On 29/09/2015 14:13, Arun Sukumar wrote:
Agree fully with Avri, and Ed's suggestion. It is important to feel the pulse of the hill, but that need not be the CCWG's driving consideration.
It is commendable that this group has not lost its bearings on accountability principles despite the noise surrounding the proposal's "acceptability" to the NTIA/USG.
What's acceptable or who's electable are pretty subjective notions, as the rest of the world is finding out from this US prez campaign :)
I agree with Arun and others. Getting professional public affairs advice on likely reactions to our proposal (and to the Board's) certainly sounds like a good idea. But we should be careful not to mislead ourselves with it. What are we actually planning to ask? Would Congress support our proposal? Would they prefer it? Would they dislike it sufficiently to pass legislation to block it? These are very different questions to each other. Moreover, any advice, no matter how well informed, is only a guess based on the current situation. That naturally devalues our ability (or others' ability) to influence the outcome. So if we were to effectively outsource our decision-making to professional political advice of what is "achievable", that wouldn't be only an improper dereliction of duty, it would also be foolish. For this reason, while I am happy for us to go ahead with this project, I think we should concentrate less on trying to second-guess others and more on winning support for our own work. Kieren's recent suggestion is an excellent starting point for a checklist, and it isn't even entirely new: I believe Thomas has already made a start on a more legible explanation of our proposal. This is where we should focus our efforts: on building support for our proposal, not on assembling excuses for abandoning it. -- Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523 Head of Public Affairs | Read the LINX Public Affairs blog London Internet Exchange | http://publicaffairs.linx.net/ London Internet Exchange Ltd 21-27 St Thomas Street, London SE1 9RY Company Registered in England No. 3137929 Trinity Court, Trinity Street, Peterborough PE1 1DA