I am glad that the dialog on this is continuing because we have
to resolve this in Brussels and to facilitate that that the amendments should
be proposed as much in advance as possible.
I personally support the motion as proposed because I think the
required threshold of 60% of each house for any additional candidates provides
more than enough protection to ensure SG support. That would require 5
affirmative votes for the CPH and 8 affirmative votes of the NCPH, so no SG
could control the vote, not even with the NCA vote. With that protection,
it seems problematic to add more complexity to the process.
At the same time, if there are those who cannot support the
original motion as is, I think I could support a modification that would do the
following:
1.
If the Council decides to try to improve the diversity of the pool
of GNSO endorsed candidates, they would first consider those alternate
candidates proposed by the SGs, if any. (One flaw with this as Bill noted
in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as
alternates.)
2.
If the Council is unable to approve any additional candidates to
improve diversity of the pool using only SG proposed alternates, then
they could consider the entire set of candidates requesting GNSO endorsement.
3.
I would add one new wrinkle to this: SG’s should only
propose alternates that are of a different geographical location or gender than
their primary candidate. In fact this would probably be a useful
amendment to the original motion.
Regarding Wolf’s suggestion that this process should only
apply to the next two RTs, I am not convinced that this is necessary. As
I said in our meeting, if we discover that the process needs to change at any
point before any of the next reviews, in this cycle of reviews or in subsequent
cycles, we could do it. At the same time, if we do not see any need for
changes, we will have a process in place and ready to go without starting
another work effort.
Note that I added a few comments below including the following: “I
am going to assume at this point that the original motion is what is on the
table for 23 June and any amendments to that need to be submitted again.”
Chuck
From:
owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf
Of William Drake
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 12:23 PM
To: GNSO Council List
Cc: Kristina Rosette; Knobenw
Subject: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hi
On Jun 11, 2010, at 12:34 AM, Rosette, Kristina wrote:
#3:
Understood. To the IPC, however, having a slightly more complicated
process at the SG level is far preferable to having the Council take on an SG
role and make nominations independent of the community. If that's
absolutely necessary, the circumstances under which the Council can do so
should, in the IPC's view, be narrow, specifically delineated, and of "a
last resort" nature. That's what the proposed amendments are intended to
do.
Thanks Kristina for explaining your position. While
it's not a huge deal, I do have a different perspective. Since Council
will hopefully vote on this on the 23rd and everyone may not be focused on the
fine points of this little item, I guess I should say why.
The process agreed in May by the drafting team, which
comprised reps of all SGs, was designed to facilitate the simplistic, most
apolitical routine handling of the recurring RT endorsement requirement
possible. So instead of having competitive elected slots 5 and 6 as we
tried with the ATRT maiden voyage, we scaled back to each SG being able to have
one endorsement selected in accordance with its own internal process—zero
inter-SG stuff required. We also downscaled the diversity objectives
close to the vanishing point to avoid that being a source of stress for anyone
(except NCSG, which would prefer it to be stronger). The relevant bit of
the latter is:
"3. In making their selections, stakeholder
groups SHOULD [not must] give due consideration to the following diversity
objectives:
*Unless the applicant pool does not allow, no more than half of the
GNSO’s nominees SHOULD come from the same geographical region; and
*Unless the applicant pool does not allow, the GNSO’s nominees
SHOULD not all be of the same gender."
In other words, normative encouragement but not a binding
requirement, subject to availability in the first place of a candidate pool
that would allow us to even try (which, it is easy to imagine, may not be the
case in some cycles).
"4. The Council will consider the
resulting list of up to four nominees at its
next teleconference. If the list does not meet the above
mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole MAY CHOOSE [or it
may not] to endorse up to two additional candidates from the applicant
pool who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired
balance. In this case, the Council would hold a vote during its
teleconference, with sixty percent support of both houses represented in
the Council being required for endorsement. If
no candidate obtains that level of support, the list of endorsements
obtained via the bottom-up process of stakeholder group nominations will
be deemed final and forwarded to ICANN."
