Hi, I would tend to agree with this. Constituencies are, as I understand them within the new structure, the basic way participants engaged in policy making are organized. It is being a constituency that gives an organized group of people with a common interest a formal voice in policy making. The Stakeholder groups based on the other hand are based on an sector organizational principle for allowing the constituencies from one of 4 sectors to manage the process and provide a mechanism to allow for the formation of new constituencies without having to constantly change the balance of representation/votes in the council. Since SG are organized along sector lines, it is quite possible for constituencies within a sector to be unaligned and in disagreement with each other. As long as we are working on a model of funding where the participants within a group are forced to discriminate on how that money will be spent, then that basic grouping has to be the constituency. Otherwise a strong constituency within a SG could refuse to allow a weaker constituency to travel thus stifling their legitimate Board given voice. Note: In saying this I repeat my minority opinion again that ICANN should be providing travel on the Board level standards for all council members. But this is not the position taken by the DT or council, so it remains a minority view. In the spirit of announcing how we intend to vote in advance, I will probably abstain since I strongly believe this and am currently the only council member, by virtue of being chair, being given what I consider the proper treatment all council members should be given. I think this will be even more the case when we move to the SG model as then the council reps will be chosen to serve the will of the SG and not interests of their constituency. a. On Fri, 2009-03-27 at 16:12 +0100, Philip Sheppard wrote:
The BC profoundly objects to the proposed change of "constituencies" to "stakeholder groups" suggested by the RyC.
Any new constituency must be approved by the Board. It is therefore legitimate. It therefore deserves equitable treatment.
Philip