Meeting cadence & feedback channels

When OPDA's governing bodies meet, what they discuss, how feedback gets into the standard, and how decisions get recorded. Pulls AGM and Board rhythm from the Articles, codifies the working-group cadence implied by the DPMSG meeting archive, and proposes the public-consultation and Stakeholder Version Register mechanics needed to fill the X placeholders in the 8-step SOP.

Meeting topology

Three clusters of bodies, each operating on its own rhythm but feeding the same decision log. The constitutional cluster sets strategic direction; the DPMSG cluster runs the cross-stakeholder workstreams; the operational cluster coordinates schema work and external consultation.

Cadence table

Per-body cadence, with the corpus evidence (or its absence) cited inline. Codes: R = ratified in primary documents; R-practice = evidenced by archived materials but not formally codified; P = proposed and not yet ratified.

Agenda templates

Standard agenda structures for the main bodies, so that meetings produce comparable outputs and the decision log captures consistent data.

Executive Committee — monthly

Topic-flagging convention (supports the topic-based steward observer pattern in page 24 §Role overlap): the Chair publishes the draft agenda 14 working days before the meeting; Domain Data Stewards self-identify any agenda items affecting their bounded context; the Chair issues the confirmed steward-attendance list 7 working days before the meeting. The 14-day notice gives volunteer stewards time to clear day-job commitments.

1. Cadence items (5 min) — minutes from last meeting; standing actions; Chair updates.
2. Topic-based steward agenda (10 min) — confirmed steward attendees per the topic-flagging convention above are recognised; any context-specific items from their inbox surfaced.
3. Workstream updates (30 min) — WG chairs report (Technical, Engagement, Comms & PR, Regulator, Policy); Sandbox / T&I sub-group; finance & budget.
4. Decisions for ratification (30 min) — breaking-change escalations from Technical WG (per RACI step 6); accreditation policy changes; conformance scheme adjustments; member admissions / suspensions.
5. Strategic items (15 min) — items rising to next AGM; new bounded-context proposals; cross-cutting initiatives.
6. Next month (5 min) — date, location/platform, anticipated agenda items, stewards to invite.

Technical WG — monthly

1. PR triage — open PRs against the next branch; reviewers' availability; release-readiness assessment.
2. Impact assessments due — Compliance & Risk pipeline; backwards-compatibility flags.
3. Breaking-change deliberation — synchronous discussion of MAJOR changes; consultation responses incoming; merge dates.
4. Stewardship coordination — cross-overlay conflicts raised by stewards; escalations to Steward Roundtable.
5. Tooling / process — schema CI, validator state, registry-publication pipeline.
6. Blockers — anything waiting on EC / external stakeholder / regulator.

Steward Roundtable — quarterly

1. Cross-overlay calendar — changes planned in each bounded context next quarter; clash detection.
2. Joint position papers — items where two or more contexts need to publish coordinated guidance.
3. External liaison report-back — each steward summarises their interactions with industry-steward counterparts (Propertymark, RICS, Law Society, etc.) since last roundtable.
4. Conflict raising — issues a single steward cannot resolve in their bounded context that affect adjacent ones.
5. Pattern review — dissents and abstentions logged since last roundtable, per page 24 §Dissent — flag where they cluster.
6. Chair rotation (annually) — handover.

Engagement WG — monthly all-member update

Existing practice (4 archived calls; "OPDA all member update — sandbox project" is the prevailing format). Codifying the structure rather than reinventing it:

1. Sandbox progress — workstreams, participants joined / left, next milestones.
2. Schema & standards updates — recent releases, upcoming consultations, breaking-change pipeline.
3. Member spotlights / case studies — short member presentations.
4. Open Q&A — questions from members, association members, observers.
5. Public consultation calls-to-action — open consultations the call attendees can respond to (with deadlines).

Decision log & 10-year retention

Articles art. 16 requires every unanimous or majority EC / Board decision to be recorded in writing and retained for at least 10 years. This page operationalises that requirement and extends the same pattern (voluntarily) to working-group decisions.

Decision log path

• Location: source/04-governance-bodies/decisions/YYYY/MM/decision-NNN.md
• One file per decision, with deterministic numbering inside the month folder for predictable URLs.
• Decisions index at source/04-governance-bodies/decisions/INDEX.md linking every decision in reverse-chronological order.

What each entry records

Pattern analysis

Compliance & Risk (governance.md §3.C) reviews the decision log on a rolling quarterly basis for patterns: who dissents and on what, which bounded contexts have the highest decision velocity, where action items consistently miss due dates. Surface findings to the Steward Roundtable and to the EC at the strategic-items agenda slot.

Feedback channels — ingress

Five named channels through which feedback enters the standard. The first four are ratified-as-practice (they exist and are used); the fifth is proposed.

Feedback ingestion workflow

How any incoming item — regardless of channel — moves from receipt to resolution and into the decision log.

