AIP-323: Authorise Special Council to issue Directives for more efficient DAO administration

PROPOSAL NAME:

Authorise Special Council to issue Directives for more efficient DAO administration

ORIGINAL PROPOSAL - Authorise Special Council to issue Directives for more efficient DAO administration.
Link to original proposal - AIP-266: Authorise Special Council to issue Directives for more efficient DAO operation

REASON FOR RETURN

The original AIP specified a period of 24 months and feedback on voting was that the proposal is an excellent idea that would meaningfully improve the administrative functioning of the DAO and unclog the AIP process from administrative AIPs, but that the 24 month period should be reduced to 6 months.

RESUBMISSION UPDATES:

The 24 month period has been reduced to 6 months as per feedback on voting and benefit to Apecoin ecosystem has been added as per subsequent AIP requiring the additional heading. Overall Cost has also been reduced.

PROPOSAL CATEGORY :

Process

ABSTRACT:

The proposal seeks to formalise a process for Special Council to give Directives to make DAO administration more efficient and to enable Special Council to immediately implement improvements to administrative functions of the DAO by Special Council themselves or on receipt of a request from any member or administrative worker of the DAO.

AUTHOR DESCRIPTION

The proposal is drafted by @ApeforLife, Member of ApecoinDao, who is an Attorney by Profession, with experience as a Director, Executor and Trustee and Previous Nominee for Apecoin Special Council in the 2023 election cycle and current level 3 member (Regular) of ApecoinDAO.

MOTIVATION

The DAO suffers from an extreme inability to speedily and thus also effectively consider and make the most simple of administrative decisions and implement them immediately, thus leading to mulitple individual AIP’s being created to address administrative improvement suggestions. Muliple individual AIP’s to address simple adminstrative efficiency improvements, as and when they are identified is both inefficient and unnecessary if a more efficient procedure is put in place.

There is, for example, currently no fixed procedure in place to simply request that additional website links to the other Apecoin ecosystem pages be added to the Apecoin twitter page or to the Discourse page. A proposed AIP is even being discussed currently in Discourse to request a tab for ‘Treasury’ with an updated counter to be added to the website. There is no reason why the AIP process should be utilised over and over again for the most simple of administrative requests and implementations thereof, such as the examples listed above, in fact using the AIP process for it, causes additional congestion in the AIP process and delays consideration of other important AIP’s, that require funding, that have to make use of the AIP process.

Also it is completely inefficient to go through an AIP process of weeks for something that should not require the AIP process, but is merely an administrative improvement and could and should be implemented in less than a week in some cases and would be so implemented in any other administrative environment.

RATIONALE

Adding a procedure for members of the DAO and administrative workers of the DAO to make administrative efficiency suggestions, including related to the Apecoin ecosystem website/s, social media, forum, future discord or otherwise to improve DAO functioning and where no funding is required for the implementation thereof or where it would fall under the discretionary spending of Special Council for the proper functioning of the DAO.

Upon approval of such suggestion/s by Special Council, to then promptly implement same, upon publishing a ‘Directive’ on Discourse.

Also to enable Special Council to implement administrative improvements itself, by publishing such improvements as ‘Directives’ on Discourse.This will also improve transparency as the DAO will be made aware of administrative decisions taken by Special Council, whereas currently they may not have been made aware of certain administrative decisions that have already been made by Special Council or only became aware thereof much later, as there was no formal publication thereof to the members of the DAO.

The above will be considerably more efficient and speedy and futher remove unnecessary administrative related AIPs from the AIP process and immediately enable Special Council to issue and publish ‘Directives’ so as to improve the functioning of the DAO on a much quicker basis. It will also improve transparency in the decisions that Special Council makes.

BENEFIT TO APECOIN ECOSYSTEM

The proposal will benefit the ApecoinDAO as already fully explained above and so also benefit the Apecoin ecosystem as a whole, as the ecosystem will benefit from Directives that can declog the AIP process from administrative related AIPs and that further enables the ApecoinDAO to operate more efficiently.

SPECIFICATIONS

  1. The person in charge of amendments of the Discourse website page or relevant administrator shall add additional headings called ‘EIS’ and ‘Directives’ on the Main Menu of the Discourse webpage.

