Nucleus Assurance Policy

Editor: Ulrich Creation Date : 2013-03-24 Status: WIP Licence: CC-by-sa+DRP

0. Preliminaries

0.1 Introduction. This sub-policy extends the Assurance Policy ("AP" => COD13) by specifying how a party of candidate Assurers can be led by a Senior Assurer to self-Assure themselves up to Assurer status.

0.2 Scope and Authority. This policy is a subsidiary policy under Assurance Policy (AP). This policy applies to all Members of the CAcert Community.

0.3 Terms.

• Candidate Assurer (or candidate) is a Member of CAcert who attends a Nucleus Event with the intention of reaching Assurer at that event.
• A quorum consists of sufficient Assurers and Members (candidates) such that the sum of allocatable points to each candidate can reach 100 Assurance Points, assuming that candidates are deemed Assurers (with zero Experience Points), and, contribute their 10 Assurance Points to the mix.
• Senior Assurer is a status and term defined by AO from time to time.

2. The Nucleus Event

2.1 A Nucleus event is a training and assurance event that brings many candidate Assurers up to the level of Assurer in one event, by allocating the Assurance Points that they would be able to allocate, in advance.

2.2 A Nucleus event should be led by a Senior Assurer, and should be assisted by at least one other Assurer.

2.3 A Nucleus event should be proposed to Assurance Officer, who will provide blessing and assistance in adding the borrowed points.

• Leader, status and points available.
• Assisting Assurer(s), status and points available.
• Description and quantity of Candidates.
• Calculation of points showing that a quorum will be present.
• Proposed training programme.

Note that this above clause does not give the AO the power to stop or modify the activity. Such responsibility is left entirely with the Senior Asssurer. The policy should seek to be self-maintaining and efficiently distributable, so putting the AO in as a blocking step would not be appropriate to that goal.

2.4 On the day, a quorum of Assurers and candidates must be found (as present and working). If the quorum fails, Assurances by the candidates are invalid.

2.5 After the event, the Leader must submit a report to AO. Notification and summary information should be provided to Board, and included in the AO's annual report to AGM.

2.6 The Assurance Handbook (AH) should describe the process and detail of the Nucleus event.

3. Ephemeral Points

3.1 If there is a quorum of candidate Assurers such that if they were to be Assurers, their allocated Assurance Points to each other would confirm their status as Assurer, if so allocatable. To fold time such that these points are allocatable before ordinarily approved under the basic mechanisms of AP, the points must be borrowed from somewhere. The points may be borrowed by any mechanism as directed by the Assurance Officer from time to time.

3.2 In the longer term, a change should be put into the system such that the borrowed points may be directly allocated and tracked for normal governance purposes.

3.3 The borrowed points are returned after each candidate is confirmed as Assurer.

3.4 The use of borrowed points and the absence of any system feature does not remove the duty of each Assurer under AP.