Author Archives: Roland Turner

ISocSG AGM and standards feedback session

When: Friday, January 24⋅7:00 – 9:00pm
Where: WeWork at 15 Beach Road, Beach Centre, Room 1A

We are at last ready to resume normal operation of ISocSG! Please join us for our 2025 AGM and a feedback session on new standards from IMDA and CSA.

AGM agenda
– Credentials
– Previous minutes: adoption and matters arising
– Committee report on FYE2024
– Financial report on FYE2024
– Election of officers
– Minor constitutional amendments (e.g. updating the financial year to be the calendar year)
– 2025 activities
– AOB

Feedback session agenda
– Data Protection Trustmark
– Tiered cybersecurity standards for organisations (TR 106)

Membership subscriptions

Only members who have paid this year’s annual subscription are eligible to participate in the AGM. As we’ve not yet regained access to our bank account we can only accept payment by cash at the meeting this time around, so we’ll take some time prior to opening the meeting to collect payments. Annual subscriptions are as follows:

  • $50 for working individuals.
  • $30 for tertiary students and NSmen.
  • $20 for secondary school students and retirees.
  • $200 for corporates.

Renewing members need only pay the amount above. For people wishing to apply to become a member, there will also be a short application form to complete.

People wishing to appoint a proxy to the meeting (see below) will also need to have their proxy pay the subscription on their behalf, in addition to the proxy’s own subscription.

Nominations

Nomination in advance of the meeting is encouraged as it gives nominees time to think through what they want to do, however our constitution also permits nominations at the AGM. For nominations in advance, please email [email protected] by 23:59 Thursday Jan 23 as follows:

Proponent:

I {name} nominate {name} for the role of {role}.

Seconder:

I {name} second {name} for the role of {role}.

Nominee:

I {name} {accept/decline} nomination for the role of {role}.

Please CC the nominee in any nomination and seconding. Also, we’d suggest that it is courteous to check with the nominee privately before nominating them to begin with. That is: although a nominee can formally decline (or even not respond), ideally this situation should not arise in the first place.

The proponent and seconder must be two different people, neither of them being the candidate. Members may make or second nominations for any number of roles, but not more than one candidate for each role.

The roles to be filled are as follows:

  • President
  • Vice-President
  • Secretary
  • Treasurer
  • Programme Officer
  • Education Officer

Proxies

Renewing members may appoint a proxy by emailing [email protected] by 23:59 Thursday Jan 23 as follows:

I {name} hereby appoint {name} to serve as my proxy at the 2025 AGM, and any adjournment thereof.

We’d encourage leaving proxies undirected (e.g. as above) — particularly because our constitution doesn’t require that the list of nominees for officer elections be finalised in advance of the meeting — however we’ll make reasonable efforts to accommodate directed proxy appointments if any are lodged.

Anyone appointing a proxy should make arrangements for the proxy to pay their subscription in cash at the AGM, in addition to the proxy’s own.

We’re not looking to accept proxy appointments by people wishing to apply to become a member, however we’ll consider requests on a case-by-case basis.

Extraordinary General Meeting Agenda

After several years of inactivity, we are at last bringing ISocSG back to life. Towards the end of January we’ll hold an in-person AGM which will also include our first on-mission activity for the year, but **before** we can do that we need a brief, online-only EGM to make it possible to complete some regulatory formalities.

The people eligible to attend (those who were voting members at the 2021 AGM) have already been invited directly, the purpose of this post is solely to publish “the particulars of the agenda”.

Agenda
1. Credentials
2. Presentation and adoption of financial reports and report of the committee for FYE2021, FYE2022, and FYE2023.
3. Retrospective appointment of the 2021 committee for 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Submission to PDPC

Our thanks to all who joined us on Monday or wrote to us in advance.

The session didn’t run as smoothly as I’d envisaged, but it occurred to me afterwards that this fact was itself valuable input for our submission. Pre-emptively addressing things that non-experts don’t understand is why the guidelines are being proposed in the first place! So, several of the things which led to lengthy “how does this work?” discussions now appear in our submission as areas for improvement in the guidelines.

Here is our submission as we provided it to PDPC.

ISOC policy framework for an open and trusted Internet

This is slightly dated (earlier this year) but is interesting reading nonetheless:

User trust: How and why Internet users – including government, private sector and citizens – trust the Internet, and how to build that trust.

Technologies for trust: The technical building blocks for establishing and maintaining trusted networks, applications and services.

Trusted networks: The Internet’s strength is that it is an ever-evolving collection of interconnected networks with distributed ownership and control. Trust is the glue that keeps networks connected and exchanging data.

Trustworthy ecosystem: How the Internet is governed and how it deals with Internet issues.

ISOC North America Director Mark Buell on Net Neutrality

 

We hope that the U.S. government can take a more sustainable approach to net neutrality; one that upholds the principles that are rooted in the Internet Society’s core values of a global and open Internet. Between seemingly endless court battles and the fact that FCC regulations can change from one US Presidential administration to another, it is clear that we need to try something different. Americans need clarity in this debate.

(full post)