Dear All,
Some high-level notes from today’s Council prep meeting.
Best regards,
Joke
Welcome by Katrina.
2.
Voting procedure Chair and Vice-chair
Leadership team. Elected at the first icann public meeting of the year.
Eligible to vote? The current council members
1 chair and 2 vice chairs: All 3 from a different region.
Nomination procedure: nominate, second, if there are more candidates than seats, we vote. Openly in case of 1 candidate, secret vote in case there are more than 1 candidate.
Vice-chairs need to be from different regions as the chair.
Applicable guideline: https://ccnso.icann.org/sites/default/files/field-attached/roles-responsibilities-council-26feb18-en.pdf
Last year we started a nomination procedure prior to the meeting. Nominations/Secondings are public. We looked at various options for voting. How to ensure the voting is done before councilors step down?
Proposal where an independent ballot counter
(Joke) will be tasked with receiving the secret votes.
Proposal to start nominations Friday, 19 March (00:01 UTC)
End: 23 March 2021 (noon UTC)
Stephen is happy with the proposal. But Council needs to approve the override of the guideline, for the duration of the pandemic.
Alejandra: no further approval needed. Council is consulted for potential issues. Council Chair can override.
Stephen suggests to respect the guideline, ack circumstance is exceptional.
Jordan: chair makes a decision. Covered in the guideline.
8.2 Omission in or unreasonable impact of the Guideline
In the event the Guideline does not provide guidance and/or the impact is unreasonable to conduct the business of the ccNSO, the ccNSO Council, or the review team, the Chair of the ccNSO will decide.
Jordan: recording a favourable view. This meeting has no standing. Endorse the chair’s decision. By substance there is no difference. Simply to note the council is comfortable with the decision, in whatever way.
Nick: bylaws. Written ballot. Or by action at the meeting. No issue with what has been proposed at all.
Bart suggests: at the start of the meeting on 25 March, start with a resolution by council adopting the proposed procedure, including the nomination. That is a formal decision by Council, supporting Katrina’s
proposal. Make clear it is an exceptional circumstance.
Nick: we ratify the process. no fundamental objections at today’s call.
3.
Roles and Responsibilities
PDF of the google doc will be shared after the meeting
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oxLOXSKiGILz5PbDAfcvnPctHExjGLeXEsYTHfstF7A/edit?usp=sharing
To date, the chair is the overseer of the annual and monthly work plan: suggested is to move this to the Triage Committee. Thus more councillors are involved. In June we had a review of the newly structured work
plan. To be updated, timelines to be added.
Any concerns regarding expanding the role of the Triage Committee?
Nick: works well and is sensible.
Jordan: Triage and Prioritisation Committee? Sounds fine to me
Laura agrees too.
Action item #1:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oxLOXSKiGILz5PbDAfcvnPctHExjGLeXEsYTHfstF7A/edit?usp=sharing
All councillors, both current and future, are invited to check the google doc, and to identify the areas where they want to contribute and to add their names to the document in column F. (out of scope: leadership roles for Chair and
Vice Chairs of the ccNSO Council) Names can be added once staff has specified in the document the number of persons sought for each role.
Bart suggests a procedure to make a selection, in case there are more than 1 person that wants to play the same role.
Alejandra: is a discussion possible at the Council meeting?
Bart: part of the main agenda.
Jiankang asks how many names are needed for each role?
Bart: confirms
Katrina: outgoing Councillors are requested not to sign up for any role. Incoming councillors are highly encouraged to sign up.
Jordan: When you are asking us to make changes to our roles and accountabilities, etc, it would be nice to have those on notice, and some time to think about it in advance - this paper should ideally have been
circulated in advance of our discussion? Or was it, and I missed it?
Rejection Action and Approval Action Manager. And also a Committee. Experience has shown they have not been very active. Based on experience to date, the action managers take on a more active role to manage the
process to consult the community. This is partially done by the Chair. To be updated: relevant guidelines.
Stephen: makes sense.
Jordan: Fine with the proposed change in combined
Pablo: more active communication with the community?
Bart: overwhelmed at secretariat level. EC rep is alerting the community. But you actually want the action manager to do this, together with the Secretariat. Would be good to have a dedicated Councillor doing
this. This person alerts the community. Should be done by Council and not by staff.
4.
Draft agenda – upcoming Council meeting
To be decided on Thursday:
Appointment new chair and 2 vice chairs, workplan, and distribution of roles and responsibilities
Governance Session
Katrina mentions that she wants to share the results of the discussions at the GRC and Council meeting regarding what (not) to include in the rules of the ccNSO. The idea is to invite people in a GRC sub-group
that works on the rules of the ccnso. The new version should ideally be ready by ICANN72. We will look back at the results from the governance session.
Here you will be able to find an overview of the ccNSO members meeting sessions as part of ICANN70 :
https://ccnso.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-03mar21-en.htm
Charter and guidelines to be updated: Travel fund committee will be integrated in OISC.
Council liaisons to WGs and committees : Liaisons to play a more active role in informing Council. Sharing views of the Council with respective WGs or Committees. E.g. Tech WG, TLD-OPS. Open channels of communication
ccNSO/GNSO agenda committee : suggestion to create such a committee
Role to be taken on by the liaisons. Maarten and Sebastien. They created an interesting agenda for yesterday’s joint GNSO and ccNSO Council meetings.
Sebastien: went well. Was not expecting to cover all topics in 1 hour. Might be hard to come up with good topics for June. 3 times per year
Maarten: agrees. Was not expecting all suggestions were included on the agenda. Well-prepared, good presentations from the ccNSO. Potentially topics to be deferred to future meetings.
Develop a 2nd overview of reporting and accountability lines.
Suggestion by Alejandra.
Lines of communication. Good idea to have a map of the people representing us in the various committees etc. have them inform the council about their work, be more involved in a fluid conversation.
Idea to have a document in the wiki. Written updates, or discussion on council agenda if there is a topic with more substance.
Katrina: good idea to have written reports. For inclusion in the living doc for newcomers. Would be an additional burden on volunteers. Eberhard suggested newcomers to serve as reporters.
5.
Q&A ccTLD Board members
Format slightly changed. Also invited: Maarten, Leon. Session chair will be Jordan.
Topics or questions to discuss? The board members did not suggest any topics or questions.
Jordan: Size of the group got bigger, which makes it more challenging. How to achieve meaningful interaction? Any questions as a suggestion form councillors?
Perhaps as a topic for discussion: how to get back to in-person meetings, as also discussed yesterday.
Jordan will follow up with the board members and council mailing list via email.
6.
AOB
none
Joke Braeken
ccNSO Policy Advisor
joke.braeken@icann.org