MGRC COI, COC and COE

[sarahjamielewis]

As I stated in the original Code of Ethics thread:

@sarahjamielewis

As much as I love a good ethical code, they seldom have the right framing for organizational governance. What is instead needed is a conflict of interest policy outlining:

• What qualifies as a conflict of interest, including what relationships might appear as conflicts of interest
• What standards there are for disclosing a conflict of interest - both upfront and during governing activities.
• How conflicts of interest are reported , to what extent are they available to other governing members or to the public.
• What consequences are there for violating the policy or withholding such information from other committee members.

Would you as MGRC members be willing to sign a similar code of conduct and ethics statement?

Personally, I see several issues with the MITRE code of ethics, namely that is makes several bold statements and then provides absolutely no mechanisms for ensuring those standards come to fruition and those statements would universally be better served by individual policies governing the subject matter. For example:

• Avoid any actual or perceived conflict of interest in personal and business relationships;
• Refrain from misuse of our professional positions for personal gain;
• Adhere to our government sponsors’ rules concerning source selection, procurement integrity, and avoidance of organizational conflict of interest;

This was the main point I made in the previous thread, statements like this are effectively meaningless without an explicit CoI policy, and if you have an explicit and robust COI policy then these statements are redundant.

• Perform to the best of our abilities in an honest, cooperative, and fair manner;
• Accurately and conscientiously record all time charges, costs, and other business records;

Statements that reduce to “Do your job well, according to the policies” are meaningless without defining what those policies and procedures that govern that work are and, again, if you have an explicit and robust set of policies then these statements are redundant.

Also, the MITRE CoE binds ethical matters to government policy and in some cases creates an explicit expectation to protect those policies:

Comply with laws and regulations that affect our work.
Protect MITRE and government resources from theft, damage, or misuse;

Whose laws? Which government? Creating an explicit expectation of protection (distinct from refraining from harm) opens up an entire can of worms (which I won’t get into but the implications should be obvious).

At at risk of repeating itself, binding ethics to any specific set of governments and/or jurisdictions (given the nature of governments) is simply and utterly abhorrent.

Would you as MGRC members be willing to sign a similar code of conduct and ethics statement?

I will sign onto as many specific, robust policies as the MGRC wants to consider, in addition to the pre-standing Zcash Contributors Code of Conduct - but as I stated numerous times over the course of the campaign I think most “ethical” codes are weak stand-ins for robust governance policies and I would rather focus on the design and implementation of those policies rather than nice-sounding but ultimately insufficient (or even actively harmful) codes of ethics.