What is the OAB?
The Organisational Advisory Board (OAB) consists of representatives from the RDA Organisational Members and Affiliates, representing their interests and ensuring that their input and needs play a role in guiding the programs and activities of the RDA. Learn more about becoming an RDA Organisational Member or Affiliate.
Specifically, the OAB is charged with:
- Providing organisational and operations advice either at the request of the Secretary General or the RDA Council or to express issues raised among the organisational membership with regard to the directions, processes, and mechanisms of the RDA to the Secretary General and/or Council.
- Providing input to the Secretary General and the Secretariat on organisational needs; for example, with the goal of encouraging the formation of Interest Groups or Working Groups or other actions that could be taken by the RDA to meet organisational needs.
- Interacting with the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) during the review of IG and WG proposals to provide guidance on overlap and synergies with other RDA and community efforts.
- Encouraging and facilitating the adoption of relevant RDA Recommendations among organisational members to drive broad adoption.
- Collaborating with TAB to review midpoint and final Working Group Recommendations and outputs, and to advise on how implementable proposed outputs are likely to be. The OAB provides guidance on organisational needs and partnership and pilot opportunities, with the goal of encouraging broad community adoption of RDA outputs.
- Assisting with Plenary programming and other outreach activities.
- Developing test-beds to support WG pilot projects and distribution of outputs to the community.
OAB Membership
The OAB consists of up to twelve elected members including two co-chairs. OAB members are elected for two years and there are currently no restrictions on re-election.
The OAB elects co-chairs from the OAB members. Co-chairs are elected for two years at a time with a maximum of one consecutive re-election (i.e., maximum 4 years), subject to rules listed in the Organisational Membership Processes Document. The two co-chairs coordinate the work of the OAB, and at least one of the co-chairs participates as a consensus-forming but non-voting member of the RDA Council.