BoG Representation by Region

By James Morris, Vice President of Conferences

The IEEE prides itself on being an international society, (as does your CPMT Society.) Indeed, IEEE-USA was specifically created as a separate body to deal with US domestic issues, so IEEE itself would not be fettered by the parochial interests of national boundaries, and could act as a truly worldwide source of technical information. But despite these efforts, IEEE and CPMT are still regarded by many outside the USA as US institutions. It is a source of continued frustration that your CPMT officers are all too often introduced at international CPMT events as representing "CPMT-USA." Another manifestation of this problem is the feeling that CPMT members outside the USA are under-represented on the Board of Governors (BoG.) The Table below lists 2001 CPMT membership by IEEE Region, with corresponding current BoG (elected members-at-large,) and Officer representations. The 5th and 6th columns normalize the numbers of BoG members and Officers from each region to the region's membership; ideally, all these numbers would be one. The 7th and 8th columns list the numbers from each region if they were to be distributed proportionately, (i.e. compare columns 3 and 4.)

Region	Members	BoG	Offiers	BoG/222mem	Officers/410 m	Rep BoG	Rep Officers
1 NE USA	480	1	2	0.47	2.34	2	1.25
2 East USA	240	0	1	0	0.59	1	0.5
3 SE USA	218	4	2	4.08	1.06	1	0.5
4 C'tr USA	231	0	0	0	0	1	0.5
5 SW USA	263	3	0	2.53	0	1	0.75
6 West USA	998	6	5	1.33	12.17	4.5	2.5
7 Canada	98	0	0	0	0	0.5	0.5
8 Europe	772	2	0	0.58	0	3.5	1.75
9 Latin Amer	33	0	0	0	0	0	0
10 Asia/Pac	764	2	0	0.58	0	3.5	1.75
TOTAL	4097	18	10	1.0	1.0	18	10

Obviously the under-represented feeling is valid, and the questions are:

Is this a problem? and if so,
What should be done about it?

The BoG has debated the issue of proportional representation in the past. The conclusion was that representation would follow the electoral distribution if members voted for those they knew, and if they knew their regional colleagues. This is clearly happening, since in 2000 there was one rep from Region 10, in 2001 one was added from Region 8, and in 2002 the numbers increased again to two from each of these two regions. Next year, it is highly likely that representation will reach three or four from both of these regions, attaining the BoG numbers in the 7th column. So BoG representation is tracking the rapid growth in Regions 8 and 10, but with some delay. There will be further time lag before Region 8 and 10 reps begin to be elected by the BoG as Officers, but this development is
inevitable, and eventually we should also see the Officer distribution anticipated in column 8. However, while we seem to be moving in this direction, it is also true that excellent candidates from these regions have not been elected in the past, which suggests that electors there are either not voting in the same proportions as elsewhere, or are not voting for regional candidates. Both are matters of choice, but clearly if representation is an issue, a strong voter turnout is essential.

At this point, it should be pointed out that disproportionate representation amongst different regions is just as apparent within the US as outside. The 7th and 8th columns also reveal a problem with equitable proportional representation schemes, in that one can never set the numbers accurately and fairly. Should there be a representation threshold set of one from every region, e.g. from Regions 7 and 9? The current system avoids these issues, but only works properly if there are strong voter responses from all regions.