  2. Members of the DAO, including DAO administrative workers, may send an administrative Efficiency Improvement Suggestion (EIS), hereinafter referred to as an EIS, which may also include improvements to the Apecoin websites, Discourse, social media, future Discord or otherwise that fall within the ApecoinDao or Apecoin Foundation administrator’s operational control or purview and where no funding is requested for implementation thereof or where the funding would fall under the discretionary spending of Special Council for administrative purposes for the proper functioning of the DAO. Such suggestion shall be sent on Discourse to a Facilitator of the DAO. The Facilitator of the DAO who receives it, shall within 2 business days of receipt thereof forward the EIS to all the members of the Special Council for their consideration and publish the EIS under the new ‘EIS’ heading on the Main menu of the Discourse website page that was created as per 1 above.

  3. Special Council shall on receipt of such request consider same and approve it, or amend it and approve it, or reject it, within no more than 12 business days.

3.1 If the suggestion is approved by Special Council or amended and approved by Special Council, it shall become a Directive and if not subject to a proviso, shall be implemented in the ApecoinDao upon publication thereof in Discourse by the DAO Facilitators. Publication shall take place by posting the Directive and the reason therefor under a new heading to be created, ‘Directives’, in the main menu of Discourse. Publication shall take place no later than two business days after Special Council forwarded the Directive to a DAO Facilitator and the relevant DAO Facilitator shall also inform the person or persons who had forwarded the EIS to a Facilitator of the DAO of the approval or amended approval and close the post in respect of the particular EIS post on the Discourse page and leave a comment that the post has closed and the EIS was ‘Approved or Amended and Approved as per Directive nr._’ and provide the appropriate number of the Directive that was issued. If any proviso or provisos apply to a Directive, such as Foundation Approval or otherwise, it shall be stated as such in the Directive and in the message referred to above and the provisions of point 17 will further apply thereto.

3.2 If the EIS is rejected by Special Council they shall inform a Facilitator of the DAO of the rejection and the reason for rejection, who in return shall within 2 business days thereafter inform the person or persons who had forwarded the EIS to a Facilitator of the DAO of the rejection and the reason for rejection and close the EIS on the Discourse website page and add the reason for rejection in a comment under the particular EIS post by using the precise wording received from Special Council for the rejection.

  1. Any EIS rejected by Special Council may still be submitted thereafter through the AIP process with all the requirements of a normal AIP.

  2. Special Council may on its own implement any EIS by forwarding a Directive for publication by a Facilitator of the DAO, in respect of any improvement that Special Council has identified and wishes to implement for the improved functioning of the DAO, which may also include improvements to the Apecoin websites, Discourse, social media, future Discord or otherwise that fall within the ApecoinDao or Apecoin Foundation administrator’s operational control or purview and where no funding is required for the implementation thereof or where the funding would fall under the discretionary spending of Special Council for administrative purposes for the functioning of the DAO. A Facilitator of the DAO shall publish the Directive, within 2 business days on the Discourse website page under the heading of ‘Directives’ that is to be added, as per point 1, to the Main Menu of the forum.apecoin.com website page, together with Special Council’s reason or reasons for the Directive. If any proviso or provisos apply to the Directive, such as Foundation Approval or otherwise, it shall be stated as such in the Directive and the provisions of point 17 will further apply thereto.

  3. Special Council shall provide a reason or reasons for a Directive when it forwards it to a DAO Facilitator for publishing. Reasons provided can be limited to short statements, such as for example - This Directive was issued as it will improve transparency to add a treasury tab and treasury spending information to the Apecoin.com website and it will be a more efficient way for DAO members to obtain the information than existed before the issue of this Directive - or as further example - This Directive was issued as it will provide a better user experience for new visitors of the DAO’s Twitter page by adding links to our Discourse page and will be a more efficient way for new users to find more information relating to the DAO, than existed before the issuing of this Directive.

  4. Special Council shall upon publishing of a Directive or if a proviso applies thereto, upon approval of implementation thereof as per point 17, instruct the Foundation administrators or any other relevant Working group or person with an administrative position in the DAO and in a position to do so, to implement the Directive, if implementation is required.