And to facilitate this, para 2 suggests that,
"Each stakeholder group is ENCOURAGED to identify in its internal
deliberations (notification to the Council would be helpful but is NOT
required) one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if
available, in the event that the diversity procedure... is to be
utilized."
[Gomes, Chuck] As I said above, I think we should amend this to
say, “Each stakeholder group is ENCOURAGED to
identify in its internal deliberations (notification to the Council would
be helpful but is NOT required) one or two additional candidates whom it
could support, if available, in the event that the diversity
procedure... is to be utilized. Any
additional candidates should be from different geographical regions or of
different gender than the primary candidate.”
So, for example, a scenario: ICANN puts out a call for
applicants, and as happened with the ATRT, 12 of them are apps to represent the
GNSO (over time, and on topics narrower than accountability and transparency,
it's likely the pools will get even smaller), 8 of which are from the US, 2 of
which are from women. And say that from this pool, the SGs endorse 3 or 4
American men and no women. In this case, the Council could decide (or
not) that it might be preferable for its nominees to look a bit more
representative of the global Internet community and that we should at least
consider adding 1 or 2 more from the 8 remaining in the pool, subject to the
agreement of 60% of both houses (which presumably means that only viable,
noncontroversial candidates would have a prayer of making the cut). Of
course, even if we succeeded in agreeing on such nominations, it's highly
likely that (as with the ATRT) the Selectors would ultimately pick the
candidates that had been supported by the four SGs in the first place.
But at least the optics would be better.
What the IPC is proposing is that only applicants that
SGs have previously designated as acceptable back-ups could even be considered by
the Council for this purpose.[Gomes, Chuck] I didn’t understand it as this
restrictive. I thought Kristina said that the SG alternatives would be
considered first; then if that didn’t result in a successful resolution,
other candidates could be considered. In which case
*Rather than sort of casually considering who they could
support in the event a diversity vote arises, each SG would probably feel
compelled in each cycle to spend time reaching agreement on back-ups and formally
notify the council of these in order not to be at a competitive disadvantage
relative to other SGs. So the added cycles of carefully parsing all the
files and engaging in strategic calculations and negotiations become the norm
rather than the exception, which is what dropping competitively elected seats 5
& 6 was supposed to spare us from.
*One can readily imagine situations in which only a few (or
even none) of the 8 get these second-level endorsements, and they're not the
candidates that would add diversity to the pool. Council's hands would
then be tied, we couldn't even have a discussion about the merits of the others
and try to persuade each other, even if the prohibited persons actually would
add diversity and maybe bring stuff to the table that not everyone recognized
at the outset. We just lock in on our first preferences, don't budge, and
potentially do nothing about diversity even when there were reasonable options.
Anyway, relative to other things on council's plate the
differences and relative merits of these two approaches may not seem like a big
deal or something that warrants a two-screen email. But since there is a
choice, I'd rather go the route that trusts the Council and gives it the option
to make reasoned choices through community deliberations rather than
politicizing things and tying its hands. And on a philosophical level, I
guess I don't agree that the possibility of Council making a group decision is an
improper usurpation of SG sovereignty; the nominees are, after all, supposed to
represent the GNSO.
Some of us at least would like to be able to vote on the
original motion agreed by SG reps in the drafting team, and as such I regard
the amendment as "unfriendly" (meaning merely "not
better"). If nothing else, maybe we can amuse the audience in
Brussels.
An entirely separate matter is CSG's proposed amendment by
Wolf-Ulrich to the effect that we should only adopt this process for the next
two RTs (rather than as a standing model, which is what the drafting team was
asked to propose) and presumably renegotiate the process again (and again...?).
Will IPC and CSG be merging their amendments or shall we address these
separately?
[Gomes, Chuck] Please try to finalize amendments to the original
motion as soon as possible, ideally by 15 June (but this is not a
requirement). Because amendments were being made on the fly verbally and
via email during the meeting, I am going to assume at this point that the
original motion is what is on the table for 23 June and any amendments to that
need to be submitted again.
Cheers,
Bill
***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
***********************************************************