To get work done, AA may form sub-committees (Tradition IX).
For example, if an Intergroup is very large, the public information (PI) officer may not be able to cover the entire Intergroup. A sub-committee might be formed to take care of PI for a particular remote area.
How would this be done? Set out below is one option.
First of all the sub-committee has to be constituted. The sponsoring body (in this case the Intergroup), acting through the PI officer, agrees that the sub-committee be established.
Now, people must be appointed to the sub-committee. There are three ways: the PI officer could be authorised by the Intergroup to handpick trusted and experienced members; the Intergroup could request volunteers from amongst its number; or the posts could be advertised more broadly (with the usual process of AA CV-submission, maybe an interview of some sort, and vote by the Intergroup). At any rate, this is merely to establish who the initial members are. Once these are selected, they vote amongst themselves for a chair (to run the meetings) and a secretary (to maintain records). An agenda can be drafted by the chair, and the sub-committee can start its work.
There are two types of work on sub-committees: the job of devising and organising the work (for instance PI work), and the job of actually performing the work. The committee-members may do both, or maybe volunteers may be attracted to perform the work. These could but need not necessarily sit in on the sub-committee meetings, participate, and vote. There is precedent for both options in AA. For instance, on some convention sub-committees, all those involved attend the sub-committee meetings and vote. At others, this would be unwieldy (if the convention is very large), and certainly all telephone line volunteers do not attend and participate in meetings concerning how the telephone service is to be run.
The sub-committee must also establish its terms of reference. These may be adopted or adapted from other sub-committees or formulated from scratch. They could be simple, defining the scope of the work, the regularity and content of meetings, and the guidelines for rotation.
Once a stable sub-committee has been established and maybe running for while, it is safe to open up membership of the sub-committee to anyone interested by advertising the availability of a post throughout the service structure. Concept XI must be observed: composition, qualifications, induction procedures, and rights and duties are important. This is why it is important that, when a sub-committee is initially set-up, membership is not a free-for-all. The fellowship is responsible for ensuring that stable, experienced, and knowledgeable people establish the sub-committee in such a way at to maximise its chances of success and to establish a sound precedent as leadership rotates.
Finally, the sub-committee is responsible to those who established it, in the example above, the Intergroup. There is no separate and direct line of responsibility to the groups or to AA as a whole, and there is no governance by the sub-committee of the groups or AA as a whole.
A public information sub-committee appointed by Intergroup is responsible to the fellowship through the Intergroup. It is not accountable to local groups directly, but via the Intergroup, and likewise cannot dictate or stipulate to groups: if it formulates public information guidelines to be followed by groups, at the request of Intergroup, it is up to the Intergroup to approve these by gathering the views of AA members via the GSRs and then to implement them (although even then such guidelines have the force of suggestion not law). Sub-committees are thus trusted servants, and governors.