CCA Leadership Definition and Upcoming Election

The Common Component Architecture has grown well beyond the small group that launched it in 1998, and well beyond the DOE SciDAC project which has spearheaded much of the development of the CCA. It was never intended that the CCA Forum should be synonymous with the DOE SciDAC project (CCTTSS). With the growth of involvement of people outside CCTTSS in Forum meetings and activities, a core of people within the Forum have felt that we need to make a clearer distinction between the two organizations and foster the idea that the CCA Forum is the standards body and user group for the Common Component Architecture, and participants in the DOE SciDAC project are simply Forum members like any others.

The first major step in this direction was the separation of the leadership of the CCA Forum from the leadership of the DOE SciDAC project. As you know, David Bernholdt leads the next incarnation of the DOE SciDAC project, while Rob Armstrong has remained as Chair of the CCA Forum. But since the CCA Forum began quite informally, the position of Chair of the CCA has never been defined, nor has an election ever been held for the office (Rob got the job by acclamation). Up to now, Rob has just done whatever he thought best whenever it seemed best to do it.

It is high time to define the postition of the CCA Chair and put it before the Forum membership. The rules governing voting is exactly the same for any other issue before the forum: attendance at two out of the last three meetings is required to be a voting member. We will first hold a vote to formally establish the position of Chair, using the Quorum voting machine. Then we will seek nominations for the position itself and hold an election to make it all legal. Since Quorum only handles yea/nay questions (no multiple choice), the actual vote will be tallied by another mechanism.


The officers of the CCA Forum shall consist of a Chair, elected by the membership of the Forum. Additional offices may be established by vote of the Forum membership.

The duties of the Chair shall include the general leadership and management of the Forum in carrying out its mission of establishing standards for component architectures for high-performance scientific computing and acting as a form for users of those standards. The Chair is expected to be an ambassador and advocate for the CCA in the wider community.

Any person nominated and seconded by a CCA Forum member (a Forum member is defined as anyone who has attended 2 of the last 3 CCA Forum meetings) is eligible to run for Chair. The call for nominations will be announced to the Forum membership, and nominations shall be accepted for a period of not less than 21 days. The Chair shall be the candidate receiving the most votes in a poll open for a minimum of 21 days. Only members of the CCA Forum will be eligible to vote for the Chair.
The Chair shall hold office for a period of two years, or until their successor is duly elected. The Chair may resign at any time by written notification (email is acceptable) of at least three members of the CCA Forum, who will then expeditiously initiate the election of a successor.

In order to promote the independence of the Forum from the interests of particular CCA-related projects, it is advised, but not required, that the position of Chair of the CCA Forum not be held by the Principal Investigator of the largest funded project associated with the Common Component Architecture.