  5. Any EIS implemented by way of a Directive of Special Council, as set out above, can be recalled or amended by an approved AIP.

  6. In the case of a conflict between any Directive issued and an approved AIP, the provisions of the AIP shall prevail.

  7. A new Directive can recall or amend a previous Directive or Directives and in the case of a conflict between Directives the most recent Directive shall prevail.

  8. No formalities shall apply in the drafting of an EIS and it can be marked - EIS - as subject and an Efficiency Improvement Suggestion shall be set out in the message that is sent to a DAO Facilitator.

  9. A ‘business day’ is defined as a day excluding Saturday and Sunday. The day on which any document referred to above is received by the relevant person or persons referred to, shall be counted as the start of the first day, unless it falls on a Saturday or Sunday, in which case the First day shall only start on Monday.

  10. Directives shall be numbered consecutively by a Facilitator or Facilitators of the DAO and the number of the Directive shall be listed on publication thereof.

  11. Any reference to Discourse refers to the forum website page forum.apecoin.com and vice versa.

  12. Once any proviso on a Directive has been fulfilled or cannot be fulfilled, Special Council shall inform a Facilitator thereof who shall post a message under a fulfilled Directive as follows - ‘This Directive has received final approval for implementation and is now in operation’. If the proviso leads to the Directive being amended or not being implemented, it shall be stated as such and in the case of an amended directive it shall be published accordingly on Discourse under the relevant Directive with a confirmation that - ‘The Amended Directive as listed above has received approval for implementation and is now in operation’. In the case of a Directive where the proviso was not met, the following words shall be published under the Directive - ‘This Directive did not meet the criteria of the proviso it was subject to and this Directive will thus not be implemented in the DAO’.

  13. The position of Drafter is further hereby created and @ApeForLife will serve in this position for a period of 6 months.

16.1) Duties of the Drafter:

To liaise with Special Council when Special Council requires the Drafter to formally draft the reasons of rejection or approval and Directives as per their instructions. The Drafter will then prepare and forward the relevant draft to Special Council within 2 business days after receiving instructions from them. Special Counsel can request amendments or edits to be done by the drafter thereafter, until they are satisfied that the relevant document is satisfactory to them and accurately reflects the decision or desired Directive of Special Council. It will not be necessary for all the members of Special Council to instruct the drafter and one or more of the members of Special Council can do so on behalf of Special Council and the Drafter shall in such case liaise only with the relevant Special Council member or members and supply that particular Special Council member or members with the relevant drafts. Special Council and The Drafter should attempt to complete the process in this paragraph in no more than 4 days. Special Council should instruct the Drafter within 7 days from receiving the EIS of their instructions, so as to ensure that the relevant document is ready for publication by the expiry of the 12 day period set out in paragraph 3 above.

16.2) Qualifications of the Drafter

@ApeForLife holds the legal degrees of B. Juris and LL.B (c. laude) and has more than 20 years of legal drafting experience as an attorney. A successor to the position, if any, should preferably hold legal degrees and have experience in legal drafting or otherwise have verifiable drafting experience.

16.3) Special Council to decide after 3 months if they wish to put the drafting position up for election prior to expiry of the term and on such terms and conditions as they may decide upon then or whether it be transferred to the working groups or otherwise dealt with at that stage and Special Council can issue a Directive accordingly.

STEPS TO IMPLEMENT

The Apecoin DAO administrators or other administrative worker of the DAO or Apecoin Foundation administrators, with ability to amend the Discourse website page at forum.apecoin.com is instructed to add separate ‘EIS’ and ‘Directives’ tabs to the forum website page of the DAO at forum.apecoin.com which will fall in the main menu under ‘Categories’ and under which proposed EIS from members of the DAO and/or administrative workers of the DAO will be published and listed and the Directives of Special Council will be published and listed respectively. The DAO is to Implement the procedure as set out in point 1 to 16 above and subject to the conditions contained therein.

TIMELINE

This AIP can reasonably be implemented within 2 weeks of the AIP being approved by the DAO.

OVERALL COST

12000 Apecoin as follows - 2000 Apecoin per month for 6 months as compensation for the new drafting position, as more fully set out and described in paragraph 16 of Specifications above, with the Drafter, as described in paragraph 16 of Specifications above, as the grant recipient.

