Proposal #14: From Elephant to Butterfly.

I propose that CISV international changes its administration from being an elephant to become a butterfly.

To do this the following changes should be implemented:

• IO should have maximum 3 full time employees, for general administration and project management
• All administration work including pool creation, form delivery, invitation acceptation/refusal, address book management, fee management, document management should be handled by an online application to be tailored for CISV with an open technology
• International committees should be reduced to 6: IEC, IJB, ODC, ERC, IMC and IAC ("International Activity Committee"):
• IFC and IRMC should be integrated into ODC as subcommittees as well as as a new QAC ("Quality Assurance Committee") with will conglomerate the actual functions of EDR and ILTC
• All program and activities committee should be integrated as subcommittees into IAC

Rationale

Nowadays CISV International moves with the same effectivenss of an elephant in the center of Manhattan. CISV is not able to respond effectively to the extremely volatile opportunities offered by the world today.
The high fixed costs and the inflexibility towards new experiences and projects is immobilizing our organization, which does not offer anymore what people need. The reason we exist will cease to support us soon if we don't face structural changes.
The structure we have today is centralized structure which was needed to strengthen the organization in a different time. What we need is few very dynamic project managers which shouldn't be bothered by administration problem. We need avoid duplicate efforts and have an effective decision making procedures.

So how the proposed changes will help CISV to mutate from an elephant to a butterfly?

• Cutting IO fixed costs and getting rid of the administration work which on the budget for 2006 is £ 324.684 on a grand total of £ 700.923 (little less than 50% of expences) and considering that excluding £ 216.808 of insurance expences the percentage goes up 65%)
• Any needed structure for pool creation or administration practices could beeasily added to the open technology choosen
• The competence which now is confined inside a particular committe will be diffused to all activity committees, avoiding the duplicated efforts of developing new solution for known problems. The chair of this committee will moreover have a better overall view of all international educational activities offered by our organization
• Mosaic and ijb will assume a more relevant role within the organization and push innovation and dynamism

Worries without fundament:

• Will we loose international activity specialists? No, they are still there, in subcommittees
• Will we have lower quality international acvitites? Nowadays the real quality control to all activites is enforced by each committee, this will still be enforced from subcommittes. Let's face that ILTC and EDR in the past year has not helped the organization in a relevant way .
• Will we loose our identity? Being dynamic doesn't mean change our nature continuosly but adapt our way to operate to the enviroment around us, as times goes by different approach to reach our goals need to be explored. Dynamism of means is not dynamism of goals.

Teo (Italy)