World Administrators’ Summit, Frankfurt, Germany, 2018

In Part 3 of our series on the WASummit, Eth Lloyd describes the Advisory Council make-up and the topics that the members of the Advisory Council will be working on in this between summits period

The WASummit Advisory Council has a Terms of Reference and consists of a single Chairman and representatives from regions throughout the world. These regions are groupings of countries which are confirmed or adjusted at each Summit to reflect the constantly changing nature of the world today. Each country works with the other countries within its region to nominate two representatives to participate on the Advisory Council.

The Advisory Council is a working group and those who participate must be prepared to work in a team. These teams work virtually, so no face-to-face meetings are required.

The Advisory Council has two major functions:

1. To form teams which take the results of discussions at the last Summit and, where required, work through those to progress them so that at the next Summit decisions can be made, where appropriate.
2. Responsibility for the Agenda and the paperwork required for running the Summit. In this role the two Co-Team Leaders, one each from the previous and the future WASummit, provide support to the Host Country for the next Summit and manage the logistics.

Between Summit Teams

After each Summit each designated region in the world, the make-up of which will be reviewed at the Summit, confirms their representatives on the Advisory Council. Those representatives will then nominate which topic area they wish to work within and they work in those teams to further the discussions held at the Summit. This might involve them in researching widely and gathering data through surveys of administrative professionals throughout the world. This is where each individual administrative professional can contribute.  The more of you who contribute, the more representative the information will be supporting valid discussions and decisions. This is where you become part of the World Summit, it will be your voices that will be heard and we can then “Speak with one voice”.

Summit Agenda and Paperwork

The Summit Agenda has three parts:

1. Part 1 – Reporting back and, where required, offering final decisions that come out of work undertaken over the previous three years by the Advisory Council into discussions held at the previous Summit (in this case the 2015 WASummit held in Papua New Guinea).The following topics came out of the 2015 Summit for further work and will form the basis of Part 1 of the Agenda in 2018:
   1. International Certification/Qualifications.
   2. Universal position titles.
   3. “Speaking as one voice” – the value of international networking.
   4. Gathering Codes of Conduct to place on the website as a resource for all.
2. Part 2 – updating of Administra, the World Action Plan, if required. During this between period the Advisory Council is going to work on Administra to make it applicable to both associations and individual administrative professionals. Currently it is focussed primarily on associations.
3. Part 3 – New discussions based on topics raised by administrative professionals. These topics will be sought from administrative associations around the world, and through a brief survey to be sent out through social media at the start of 2018. These topics will be gathered together into similar subject areas so that the Agenda is manageable.

Further detailed reading can be found at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vzq0luegstjgw3b/AABHT4LBzl636PZmGLM_lM4ca?dl=0