Introduction

Deborah Foulkes is an ex-member of the Sortition Foundation supporters network. She is currently running a campaign of harassment to intimidate and discredit the Sortition Foundation. Deborah wrongly believes that the Global Assembly team, which we were part of, based the recruitment for the Global Assembly on ideas she developed. 

We have created this page to be able to deal with the volume of communication that Deborah publishes relating to this complaint. If we have sent you the link to this page it is likely because we believe Deborah has contacted you, or you are in a meeting where she is posting about this matter.

Details

The software that we wrote to support the Global Assembly selection process is very different to a process that Deborah proposed. In the spirit of transparency and sharing, this software has been placed for free in the public domain for everyone to see. While Deborah did share her ideas about performing a global process with a volunteer director of Sortition Foundation, he did not share them more widely within our organisation. When the Global Assembly approached us some months later to develop a global process, the staff that worked on this developed the approach from scratch.  

Ongoing Harassment

To date we know that Deborah has submitted several formal complaints relating to this claim, including one that prompted an internal investigation by the Global Assembly. She has sent emails to us and our collaborators and posted in meetings and forums, making defamatory claims about us and our staff. None of these allegations have been deemed valid nor resulted in any actions we are aware of.

We have offered to discuss Deborah’s complaint directly with her but she has not taken us up on this offer. We have also offered to go through the UK Government’s formal Intellectual Property Mediation process with Deborah but again, unfortunately, she has not accepted that offer. We have made this page as Deborah continues to harass us, and contact people like yourself that she perceives to be connected to us. 

If you would like to contact us about this issue in more detail, you are welcome to do so through the usual channels.

Last updated: June 2023