During my CIRA Chair days, we developed a conflict of interest policy, with the assistance of one of the country's leading legal firms. Ross, would CIRA be willing to share its policy with the Council? Maureen ----- Original Message ----- From: Marilyn Cade To: 'Cubberley, Maureen (CHT)' ; ross@tucows.com ; 'Bruce Tonkin' Cc: council@gnso.icann.org Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:38 PM Subject: RE: [council] Conflicts of Interest I'm also interested in supporting the development of an effective Interest Statement, and a discussion of what creates a conflict that requires a recusement, versus a disclosure. Also, we should examine how we implement such a program. Grant has shared with the BC the way that InternetNZ addresses, and perhaps there are other useful models also about to quickly get a sense of. Marilyn -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Cubberley, Maureen (CHT) Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 11:04 AM To: ross@tucows.com; Bruce Tonkin Cc: council@gnso.icann.org Subject: RE: [council] Conflicts of Interest Bruce and Ross, Thanks Bruce for bringing this proposal forward. I too think this is an excellent idea, and Ross, I agree with your further analysis. In particular, I agree that the GNSO council should move ahead with a conflict of interest policy, and an appropriate process to accompany it. As you know, this is an issue that I brought up at the meeting in Vancouver, at which time I cited the Board conflict of interest policy and asked for clarification as to whether or not it applied to the Council. Now that we have our clarification, we should move ahead. I like your" light weight" approach and also the concept of a design committee. I support the idea of adding this to the next agenda, so Bruce, if that is acceptable and if the Council as a whole agrees to proceed, I would be pleased to volunteer to work with fellow Councillors on the proposed "design committee" or with whatever development approach is decided upon. Best regards, Maureen -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Ross Rader Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 8:57 AM To: Bruce Tonkin Cc: council@gnso.icann.org Subject: Re: [council] Conflicts of Interest Bruce Tonkin wrote:
I see this being a voluntary initiative as there doesn't seem to be any explicit bylaw requirements.
Bruce - I think this is an excellent proposal. As you know, the registrar constituency has had similar practices embodied in its bylaws for a number of years. However, simply because the bylaws is silent on a specific set of behaviors, doesn't mean that we can't officially adopt these behaviors through other means. I also believe that it is time for the Council of the GNSO to adopt some explicit conflict of interest management processes - but I believe they should be mandatory. At first, we should proceed cautiously with these. A light-weight approach would seem to be most prudent. Over time, we could improve and expand upon the approach in ways that make it more useful for our purposes. My preference would not be to create a "design committee" to come up with a comprehensive proposal at this time. As a first step, I think your proposal makes eminent sense, and I would like to discuss whether or not the rest of the council would be willing to undertake a vote to make these requirements mandatory. Is this something that we could add to the agenda of our next meeting? Thanks in advance for your consideration. -ross