Karl, To be clear, my point was not about whether the budget is high or low, and who should control it, that's another debate. My only point was that by design the Ombudsman has latitude in the use of his/her budget, once this budget is decided. In simple words, control by the Board of the way the Ombudsman spends money would be limiting the independence of the Ombudsman's Office. Forget for a moment the luggage tags (that, incidentally, I have never heard of before), and think about the Board deciding that the Ombudsman should or should not spend money for discovery on a case: if this would happen, I would expect a strong outcry by the community. If we want to let him/her the freedom of investigating without interferences, we have also to accept that money might be spent for other reasons. Cheers, Roberto
-----Original Message----- From: Karl Auerbach [mailto:karl@cavebear.com] Sent: Monday, 18 May 2009 01:11 To: At-Large Worldwide; 'Roberto Gaetano' Subject: Re: [At-Large] FW: Respectful Online Communication and Behavior
Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Karl,
In conclusion, I am once again stunned that ICANN permitted money to be spent in the creation of this document.
I don't think that the ICANN Board should go into details like what document the Ombudsman should or should not develop and publish. I am convinced that the actual system, that gives the Ombudsman latitude in the way he/she will use her/his budget is appropriate.
Were it the case, which it most definitely is not, that the community of internet users had sufficient voting representation on ICANN's board of directors to decide whether this is in-scope for the ombudsman than I might agree with you.
However, given that it is the case that the community of internet users has virtually no say in how ICANN spends the money that ICANN takes from those internet users then I do not agree that ICANN's ombudsman ought to have the authority to spend what is in effect our money on frivolous purposes, into which category squarely falls that most recent bit of politically correct fluff.
ICANN is now hiring a new president on the basis of he/she having run a $100,000,000 (US$) corporation. That's $100,000,000! There seems to be no sense within ICANN that money is to be spent wisely. Rather there seems to exist a corporate lifestyle of lavish and unbridled expenditure.
What's next? Ombudsman luggage tags? Oh, that has already happened.
I agree with John Levine that ICANN's org chart needs a good pruning and that the ombudsman is a good place to make the first small cut.
--karl--