Proposed service-level agreements — calibrated to volunteer-body reality

• Triage means the assigned Domain Data Steward acknowledges receipt, classifies the issue, and confirms routing. In-progress responses are acceptable ("we are evaluating; expect substantive response by <date>") and count as meeting the SLA.
• Breaking-change consultation comments are governed by a tighter rule: every substantive comment received during a Public Consultation Window receives a documented response before merge. This is non-negotiable — if responses cannot be completed in time, the merge slips.
• Seasonal flex: during member-firm seasonal peaks (conveyancing year-end, lender financial year-end, tax year-end), SLAs may extend; the Engagement WG flags expected delays in advance via the all-member call.

Stakeholder Version Register operationalised

The artefact already exists at release-version-register.md and is referenced in governance.md §6 (SOP step 8). The process for maintaining it is what this page proposes.

What it records per release

• Version — semver tag (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH).
• Change type — breaking / non-breaking; per-overlay or framework-wide.
• Bounded context(s) affected — links to the relevant Domain Data Steward.
• Stakeholders notified — list of organisations + notification date.
• Public consultation summary — number of substantive responses, headline themes, link to full responses log.
• Vote split — at Technical WG and (for breaking changes) at EC.
• Submitted dissents — links to any 200-word positions filed per page 24 §Dissent.
• Linked decision log entry — back-pointer to the canonical decision file.

Who maintains it

The Engagement WG per governance.md §3.D ("Regular publishing of findings related to PDTF"). Each release adds one row. Compliance & Risk reviews quarterly per §Pattern analysis.

Public consultation mechanics

Fills the X placeholders in change-management §thresholds.

Where consultations live: Astro pages + Artalk threads

Each consultation is published as an Astro page on the OPDA site — the page itself is the "paper" containing the proposal, rationale, evidence, and call for feedback. An embedded self-hosted Artalk threaded-discussion widget on the same page captures responses, Quora-style: the page is the question, the thread is the answers. Responses persist in OPDA-hosted storage with full PII control, supporting governance-grade retention even though they sit outside the strict Articles art. 16 scope (which covers EC and Board decisions).

Artalk is the same toolchain already operational on OPDA's sister ontology browser, where it serves as a per-page discussion thread on every page. The plan extends the same pattern to the OPDA site: a per-page general discussion thread on every Astro page, plus dedicated consultation pages whose thread is the formal consultation response record. Identity is pre-filled from single sign-on so respondents are known and accountable; moderation, accessibility (WCAG via ARIA patches), and design-system integration carry over from the sister implementation.

Window length

Breaking-change timeline

Response obligations

• Every substantive comment receives a documented response before merge. If responses cannot be completed in time, the merge slips. Non-negotiable per §SLAs.
• Responses published in the Stakeholder Version Register entry for that release.
• "Substantive" excludes off-topic, abusive, or fully-out-of-scope comments — the Engagement WG curates with the relevant steward.

Who can respond

Open to all stakeholders: members, non-member firms, regulators, government departments, consumers / the public. Detail on differential participation rights — what regulators get to weigh in on vs. what consumers can comment on — is on the Stakeholder engagement page.

Publication policy — public by default with opt-out

Consultation responses are published by default with respondent name attributed, matching gov.uk standard practice and W3C wide-review norms. Respondents may submit a written opt-out request alongside their response asking for anonymisation; the Engagement WG decides based on the substance — typically granted for commercially sensitive content where naming the firm would create competitive harm, and declined for statements of position where the public interest in transparency outweighs.

Anonymisation, when granted, removes the respondent's name and firm but preserves the content. The Engagement WG's decision on each request is itself recorded (against the response ID, anonymously if the request was granted) in the Stakeholder Version Register for audit. Artalk supports the dual-mode configuration via per-thread settings, so the toolchain enforces the policy automatically once configured.

Open questions

1. Policy WG remit — the working-groups/policy/ folder is empty in the corpus. Before setting cadence, the WG's remit needs to be defined (policy positions for external consultations? internal OPDA policy authoring? regulatory alignment? something else?). Cadence follows from remit, not the other way round.
2. Async vs synchronous default for Technical WG — async-first is proposed; whether the synchronous call should be standing monthly or convened only for breaking-change discussions is a coordination choice.
3. Decision-log retention extension — Articles art. 16 mandates 10y for EC + Board. Should we extend to all WG decisions for symmetry? Storage cost is negligible; the choice is about retention policy obligation.
4. Quorum for Comms & PR, Regulator, Policy WGs — not yet defined; presumably 3 members per Technical WG pattern, but each WG may need bespoke rules.

Related pages

• Steering & coordination — DPMSG structure that this page operationalises.
• Change management — the 8-step SOP whose X placeholders this page fills.
• Lifecycle & versioning — how the version register intersects with semver.
• Data stewardship & decision rights — the roles whose rhythm this page sets.
• Stakeholder engagement — who gets to participate in the consultations described here.