Steve, all
In finalising the CCWG's proposal, the ICANN board is a stakeholder - an important one.
It has a later role as a decision-maker, according to criteria that have already been established by Board resolution.
A careful multi-stakeholder process over almost a year has analysed the community's requirements and come up with a model that can do it - based around membership.
The Board has abused its role as a decision-maker in this process. In effect, it has sought to replace the open, public, deliberative proposal development process with its own definition of what the community requires, and its own solution that can deliver its evaluation of those requirements.
In doing so, it has profoundly challenged the legitimacy of the multi-stakeholder model of decision-making that ICANN and its Board claim to uphold.
Worse, as a matter of process, the Board has attempted to use its decisional role at the end of the Accountability to move the trajectory of debate away from what the community's requirements, fairly analysed dictate -- trying to force the group to "jump the tracks" and into a solution that is unlikely to be able to deliver on those requirements.
It's an ugly display of force in what should be a rational and requirements-based conversation.
I sincerely regret the Board's choice as a group to take that approach. The effect is to give fodder to all of those people, countries and groups who have long argued that the entire notion of multi-stakeholder Internet policymaking is a charade, behind which decisions are made simply and alone by "the people who matter".
In terms of the CCWG's work, this email combined with your statement in Los Angeles reduce the chances of any consensus being able to emerge between what the Board has asked for and what the CCWG has developed.
It leaves me very sad that the groups here (Board and CCWG) have arrived at this position. There is an apparent lack of listening and comprehension; few displays of empathy or willingness to see things from another point of view; and a consequent inability to really talk through and resolve the conflicting perspectives and aims here.
I hoped the Board might make some overtures in that direction. I know I and other CCWG members have been trying to do. To get this sort of response indicates that that attempt serves no further purpose.
What are others' views about how we proceed from here? I confess myself mystified.
Look forward to speaking with you all in a few hours.
Cheers
Jordan