After the report submitted in 2020 by the Diversity Working Group, formed in Adelaide 2019, the Programme Commission (PCOM) started to move away from executive appointments to PCOM towards elections among self-nominated candidates. This transition was intended to promote both transparency and diversity in the Commission. By voting with these ICA goals in mind, it is considered that those who send their nominations and those who vote play an important role in making PCOM reflect the global community of archivists in ICA.
PCOM Elections
Most PCOM members are now elected by the ICA membership at large, based on ballots that provide the candidates’ home country, institution, expertise, previous ICA experience, and linguistic background. Each election will be used to re-balance PCOM in any dimension of diversity that needs correction.
In addition to this, each of PCOM’s strategic focus areas (currently the Training Programme, Africa Programme, and New Professionals Programme) would have a dedicated seat on PCOM, which would be filled using a slightly different process to ensure necessary expertise. In those cases, and also in a seat reserved for a representative of the early career professionals, PCOM members would vote among candidates who meet the qualifications.
Branches, Sections, Expert Groups, and other ICA bodies (FAN, FIDA, FPA) would not have representatives at PCOM, but instead the improved PCOM would have a far more robust communication strategy.
To learn more about the discussion on this topic, read the articles in the section below.