Hi all, Just to chime in - #3 really seems like a good point, to me. I could certainly see a potential complainant for, say, harassment, being deterred from reporting if they saw the Ombudsman drinking and socializing with the subject of their complaint. Though it may make the job less fun - I do think it's important to keep distance when one has such a position. #2 also seems very important... but also challenging. Having an external 3rd party provide ombudsman services may not solve this problem since, presumably, they would still need to be contracted in by ICANN, leaving them equally subject to influence - and potentially even more so. Imagine the Ombudsman was someone seconded over from some KPMG-like organization. Wouldn't their higher ups pressure them to avoid rocking the boat, and jeopardizing the contract? I am personally more accustomed to such challenges in a public sector context where, indeed, longer and fixed-term contracts (security of tenure) are the preferred means of ensuring that an official (like, say, human rights commissioners) won't be swayed by political forces, along with making the official difficult to fire through oversight of termination proceedings and strong and specific requirements for cause (incapacity, missing a certain number of meetings, demonstrated incompetence, etc.). Just some thoughts. Thanks of course to Sebastien for his excellent work on this, and to Farzi for bringing these issues up. Michael Karanicolas On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Mueller, Milton L <milton@gatech.edu> wrote:
I find it difficult to see how anyone could disagree with these points.
1. I don't think we can solve the problem of independence by giving the ombudspersons a 5 year contract. I have provided my reasons before. If by 5 years fixed contract you mean the Ombuds office as an entity should be given a fixed term contract that is fine. But ombudspersons getting fixed five-year contract won't solve the problem.
2. Ombuds has to be an office and not a person. At the moment it's a person. I think to maintain the independence of the office, we need to have preferably an external organization that provides ombuds services and its revenue is not only dependent on ICANN. That way we can ensure independence.
3. Under no circumstances, the ombudspersons should socialize and befriend community members ( this is a very obvious independence element, have you ever encountered the decision maker of your case at a social event talking and smiling at the party you filed a complaint against? It is written in first year legal text books that independence is very much affected by social encounters and interactions)
I don't think the current recommendations are sufficient enough to expand the ombuds office mandate. But I do need written reasons for not considering the points I have made. It is simply not enough that the WS2 group on Ombuds did not agree with my comments.
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