Dear TC6 members,
For your information I forward the message that I received from the IFIP President.
Best regards
Augusto Casaca
-----Original Message----- From: owner-ifip_ga@ifip.or.at [mailto:owner-ifip_ga@ifip.or.at]On Behalf Of Klaus Brunnstein Sent: quinta-feira, 10 de Abril de 2003 12:54 To: IFIP GA Cc: Klaus Brunnstein Subject: [IFIP GA] information about IFIP secretariat Importance: High
Dear represenrtatives of IFIP member societies, Dear TC chairs,
it is with personal regret that I have to inform you that on Friday April 4th 2003 I was obliged, with the agreement of the members of the Executive Board (EB), to terminate Plamen Nedkovs role as IFIP Executive Director.
During meetings of EB in Bilbao various issues were raised concerning the work of the EB and the Executive Director which EB agreed should be investigated by the IFIP Secretary. This esp. included cases of decisions on personell where ED informed EB only about arguments supporting his suggestions but leaving out essential decisions of previous presidents which explicitly contradicted those suggestions. I expressly instructed EB and the Executive Director that the issues were not to be discussed publicly until that report was received. Following the EB meeting, and in direct contravention of my instruction, the Executive Director sent an email to a large number of those who had attended the Bilbao Council meeting discussing some of the issues.
I sent him an email reminding him of my instruction. Plamen Nedkovs response was to send a further email to the Council members, which included an admission that he had breached the Presidents earlier instruction against discussing the issues publicly.
As a result of this deliberate breach of my instruction I had no alternative but to ask Plamen Nedkov to sign a short statement apologising to EB and agreeing to respect the confidentiality of EB discussions in future.
He declined to sign the letter. Consequently on Thursday March 27th 2003 the IFIP Secretary and I met with Plamen Nedkov to discuss the matter with him.
Plamen Nedkov was again invited to sign the statement but declined. Consequently we discussed, at his suggestion, possible terms for a mutually agreeable termination of his employment.
On behalf of EB I made an initial offer which was significantly more than the terms specified in his contract concerning termination of the contract and invited him to respond. He asked for a weeks delay to consider his position, to which we agreed.
Because of the seriousness of this matter, in addition to EB, I consulted a number of recent IFIP Presidents who all expressed their support for the way the matter was to be handled.
Our discussion resumed on Friday, April 4th 2003. I again invited him to sign the statement but he declined. I restated EBs previous offer and invited his response. Plamen Nedkov requested a financial package far in excess of the terms that EB considered appropriate. Despite our requests, Plamen Nedkov declined to negotiate further. Consequently I had no alternative but to terminate his role within IFIP with immediate effect and in accordance with the terms in his contract.
IFIP staff are employed on our behalf by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Before taking these final steps, I had consulted their Director of Human Resources and acted in accordance with her guidance. The final contractual matters will now be formally concluded by the Academy in accordance with Austrian labour practice and law. Until these formal steps have been concluded I do not feel it appropriate to give more details of the offers made on either side.
I very much regret that I have had to take these steps. EB is convinced that Plamen Nedkovs behaviour constituted a fundamental and repeated breach of the trust that is essential to the success of IFIPs work.
For the moment, Dorothy Hayden will take over the running of the office in Laxenburg. EB is taking immediate steps to ensure that the essential work of IFIP is maintained.
EB is actively examining a number of options for the future and I will be in touch with you again as soon as there is more news to give you.
Finally, I wish to add a word of appreciation of the work which Plamen did esp. for Technical Committees and Working Groups. As I experienced myself during my time as TC-9 chair and TA chair, Plamen indeed supported TC and WG work in a friendly and efficient way. I had sincerely hoped and repeatedly tried my best to reconstruct the atmosphere of trust and cooperation which was the basis of my previous work with Plamen, but he refused my suggestions which would have been a fair basis of continued cooperation.
Yours sincerely Klaus Brunnstein