Talk:Expenses 2014-2015

Purpose of expenses?

Hello. Thanks for sharing this record of the CE and trustee expenses publicly. :-) A notable change from last year's page, though, is the lack of detail about what the expenses were actually for, which is crucial for proper transparency (e.g. "OK, you spent £100, but was that spent on a reasonable charitable activity or was it spent on a duck pond?"). Will this detail be coming soon? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:19, 2 June 2014 (BST)

+1. In terms of demonstrating meaningful transparency and openness meeting Mission#V4_Transparency, this is going firmly backwards. Could we have less politics and more core values please? --Fæ (talk) 05:02, 3 June 2014 (BST)

Hi Mike! The board are going to discuss an appropriate level of transparency at the board meeting this Saturday. The ARC recommended that it be made more transparent than it currently is, but I have to wait for the full board to give their views and make a decision before I can change the page. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:21, 3 June 2014 (BST)

This is Govcom, not ARC actually. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:23, 4 June 2014 (BST)

I had no idea that the board of trustees had ordered that expenses were not to be reported in detail, going against the charity's value of transparency, rather than this being a decision of Chief Executive. A detailed report of expenses was done in 2013, but now apparently requires a vote of trustees in order to do exactly the same thing this year. Could someone provide a link to the minutes that have the original decision recorded, i.e. to suppress the information from the view of members of the charity? I find it bizarre that the board of trustees appears to think it is a good thing to be seen to be less transparent year on year.

As this is a trustee matter (apparently) rather than a matter for the Chief Executive, I have flagged it at Talk:Agenda 7Jun14. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 06:45, 4 June 2014 (BST)

I am puzzled that it apparently didn't need a board decision to make this page less transparent, but it does need one to return to the previous level of transparency... I must be missing some of the background here. :-/ Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:05, 5 June 2014 (BST)

Thanks to the member who reminded me that this has not been answered. The answer is that the board has taken the view that to drill down in such detail is an inappropriate use of precious staff resources. The page was updated today. https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Expenses_2014-2015. On balance they feel, and I agree, that this gets the balance of transparency vs. there being too much detail about right. They will all be at the AGM so you can discuss it with them there. Jon Davies (WMUK) 14:38, 16 July 2014 (BST)