Re: [ALAC] [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?
Hi Dominik On Oct 21, 2009, at 1:26 AM, Dominik Filipp wrote:
Bill,
I see some points be more clarified for those not sitting inside ICANN. If I understand well, the NCUC viewpoint presented by you is that the NCUC in the new charter supports democratic election of councilor seats in the GNSO council and those elected councilors will have obviously voting right exactly as they have it now (the NCUC has three seats). The difference between NCUC and some At-Large presented positions is only in a way how the councilors will be nominated or elected, democratically or hard wired. In other words, there is no doubt or discussion but a general consensus between the NCUC and At-Large on the basic fact that NCSG constituency should have voting councilor seats in the GNSO council in any way. Am I right?
Yes, absolutely. As I said yesterday in response to Roberto,
Agreed. As far as I can tell, everyone sees the 'powers' fairly similarly, except that NCUC thinks council seats should be filled by elections, SIC thinks the EC should just hash out the allocation of seats (which to us sounds like a recipe for trench warfare), and some in ALAC feel there should be hard wiring. Hopefully we can have a focused discussion on the relative merits of these approaches and the trajectories/scenarios they may point to in order to move this to another level.
That's it. We think hard wiring will result in fragmentation within self-regarding silos, with people treating the NCSG as a mere shell within which they can pursue their stand alone agendas rather than feeling an incentive to work with the broader civil society community. And once you get to more than six constituencies, you'd have to start monkeying around with formula for division of the spoils. It is often the case that noncommercial interests and viewpoints are in a distinct minority in the council as they are in ICANN more generally, so encouraging fragmentation is just a recipe for staying powerless, in my view. And as I've said, democratic elections would probably yield the same sort of distribution of council seats anyway, unless a constituency is constitutionally screwed up (e.g. if the consumer group is populated by groups with corporate members who have entirely different agendas) or just a vehicle for a few non-geographically diverse folks, or the candidate is personally impossible to work with, etc. I can't see CS people who work on say privacy not supporting a good candidate from a solid constituency who's advocating positions that are broadly appealing to other CS people. In other civil society networks I participate in--- the iG caucus in the IGF, the CSISAC in OECD, etc---mutual support and broadly shared visions have been more than sufficient to bind people together and produce elections to leadership positions that were non- divisive (without every faction demanding "it's" rep, although here that'd be more of a priority I guess). I can't see any reason the same level of trust and collaboration couldn't prevail in NCSG, other than the generally dysfunctional, trust-free culture that seems to pervade in ICANN. And the SIC's model is even worse, they have the executive committee somehow just "working it out" amongst itself, which will just transfer the fragmentation and competition into a more intensive and divisive process. Whatever one's perspective on the options is, it ought to be the case that we can have a reasoned, adult conversation about how each would likely play out, and it's costs and benefits. We did that internally in NCUC and came to the view that elections were the best way forward. But we've not had the opportunity for a similar conversation with the board/SIC, or with ALAC for that matter. Hopefully we're about to do that with the former now, but re: the latter, there's no NCUC-ALAC meeting scheduled, so I guess it's a matter of talking over beers. Whether that'll be sufficient I don't know, but it's all we can manage, I guess. And BTW, as a member of the council, can I just add that it's slightly puzzling to me that people should be fighting over this particular "prize." If done properly, it's a ton of work, much of it on procedural arcana (my bandwidth has unfortunately been largely absorbed with restructuring hijinks, looking forward to getting past that eventually and having more to work on the substantive policy issues). But I guess ICANN should be happy that folks are just dying to get in there and do it... Bill
Hi Bill and Roberto, thanks for taking the time on the extensive exchange of infos. To me this was very helpful, and I can affirm you that I learned a lot about the substance of the issue from your recent mails what was rather ambiguous (at least to me) so far. I understood and share most of Bill's points, concerns and reflections how best to organise and represent public interest and to make them more streamlined and resounding at ICANN. I am looking forward to further fruitful and progressing discussions on the subject in Seoul. See you soon, best, Wolf William Drake wrote Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:44:
Hi Dominik
On Oct 21, 2009, at 1:26 AM, Dominik Filipp wrote:
Bill,
I see some points be more clarified for those not sitting inside ICANN. If I understand well, the NCUC viewpoint presented by you is that the NCUC in the new charter supports democratic election of councilor seats in the GNSO council and those elected councilors will have obviously voting right exactly as they have it now (the NCUC has three seats). The difference between NCUC and some At-Large presented positions is only in a way how the councilors will be nominated or elected, democratically or hard wired. In other words, there is no doubt or discussion but a general consensus between the NCUC and At-Large on the basic fact that NCSG constituency should have voting councilor seats in the GNSO council in any way. Am I right?
Yes, absolutely.
As I said yesterday in response to Roberto,
Agreed. As far as I can tell, everyone sees the 'powers' fairly similarly, except that NCUC thinks council seats should be filled by elections, SIC thinks the EC should just hash out the allocation of seats (which to us sounds like a recipe for trench warfare), and some in ALAC feel there should be hard wiring. Hopefully we can have a focused discussion on the relative merits of these approaches and the trajectories/scenarios they may point to in order to move this to another level.
That's it. We think hard wiring will result in fragmentation within self-regarding silos, with people treating the NCSG as a mere shell within which they can pursue their stand alone agendas rather than feeling an incentive to work with the broader civil society community. And once you get to more than six constituencies, you'd have to start monkeying around with formula for division of the spoils. It is often the case that noncommercial interests and viewpoints are in a distinct minority in the council as they are in ICANN more generally, so encouraging fragmentation is just a recipe for staying powerless, in my view. And as I've said, democratic elections would probably yield the same sort of distribution of council seats anyway, unless a constituency is constitutionally screwed up (e.g. if the consumer group is populated by groups with corporate members who have entirely different agendas) or just a vehicle for a few non-geographically diverse folks, or the candidate is personally impossible to work with, etc. I can't see CS people who work on say privacy not supporting a good candidate from a solid constituency who's advocating positions that are broadly appealing to other CS people. In other civil society networks I participate in--- the iG caucus in the IGF, the CSISAC in OECD, etc---mutual support and broadly shared visions have been more than sufficient to bind people together and produce elections to leadership positions that were non- divisive (without every faction demanding "it's" rep, although here that'd be more of a priority I guess). I can't see any reason the same level of trust and collaboration couldn't prevail in NCSG, other than the generally dysfunctional, trust-free culture that seems to pervade in ICANN. And the SIC's model is even worse, they have the executive committee somehow just "working it out" amongst itself, which will just transfer the fragmentation and competition into a more intensive and divisive process.
Whatever one's perspective on the options is, it ought to be the case that we can have a reasoned, adult conversation about how each would likely play out, and it's costs and benefits. We did that internally in NCUC and came to the view that elections were the best way forward. But we've not had the opportunity for a similar conversation with the board/SIC, or with ALAC for that matter. Hopefully we're about to do that with the former now, but re: the latter, there's no NCUC-ALAC meeting scheduled, so I guess it's a matter of talking over beers. Whether that'll be sufficient I don't know, but it's all we can manage, I guess.
And BTW, as a member of the council, can I just add that it's slightly puzzling to me that people should be fighting over this particular "prize." If done properly, it's a ton of work, much of it on procedural arcana (my bandwidth has unfortunately been largely absorbed with restructuring hijinks, looking forward to getting past that eventually and having more to work on the substantive policy issues). But I guess ICANN should be happy that folks are just dying to get in there and do it...
Bill
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participants (2)
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William Drake -
Wolf Ludwig