Establish an ERB

[LJWatson]

The idea for an Equity Review Board (ERB) comes from a post by Quincy Brown.

The concept of an ERB could be embodied within W3C as a group that conducts horizontal review on all our output, including charters. Such a review could look not only at language, rooting out words like "blacklist" and "whitelist" and similar language that may divide people, but also analyze new technologies for potential harm along ethnic or diversity lines, such as algorithms that may discriminate.

[LJWatson]

Questions an ERB may be able to help with:

• Are there areas of work we're missing, like racial bias in AI for example?
• Are there intersections between ethnicity and other areas of W3C work we could explore?
• Could we look at other intersectional issues, for instance the intersection of ethnic and cultural issues with disability can doubly disenfranchise people from the training and mentoring opportunities that help bring people into the field.

[jeffjaffe]

I have several concerns about the ERB's scope together with some approaches to address my concerns. Overall, one way to characterize my concerns is that the ERB is proposed to conduct "horizontal review (HR)", but for other HR categories we do not have review boards. Here are my concerns in more detail.

a. A Review Board sounds like a relatively formal team with rather heavy responsibilities. Creating such a board without a clear mission and without clear accountability could be confusing. Depending on its accountability, such a board might require not only AC approval, but W3C Steering Committee approval (I say "might" because it is not even defined what the ERB is). I don't think it is responsible to create a Review Board without detailed definition.

b. The nature of the W3C organization presents challenges. Every year, when I do the W3C Diversity Report [1] I struggle to provide a better report. But it is difficult because of the nature of the W3C organization. There are at least three dimensions of W3C which make it particularly difficult.

i. We are a global organization. As a global organization, there are immense challenges to even define what we mean by "our objectives for diversity". We are in so many countries, there are so many diverse groups, there are so many languages that are on the web (and plenty more that are not).

ii. We respect privacy. We do not collect information about people in any place, which makes it difficult to formally set targets or evaluate them.

iii. W3C is a community. It is appropriate that we challenge the entire W3C community to become more inclusive and diverse. But the fact that noone controls our hundreds of members (certainly not the >10,000 people in our CGs) makes this a challenge.

Paths forward.

I see two possible paths forward.

1. Create an Equity Review Board. Spend some time working through the issues above so we can have a solid understanding of the scope and responsibility of the ERB.

2. Create an Equity Advisory Board instead of an ERB. Here is a strawman proposal for an EAB:

   Mission: Form an impression of inclusion and diversity at W3C and advise the W3C Community (team, working groups, members, participants) on ideas to improve inclusion and diversity. Topic (inspired by the initial ERB post) could include:

• Input on specifications and charters
• Analysis of where language usage can be discouraging in a diverse community.
• Bias in algorithms

• Intersection with other issues, e.g. disability.

  Composition: Seven elected members, two appointed members, one ex-officio as follows: The seven elected members are elected by the AC. They serve rotating two year terms (3/4 expire every year) After each election, the seven elected members identify weaknesses in the EAB composition, and find two appointed members to assure diversity of the EAB The terms of the appointed members begin 6 months after the seating of the elected members After each election, the then-serving nine members elect (from themselves) a chair for the next year The W3C CEO serves on the EAB in an ex-officio (non-voting) fashion Status Once approved by the AC, the Team can immediately organize the first election (top 3 vote getters get an initial three year term) A version of this description will be added to the W3C Process, with the process community allowed to make further tweaks.

[1] https://www.w3.org/blog/2020/06/diversity-and-inclusion-at-w3c-2020-update-future-of-the-w3c-diversity-fund/

[LJWatson]

1. Create an Equity Review Board. Spend some time working through the issues above so we can have a solid understanding of the scope and responsibility of the ERB.>

I believe that is what we are doing.

2. Create an Equity Advisory Board instead of an ERB.>

The term Equity Review Board already exists so I think we would want to think very carefully about choosing another name.

There are features of your strawman proposal that I think would be good for us to consider including as we define what our ERB looks like, but equally I think it rules out the possibility of the ERB being a horizontal review group, and that is not something that has been discussed yet.

[jeffjaffe]

The term Equity Review Board already exists so I think we would want to think very carefully about choosing another name.

A quick Google search did not lead me to any conclusion that ERB is a widely used term. But in any case, the term that we use should fit its usage. If there is a problem with the term Equity Advisory Board, I would like to understand what scope people are looking for, for which EAB does not fit.

[wareid]

I don't see a logistical difference between "Review" and "Advisory" if anything, since the suggestions thus far (obviously we're still early days) promote the ERB as a part of horizontal review, Review makes more sense. It's also more common in language in this space.

I don't think I agree with Jeff's idea for the composition. The best position for this work is as a part of horizontal review, horizontal review is routinely performed by WGs or groups within the W3C based on their area of expertise. Potentially this means the ERB is run by IDCG, or we charter a new group that does research and cultivates experience in Equity from the community. ERB Review for every specification is like the other reviews, "we've looked at your document, we have the following recommendations/concerns, let's discuss".

It is obviously early days for this idea, so let's figure out what the goals and scope of the group should be before we declare where it's positioned in the general order of things.

[jeffjaffe]

Thanks @wareid for your comments. They are very helpful.

I agree with Wendy that if the purpose is horizontal review, that the composition that I proposed for the EAB is the wrong composition.

For our other horizontal review areas (security, privacy, internationalization, accessibility, web architecture) we don't have a consistent terminology, but in no case do we have Review Boards or Advisory Boards.

I would support dropping ERB/EAB and replace that with "we are investigating the creation of a DEI Interest Group which performs horizontal review of W3C specifications to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion". This terminology is consistent with several of the other horizontal areas.

( I resisted called it an Equity Interest Group because that sounds like something done by financial institutions.)

[TzviyaSiegman]

I did a quick search for the term "equity review" and found several resources. I think that we should stick with what seems to be an emerging term.

I am sensing a tension, possibly because of the term "board"? I don't think we should not worry too much about specific terminology or the specifics of the ERB before we publish the statement. It is too soon to discuss composition.

My understanding was that Equity Review would be part of Horizontal Review. At this point, Horizontal Review is done in different settings and in different ways for each aspect of the review. The Process does not dictate much detail. If this gets added to the Process, we can leave it to those responsible for Equity Review to determine how best to do the reviewing.

[chaals]

It makes sense to me that whatever this thing is provides advice to working groups and the membership, and is set up like other chartered review groups. I don't see any benefit to it being an elected body, and I do see a number of potential drawbacks, the first of which is that elections tend to reinforce existing power structures rather than being a good way to find out how to open them up.

[jeffjaffe]

My understanding was that Equity Review would be part of Horizontal Review.

My concern with the term ERB was a concern until/unless we defined what it meant.

With Tzviya's proposed limitation (which Chaals supported and was also indicated earlier by Wendy), I could see another path to resolve ERB/EAB.

Specifically, I would not object to a statement that we are "exploring the creation of an Equity Review Board whose function is horizontal review of specifications and charters."

[TzviyaSiegman]

I prefer the wording that is already in the proposed statement. This is a public-facing document, and many will not be familiar with our nuanced definition of horizontal review. I don't think it serves us well to include W3C lingo in this statement.. "Exploring the creation of" is not a concrete action. We agreed that this statement will include only concrete actions. Therefore I object "exploring" and prefer the orginally proposed language