1 Like

I have resubmitted the proposal, as comments on voting were that it was a good proposal that would greatly benefit the DAO, but that the term before election should be reduced to 6 months. I have amended accordingly and resubmitted.

4 Likes

In the above proposal I refer to the AIP written by Waabam for adding a Treasury Tab to the website - that AIP was written by Waabam on 29 May and it is only coming up for vote now in September month, nearly 4 months later! So to put things into perspective, the same result could be achieved in just 14 days with the EIS process. I’ll add a link to Waabam’s AIP - AIP-267: Add 'Treasury' tab to Apecoin.com

Thanks for putting this AIP together. It’s something that I had already been considering as well.

And you can tell that an attorney wrote it, because it covers all the bases. :rofl:

That’s basically the gist of what myself and several others have been saying over and over again. Even the most simple and mundane things - which the Ape Foundation has complete control over - end up in a time-wasting (and usually inconsequential AIP) AIP process.

To my knowledge, this is literally the only DAO that does things this way. And unless I am missing something, nothing in the AIP-1 mandate said things had to be this way.

The ApeCoin DAO community will have the power to submit proposals, vote on the most exciting and promising ideas, and make them real.”

And it’s precisely why we’re not make much progress on anything detrimental to the prosperity of the DAO.

wow. Really? I think you’re short-changing yourself here; given the sheer amount of work that you’re going to be faced with when EIS start getting submitted. I would have asked for $5K in $APE - minimum.

2 Likes

Thank you for the kind words @SmartAPE! Very much appreciated!

1 Like

Are you going to reduce the terms for the other 2 proposals you have as well?

The Ape Assembly has now subsequently created the positions of Co-ordinator and Spokesperson, so they will now have professionals that can assist them and I am thus not proceeding with that proposal as it appears they have taken my suggestion to heart and have created paid positions for persons to take it further. If I proceed with the Ombud I will also reduce it to 6 months, but it looks like that one is lost in the administration process at this stage, as no one is coming back to me about that one yet.

3 Likes

Hi @ApeForLife ,

Your topic will be moving to the AIP Draft phase in less than 24 hours. Are you content with the feedback received or do you wish to extend community discussion for another 7 days?

If we do not hear from you within 48 hours after your topic closes, your topic will be moved straight to the AIP Draft process.

We look forward to hearing from you.

-@Facilitators

@ApeForLife Those roles are temporary and will expire after 3 months.

1 Like

Hi 12 Gauge, I am satisfied that it can be moved to AIP Drafts category. Thank you

This topic was automatically closed after 7 days. New replies are no longer allowed.

Hi @ApeForLife ,

Thank you for your ideas [and the ApeCoin DAO community for the insightful discussions]. A moderator will reach out to the author to finalize the AIP Draft using the appropriate template. In accordance with DAO-approved guidelines, if the author doesn’t respond within 30 days, the proposal will be automatically transferred to the Withdrawn category, and the author can re-submit the idea. Once the AIP is Drafted and meets all DAO-approved guidelines, it will be published on Snapshot for the official live voting phase at: Snapshot.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments. @ApeForLife please see your messages for the next steps.

-@Facilitators

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@ApeForLife has completed editing their AIP Idea to be their AIP Draft.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-@Facilitators

1 Like

Can you explain what is the future Discord?
How does it relate to the Discord which people are using today?
Do you see this as a replacement to the currently used Discord?

1 Like

The Discord server does not belong to ApecoinDAO, it belongs to Lost as far as I know. They specifically requested me to remove Discord when I previously submitted it or make it future Discord.

Who is They? That asked to change it to future Discord?

1 Like

The Facilitators. The Discord is not official.

Yes. I agree, I think the Discord control would be best under the Operational remit of the Governance Working Group if the budget is approved that they have in the AR phase now.

It could be one of these options:

  1. Owned by the Cayman ApeCoin Foundation and Operated by the Marshall Islands DAO LLC.
  2. Owned and operated by the Marshall Islands DAO LLC.
2 Likes

Btw if the ApeCoin Foundation or the GWG acquire the discord server I think a reasonable payment should be given to @Lost on the assumption this was created outside of his current contracted role.

1 Like