by the GÉANT Executive Team. 

2. “Once the SIG has been created, GÉANT will provide continuous support subject to yearly monitoring.”

What will this monitoring entail?

-       Number of individuals attending meetings as total per year and average per meeting;

-       Average number of presentation topics per meeting, of which how many ‘external’ speakers, how many organisations represented;

-       Annual evaluation of the value of SIG-MSP meetings through a mailing list ‘survey’;

-       Number of discussions / meetings / topics shared with other SIGs or other communities.

III. Operations, composition, and roles

1. SIG-MSP is to keep the strengths and interests of the community, to continue sharing and investigating within the spirit of openness and collaboration.

2. The SIG should act as a catalyst, organising virtual and face-to-face meetings, small workshops, training or BoFs co-located with other related group-meetings or relevant conferences.

3. Should the SIG produce any kind of results, these shall be made available in the public domain.

4. Participation in SIG-MSP is open to any clearly identified organisations or individuals, provided that the other SIG participants are sufficiently informed about their interest and intentions.

5. The SIG is collectively led by its Steering Committee (SC = 3-5 voluntary members) nominated by its participants and appointed by GÉANT for a two-year term of office that is interruptible and/or renewable.

6. The SC is responsible for the business of the SIG. The SC takes decisions primarily by consensus or by simple majority within the SC. If a decision cannot be made, GÉANT is responsible for the decision.

7. The SC is also responsible for producing brief annual reports to GÉANT about the progress of the SIG according to the pre-defined yearly plan and Key Performance Indicators.

KPIs

Number of individuals attending meetings                   
 as 1) total per year and                                               ≥ 45
2) average per meeting,                                                           ≥ 24
3) year total from GÉANT staff,                                                ≥ 5
number of
organisations represented from
4) membership and                                                      ≥ 15
5) other organisations.                                                 ≥ 3

Topics:
6) average number of presentations per                                   ≥ 7
meeting,
7) number of ‘external’ speakers per year,                   ≥ 1
8) number organisations presenting on average;                     ≥ 5

A yearly evaluation within the mailing list                    Report on satisfaction levels and how results
                                                                                    will inform future activities

Number of discussions / meetings / topics shared         
with other groups                                                         ≥ 1/y

IV. Termination

1. A SIG has no pre-defined mandate or expiration date, but its support, subject to yearly monitoring by GÉANT, can be terminated if one of the following situations occurs:

a. the SC has fewer than 3 members for a 3-month period;

b. the SC collectively requests the termination of the SIG;

c. the yearly assessment results are unsatisfactory;

d. any of the SIG participants, subject to detailed investigation by GÉANT, explicitly requests the termination of the SIG;

e. GÉANT decides to terminate the SIG.

2. Appeals by any of the SIG participants can be submitted to GÉANT; these shall be resolved within 3 months.

3. After detailed investigations of the aforementioned situations and potential appeals, the decision of GÉANT about the SIG support is final.

V. Resources and support

1. As long as the SIG is supported by GÉANT, GÉANT will provide the following services:
a. mailing list(s) and public web archive(s) under the geant.org domain;

tf-msp@lists.geant.org (will need to be changed to sig-msp@lists.geant.org) https://www.terena.org/activities/tf-msp/ (will ultimately need to be archived and / or content transferred to new / updated wiki space)

b. maintenance of wiki page(s);

Yes – as main presence for the group.

c. website - on request and as decided to be appropriate by GÉANT;

n/a

d. online survey tool - on request;

e. social media, news, and annual report coverage – on request and as decided to be appropriate by GÉANT.

2. In the case of termination of SIG-MSP support, the transition of services a), b), and c) to other providers is ensured by GÉANT.

3. Official minutes keeping, AV recording or other archiving is subject to discussion with the GÉANT employee assigned to support the SIG.

For SIG-MSP, this employee is Annabel Grant, with support from Nadelina Sandu.

4. A SIG has no dedicated budget other than the expenses of GÉANT (detailed in V. 1.).

5. GÉANT may find internal or external funding sources (e.g., projects, commercial sponsors) to cover the expenses of SIG support, as appropriate.