I wanted to see where this ended up. The public discussion has been open for a very long time. I would assume anyone who was going to chime in by now would have.
Right. The consensus seems to be that this is not ministerial;
the board should exercise discretion. As far as the particular
criteria, the public comment didn't seem to generate a lot of
detail there.
What has the board decided on?
In terms of remote switches generally, I modified the website a
bit after the board's last discussion:
-<li>The remote switch operator will
provide a technical proposal to the board.</li>
+<li>The remote switch operator will provide a proposal to
the board addressing both technical and business details.
Switches dedicated to MICE are quasi-required. Proposals should
address expected participation. For example, does the operator
have firm commitments from e.g. 5 participants?</li>
As you can see, this is still relatively "squishy". We strengthened the dedicated switch thing, but it's hard to actually say it's "required" if we're still theoretically willing to make exceptions. There's also the bit about addressing whether they have participants lined up.
The approval is still subject to board approval, and it's still subjective. Having 5 participants lined up does not guarantee approval, and having less than 5 does not guarantee rejection.
As far as the NOCIX proposal specifically, we tabled that at the
last meeting and asked for more information. We have that now, so
we can pick this back up again for a decision.
-- Richard