The whole ISC2 Election Story

This post is primarily for those that have not been following this issue all year.

In May 2022, ISC2 issued an open call for nominations for the Board of Directors election. This was actually an improvement to the process, as the way candidates were even nominated in the past was a mystery. Any member in good standing could nominate themselves by completing a series of questions, and providing two letters of recommendation. To see what was asked, view my answers here. Links to my two letters of recommendation are at the bottom of that linked page. Applications had to be submitted by mid-June.

Approximately August 1st, I and all the others not selected for the ballot were notified by the ISC2 legal counsel. Given that about 85 candidates had nominated themselves, I was disappointed not to be selected, but not upset about it. I'm sure there were plenty of qualified people among the 85.

On August 3rd, the ISC2 announced the Board of Directors election ballot. Only 5 people were chosen to be on the ballot for 5 open positions. This meant that unless someone successfully petitioned their way onto to the ballot, or was elected via write-in, the Board's hand-picked slate of 5 would be elected. Essentially the right of choosing the members of the Board of Directors had been taken away from the membership. This did get me upset. I cannot believe that there weren't at least 10 qualified people out of the 85 that could have been put on the ballot, giving the membership at least two candidates for every open position.

As a result, several of us tried to petition our way onto to the ballot. We built websites outlining why we wanted to be elected. Mine is here. We asked the ISC2 to send out an email to the membership notifying them that we were running a petition campaign and where they could find our information and how to send their support. We were denied that request, even though it had been standard practice for years, and the Election FAQ on the isc2.org website included the following, "*NOTE: (ISC)^(2) does not endorse petitions. It is up to petitioners to promote their own petition and encourage other members to visit the site and 'sign' their petition. (ISC)^(2) will, however, send one email per election year to all members on behalf of any candidate providing a link to more information about that candidate." We pointed out the note on the Election FAQ, and were told by the General Counsel that the rules had been changed for this election and that the FAQ was incorrect. We asked when members were notified of this rules change, but we never did get a straight answer. That fact is that members were never notified about the rule change. ISC2 then changed the Election FAQ the next day to remove the quoted note. So, with no easy way to reach members to get the needed petitions, none of us were able to get onto the ballot via that method.

Many people complained about the fact that only 5 names were placed on the ballot. On September 6th, a webinar was held on the BrightTalk platform. A link to the recording is here. This webinar was to discuss Governance and Nominations changes with the Board of Directors. Those presenting were Clar Rosso (CEO of ISC2), Dr. Jill Slay (Char of the Nominations Committee), Lisa Young, Samara Moore, and James Packer. The last three are all members of the Board of Directors. There was a bunch of discussion about the terms "slate" and "ballot" and reasons for why not more than 5 candidates were chosen, none of which resounded with me. Watch the video yourself and draw your own conclusion. What really angered me though was about the 13:00 minute mark of the video, Dr. Jill Slay says, "We were never in the situation where we had to exclude really good people as far as I am concerned."

Wow! None of the other 80 candidates are "really good people". That group includes several past members of the ISC2 Board of Directors and at least 1 past Chairperson. The arrogance of that statement is galling. Note that of the 5 hand-picked candidates, 1 is an incumbent member of the Board, and 1 is a colleague of the Nominations Committee chairperson. While she claims to have recused herself from discussions of that person, I'm sure that the Committee had to give favor to them and the incumbent Board member.

At this point, 5 of us made plans to run as a write-in slate in the upcoming election.

While this was going on, the Board announced proposed changes to the By-Laws, and without any prior coordination with the membership, immediately put these changes to a vote, in an all or nothing vote. While there are some good things in their proposals, there are enough bad things to warrant rejection. This topic is the focus of many other reddit posts.

On November 1st, the Election ballot was released. There is only 1 space for a write-in candidate, despite there being 5 open positions. I and others complained to directvote.com (the election 3rd party handling the vote) but were told they cannot make any changes to the ballot without the approval of ISC2. We complained to ISC2 and were told this was not a mistake, that they never provide more than 1 write-in position. While that is true, they also never before had only as many candidates as positions. There had always been a choice. Since this ballot design is on purpose and not a mistake, no changes will be forthcoming. This means that at least 4 of the 5 hand-picked candidates will be "elected".

Options discussed included trying to squeeze the 5 names into the one box, but we figure they would simply invalidate those ballots. If write-ins were spread among the 5 of us, probably none of us would be elected. Thus we have decided to get together to throw our support behind Wim Remes.

We ask that each of you write-in Wim Remes and vote only for him. Do not mark any of the candidates. Hopefully Wim will get a spot on the Board so that we at least have a voice, even though it will be only 1 of 13 Directors. We also ask that if you have not already voted against the proposed By-laws, please do so. Finally, go to https://jsweb.net/isc2 to review an alternative set of by-laws proposals, and to sign the petition asking for a special meeting to be called to vote on those. When the Board's proposal fails, we will submit the petitions to call for the special meeting. As this is written, we need about another 150 signatures to reach the required threshold. We will need extra to account for any duplicate signings or otherwise invalid signatures. So, we really need about 200 more. If you are an ISC2 member that hasn't signed the petition, please do so now.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

You can send questions or comment to me at steve@mencik.com, or by calling me.410-854-8673 (days EDT)443-995-9823 (cell - only available outside of work)

Update:
One thing I forgot to mention, in the email starting the voting for Directors, it says,

"The 2022 candidate slate was selected from an open call for nominations held earlier this year. ALL (ISC)² Members had the opportunity to nominate themselves to serve on the Board of Directors. 2022 was our first year conducting an open call. We had tremendous success, with the Board interviewing more than 80 candidates and putting forth a slate that is the most geographically and experientially diverse we have ever had."

The bolded and italic phrase is an outright lie. The Nominating Committee only interviewed 15 of the candidates. They even said so in the BrightTalk seminar on September 6th. Go check it for yourself.

Why can't ISC2 even be honest about its own processes and announcements?