Roles & Bodies

1. Overview

This page summarises the main roles and bodies that appear in the Organisation domain.
In a small organisation, one person may hold several of these roles at the same time.

2. Executive Roles (Leads)

• Executive Lead – Ensures coherence across all domains, oversees implementation of Governance decisions, and represents the organisation externally where appropriate.
• Research & Development Lead – Owns the technical architecture, data model, and quality of reasoning ALGORITHMS and models (the systems that evaluate claims, not the evaluation outputs).
• Organisation Lead – Maintains organisational documentation, governance rules, contributor processes, and the XWiki structure.
• PR & Care & Marketing Lead – Oversees communication, user support, campaigns, and community-facing material while respecting neutrality rules.
• Finance & Compliance Lead – Maintains the financial ledger, budgeting, reporting, and the conflict-of-interest register.

3. Governance Bodies

• Governing Team – Strategic oversight, compliance monitoring, and resolution of escalated issues.
• Governance Steward – Safeguards neutrality, transparency, and fairness of procedures.

4. Support Roles

Examples of support roles that may be added as the project grows:

• Infrastructure Manager – Coordinates hosting, deployment, monitoring, and backups.
• Repository Steward – Keeps repositories structured, tagged, and consistent.
• Process Support Specialist – Helps contributors follow defined workflows and improves processes.
• Onboarding Coordinator – Supports new contributors with documentation and introductory sessions.

5. Advisory Roles

• Legal Advisor
• Ethics Advisor
• Scientific / Domain Advisors
  These advisory roles provide input and critique but do not replace the formal responsibilities of the Governing Team or Executives.

5.5 Domain Concept (from Sociocracy 3.0)

Each role has a domain - a clearly defined area of authority and responsibility.
Domain definition includes:

• Purpose: Why this domain exists
• Responsibilities: What this role is accountable for
• Dependencies: What this role needs from others
• Authority: What decisions this role can make autonomously
• Constraints: What boundaries limit this authority
  Examples:
  Technical Coordinator Domain:
• Purpose: Ensure AKEL performs optimally
• Responsibilities: System performance, infrastructure, algorithm improvements
• Dependencies: Performance metrics from monitoring, improvement suggestions from community
• Authority: Approve technical changes that don't affect policy
• Constraints: Must use consent-based decision for policy-affecting changes
  Community Coordinator Domain:
• Purpose: Enable effective community contribution
• Responsibilities: Documentation, onboarding, feedback loops, community health
• Dependencies: User feedback, contribution patterns
• Authority: Approve community process changes
• Constraints: Cannot change technical systems or policies
  Key principle: Clear domains prevent overlaps, enable autonomous decisions, and clarify escalation paths.

6. Principles for Role Design

• Responsibilities must be written down and accessible.
• The same person may hold several roles, but conflicts of interest must be declared.
• For sensitive areas (finance, governance, moderation) there should always be at least one other person able to review or approve critical actions.