Critical Points

[Jacob Barhak]

Ahmet and Lealem sent me a membership termination letter. I asked for this letter to become public. It is only appropriate in a committee that should have public impact. Note that nomination letters are public as well as our discussions, there should be no reason not to publish other documents, especially if asked for.

I already severed ties to the committee yet I still owe one last duty of providing feedback - it is after all part of a committee member duties. I will try to summarize my feedback in this post.

I already mentioned openness. It is my first critical point:
The committee started fully open. Yet recently has been closing and not operating transparently. The last private internal vote regarding publication is a good example of regression from open policy. Since openness was announced to the public in IMSH as part of the committee elements, not living up to this characteristic is serious. The leads should be held responsible for implementing this openness. And this includes making relevant discussions and especially votes public.

Another element that requires scrutiny is commitment. The nomination letter for the committee included some obligation regarding time investment. Unfortunately this commitment was rarely fulfilled. I mentioned this to the leads a while ago, yet no action to improve this condition was taken. A committee cannot be effective if its members and leads are not investing efforts as promised. There are delays in many tasks and action items that are a consequence of this issue.

Finally, the committee chose to rule out technology as a driving force for credibility. This has been publicly voted on in the following thread: https://simtk.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=848&t=4595
In my mind, this is a serious limitation that committee took upon itself. If technology is not recognized as a major driver in computational modeling, which is driven by availability of computing power, then the committee scope is too limited to make an effective impact.

I am in hope the committee will fix the above issues.