I am speaking as a individual BC rep.
Summary of recommendations on Working Group:
Support completing the election to elect a single chair
Support further discussion and possible clarification of the Working
Group Charter in Council call
Support asking the Working Group to propose working methods and examine
whether and how to expand participation and input to the Working Group and
report to Council in Sao Paolo
Discussion :
Are we making this too complicated, and overlooking the purpose of the WG,
or misunderstanding it, or trying to make it more than it is?
I think we have a working group already agreed, and an election
underway.
I would support the Council discussing asking the working group and elected chair to undertake how to and whether
to expand the working group, what would be the purpose, etc. and whether the
working group can use methods to keep broader groups of interested and relevant
individuals or entities informed, such as through transcribing working conf. calls,
et, maintaining a public mailing list that members and others can post to, etc.
This is a working group launched by Council for a purpose and is
therefore not actually the 'old' working group model, as I see it.
I do not want Council to lose sight of its own responsibilities for
further discussion of policies of relevance to IDNs and find the working group
a diversion from Council's overall responsibilities. It seems to me that we may
be getting a little diverted into confusion about the role of the Working
Group. And perhaps missing some points about the work at hand for the group.
I see some
Quoting from the Chair's email/pasted in full below: "The working group is attracting plenty of
interest, but my concern is that without a clear charter that we are setting
false expectations
regarding the purpose of this
working group. We also need to clearly
establish the working group in the
context of the President's Advisory
Committee, the ccNSO working group,
and the new gTLD committee."
Two points: I fully support the Council clarifying further the charter
of the Working Group. That is within Council’s role/ however, we have
some work already on that, which led to the agreement to create Council’s
working group. So, I support having that on the Council agenda and it
would be good for councilors to have submitted written thoughts, if possible. That
will facilitate the opportunity for dialogue, rather than debate.
Changing the election in process: I cannot support changing the
election process. And, further, I have not see a consensus emerging that there should
be any change in the election cycle underway.
The election was opened, and undoubtedly many have voted. I have voted.
I am not aware that elections, once started, can be stopped, unless
there is some kind of technical problem with the election, failure in the
systems, etc. so I'm not in support of changing the decision to have an
election after having an announcement of an election; getting two candidates
nominated and seconded, and then opening the election.
Once the Working Group has a chair, it can meet and it can take into
account the input and guidance from Council and relevant other inputs on how it
does its work, including but not limited to whether working methods are
sufficient to ensure participation and feedback from other groups or other
parties into its work, or whether expansion of membership is appropriate. The
Working Group could be asked to report back to the Council in Sao Paolo on
ideas about membership and participation. Given the diversity of the Working
Group as present, I believe that a balanced and pragmatic, and responsible set
of ideas can be quickly put forward by the Working Group.
First and foremost, can we all keep in mind that this is only ONE
effort, and does not replace the work of the Council, the need to discuss
policy more at the Council level, and with the focus on understanding the
working group in the larger context.
I fear that it is easy to confuse the Working group as something
magical. I think it has some hard work to do, but nothing magical. J
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On
Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006 9:02 PM
To: Council GNSO
Cc: rmohan@afilias.info
Subject: [council] Additional agenda item for the Council call on 16 Nov -
regarding IDN working group
Hello All,
I would like to add an additional agenda item regarding the GNSO IDN
working group.
As you know, I chaired the original working group on the assumption
that
the working group had a very short life.
Based on the last Council meetings decision to re-instate the working
group with no specific time limit, I wanted to hand over the chair to
another person. There have been two candidates that have been
nominated
by committee members -
initiated an email election process based on the existing membership of
the working group to put a new chair in place.
There are however outstanding issues:
- clearly defining the charter of the working group
- clarifying the rules for membership
I have received some requests from people in the ICANN community that
are currently not members of a GNSO constituency, but are members of
the
general assembly mailing list. So far I have been
recommending that
these people join one of the existing GNSO constituencies to meet the
requirement of a "GNSO volunteer" I have since
noticed that the
current definition of a working group in:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/council/names-proceduresv7.shtml opens up
membership to "members of the General Assembly (GA) defined as
subscribers to the ga@dnso.org, announce@dnso.org or the GA voting
register". I am not sure if this is the
Council's intent.
The working group is attracting plenty of interest, but my concern is
that without a clear charter that we are setting false expectations
regarding the purpose of this working group. We also need
to clearly
establish the working group in the context of the President's Advisory
Committee, the ccNSO working group, and the new gTLD committee.
It has also been noted that perhaps we should hold off on electing a
chair until the above is clearer, and we have done a public call for
members etc.
One alternative is that we continue with the current election and with
the current group of members, and that the elected chair work with the
group to finalise a charter and submit that to the GNSO Council for
approval. I don't personally have the time to do that,
hence my
interest in handing over responsibility to someone else. We
could
limit the "initial" term of the chair to three months, and
then if the
working group is still operational, we could hold a follow up election.
Alternatively if the two candidates are willing, we could simply
suggest
they be appointed as joint chairs for the purpose of moving the work
forward.
I am interested in ideas on further thoughts via the mailing list, and
discussion on the way forward at the next Council meeting on 16 Nov.
Regards,
Bruce Tonkin