Dear George, Your comments do make more sense to me than our earlier discussion. I hope i did not offend you with my initial reaction. If I did, please accept my excuse. In particular I like the comments towards the end.

The nature and level of trust among staff, Board, and community is one of the largest factors that affects how we work together.

We should be working together, yes. But my personal feeling is that we are at a point were the most of us are afraid that the proposal does depend less on the NTIA, Commerce Department and the US Congress all bundled together, than on the internal balance between the SO/AC´s (if we may group them as one, an assumption nobody would have done not so long ago) and the Board. The terrifying position the Board may take or not, seems to be the largest stumbling block to the fulfilment of the transition to a private sector led, bottom-up policy developing, global, multi-stakeholder community, etc. etc.. I know it is a tall order. But it would be a pity if it gets stuck because of internal mistrust between members of the same community, just be cause they see red when they happen to wear different hats, or change musical chairs and do not realise they sit in the same boat.

I think that it would be very useful to address this issue directly, and probably in a larger context than just the accountability process.

Yes, I agree with you that we are trying to selectively put too much under the hat of the "transition accountability” as if it was the last opportunity change things. I fully support your large context view. I also missed a larger context in ATRT2. I don´t know enough of the history of the Corporation to understand what drives this (maybe only recent) “bunker” mentality between SO/ACs and Board, while staff flies (temporarily leaderless) under the radar screen. As Larry Strickling memorably noted in Buenos Aires (Sunday evening I think) there seems to be no larger transformation between one and the same individual, when she goes trough the metamorphosis from being a mortal member of the community and becomes member of the Board (my words, not Larry´s). If you ask me, I don´t think the Board should be "more equal" than the SO/ACs in this process, and should have NOT the last word on what goes out to the Beltway and what not. My early understanding was the the Board would send “anything" the community would propose to the higher political instances. But that was long time ago and a few million US $ later in legal fees in a non-contentious competition for the best blueprint for a internet-age institution. We seem to be locked in a rather early phase of the 30 year War and nobody seems to remember the way to Westfalia (funny, Wuzen also starts with a W)

I speak only for myself here.

Me too!

Does this make sense to anyone?

As an avid reader of everything you write, let me thank you for adding this reflection after today´s exchanges and bringing the conversation to another level, while I cannot hide my disappointment, as I was expecting more on why the “Heritage Foundation” raised questions in the first place. I would have easily found another 100 serious people in Central America that also have serious doubts about its past role in policy making :)

If so, what can we do about it?

I strongly suggest to go back in a quiet hour to the “Road ahead” section of the Net Mundial declaration; read it; use it as a sensible check list; and hire Architects for a good blueprint of what kind of institution (as opposed to Corporation) we want, instead of California Law experts to fix holes in the roof at the discretion of a rather small group. The Checks and Balances I would be looking to add to the discussion, are less focused to the risk of a fired Director suing its detractors……. They should be focusing between public interest on the one hand vs profit motives on the other. Between national vs global interests (the jurisdiction issue that flew nowhere, for example). Between policy making and the direct day to day management of the corporation. Between all the good will community members and the external individuals, judges, impartial experts etc. that hopefully will solve over all IRPs, reconsiderations and other eventual rights violations. Are they really going to solve all our problems? Fairly? Cheers Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez _____________________ email: crg@isoc-cr.org Skype: carlos.raulg +506 8837 7176 (cel) +506 4000 2000 (home) +506 2290 3678 (fax) _____________________ Apartado 1571-1000 San Jose, COSTA RICA

Dear Co-Chairs, I am on LH 575 (with WiFi) and will only have a short layover to 4U8047 right when the call starts, so this is the very first CCWG Call I am actually sorry to miss :-)-O As someone else stated, the way the Board has gone about it is not really contributing much towards trust, though as far as content is concerned I am waiting for the Board's final output. The way individual Board members (and that includes the outgoing CEO) go about it "in their individual capacity" is not contributing much towards trust. And not only yesterday's outburst, which made one think of how to recall a Board Member rather than to trust. The history we have with ICANN (and not only the ccNSO 2003 situation referenced by Nigel Roberts recently) forms the basis of this absence of trust. And, finally, this is not the CCWG Trust, but the CCWG Accountability. But then I have been saying that we are going about this the wrong way and ICANN needs deep, structural for almost a year. el -- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPad mini

On 7 Jan 2016, at 01:36, George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky@gmail.com> wrote:

I'd like to add something to my recent post regarding Brett Schaefer and the Heritage Foundation.

It is now clear that I misinterpreted what Brett wrote in his post regarding comments filed by the Heritage Foundation. I'm asking myself why that happened, and what I come up with was a slightly embarrassing but educational conclusion. When I was reading Brett's post, I was unconsciously more ready to misinterpret it than I was to treat it as a neutral request for inclusion of presumably omitted material. It had very little to do with Brett. I was tired of reading what I believed were unwarranted negative comments regarding the Board and I was in a somewhat frustrated mood.

I think that my reaction mirrors to some extent what I've seen in moderately frequent reactions on the CCWG list, where some posters seem quite ready to think and say ill of the Board or established processes or express disdain without looking for or knowing the facts or expressing their concerns directly in a manner leading to useful discussion. The reasons might be different, but I think that it's basically the same infection, born of contentious historical circumstances and strengthened by a downward spiral of mistrust that grows as the available evidence is interpreted in a biased fashion, and it can infect both sides.

We do have a choice. We can either nourish this downward spiral in trust, or we can try to kill it. At a minimum, to kill it requires more communication, more directly, more substantively, more immediately and more oriented toward reasonable shared common goals than we have been able to achieve in the past. We don't seem to have effective mechanisms in ICANN for achieving such a state of affairs; we seem to be frozen in processes (or lack thereof) that maintain an existing dynamic that does not clear misunderstandings and problems promptly or thoroughly, but can leave them to fester, nourishing the downward spiral.

The nature and level of trust among staff, Board, and community is one of the largest factors that affects how we work together. I think that it would be very useful to address this issue directly, and probably in a larger context than just the accountability process. I speak only for myself here.

Does this make sense to anyone? If so, what can we do about it? If not, how am I misperceiving the issue?

George

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