We are at the mid-point of our series of virtual round tables on our Governance Review, and have already received great feedback and useful questions. The next week will offer further opportunities to share your ideas – we encourage Members and volunteers to join us!

The success of IFLA’s governance review depends on our Members and volunteers.

This is not just because it will be our Members who will vote on the relevant changes to our Statutes at the end of the year. More fundamentally, it is because we cannot design structures that work best for our Members and volunteers without your ideas and inputs. 

This has been key to IFLA’s transformation. You have already given IFLA its Vision – through our Global Vision process – and built its Strategy for 2019-24.

Through your responses to our survey in October 2019, you also set out the challenges you felt our Governance Review needed to address: more transparency, efficiency and collaboration, stronger regional representation, greater financial and organisational sustainability, more varied opportunities for participation, and better support for volunteers.

We are now at a crucial stage of sharing, debating and developing our ideas. We have already run a survey which saw over 760 responses, as well as additional letters, demonstrating broad support for the plans, while sharing valuable new ideas.

Today marks the half-way point in a series of virtual round tables with IFLA Members and volunteers from around the world.

Led by IFLA’s President, Chair of the Professional Committee and members of the Governing Board, these have seen representatives of all types of IFLA Member – associations, institutions, individuals – from all regions already take part. Some have joined more than one call!

In doing so, participants have asked important questions and brought new clarity. They have drawn on their own experience to suggest how IFLA’s new structures could work best in reality. And they have shared insights that will help the Governing Board work towards a final draft.

The next coming week will therefore bring new opportunities for engagement by Members and volunteers. We therefore encourage any of our Members and volunteers who have received invitations to register, if you have not done so already.

To support preparations – or simply in order to find out more about the proposals – our working paper for the round tables is now available in Chinese, Russian and Spanish. This contains the key ideas, with some improvements already made, as well as highlights from your responses to our survey.

Together, we are building a more inclusive, effective and transparent IFLA! 

Gerald Leitner
IFLA Secretary General