Proposed changes. 1. Add after the first sentence in point 4: If the list meets the above-mentioned diversity objectives, the Council will consider the list of endorsements to be deemed final forwarded to ICANN. 2. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, . . . ... 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. K
On Jun 10, 2010, at 10:41 PM, Rosette, Kristina wrote:
Proposed changes.
1. Add after the first sentence in point 4: If the list meets the above-mentioned diversity objectives, the Council will consider the list of endorsements to be deemed final forwarded to ICANN.
Sure, parallel restatement
2. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, . . . …
so just add however, ja?
3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized.
This would mean that the council is engaging in a compulsory weeding of any sized pool down to 4-8 "backups" who may or may not help us meet the diversity requirement. More work for everyone in order to preclude a council decision by 60% of both houses. The DT was trying to simplify rather than complicate the process. Would help to hear how more people feel about this, if they do
4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
I do not share the concerns of the IPC. I really see no need for these changes as this diversity process may or may not ever be triggered - it is discretionary. We are probably tying ourselves up unnecessarily. However, if this is an absolute must for the IPC, I can live with it. Caroline. From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of William Drake Sent: 10 June 2010 22:01 To: Rosette, Kristina Cc: council@gnso.icann.org Subject: Re: [council] Changes On Jun 10, 2010, at 10:41 PM, Rosette, Kristina wrote: Proposed changes. 1. Add after the first sentence in point 4: If the list meets the above-mentioned diversity objectives, the Council will consider the list of endorsements to be deemed final forwarded to ICANN. Sure, parallel restatement 2. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, . . . ... so just add however, ja? 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. This would mean that the council is engaging in a compulsory weeding of any sized pool down to 4-8 "backups" who may or may not help us meet the diversity requirement. More work for everyone in order to preclude a council decision by 60% of both houses. The DT was trying to simplify rather than complicate the process. Would help to hear how more people feel about this, if they do 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
Bill, apologies. didn't see your message during the call. #2: yes #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. K ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 5:01 PM To: Rosette, Kristina Cc: council@gnso.icann.org Subject: Re: [council] Changes On Jun 10, 2010, at 10:41 PM, Rosette, Kristina wrote: Proposed changes. 1. Add after the first sentence in point 4: If the list meets the above-mentioned diversity objectives, the Council will consider the list of endorsements to be deemed final forwarded to ICANN. Sure, parallel restatement 2. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, . . . ... so just add however, ja? 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. This would mean that the council is engaging in a compulsory weeding of any sized pool down to 4-8 "backups" who may or may not help us meet the diversity requirement. More work for everyone in order to preclude a council decision by 60% of both houses. The DT was trying to simplify rather than complicate the process. Would help to hear how more people feel about this, if they do 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
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." 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. 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? 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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
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.
Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor?
(One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.)
After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available."
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.
I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated.
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.
That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says
3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized.
4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill
I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill
All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill
Hello, It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels... Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario. The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction. Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each? Best, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement.
Chuck
From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.)
The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates.
To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios
Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates.
Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met):
Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step.
If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough.
From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hi Chuck
On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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.
Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor?
(One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.)
After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available."
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.
I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated.
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.
That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized.
4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered.
Best,
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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
Bill, . I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. Is this not the same debate as "participatory vs representative"? For what it is worth, I share the same quandary. Adrian Kinderis From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of William Drake Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 6:17 PM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hello, It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels... Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario. The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction. Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each? Best, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill *********************************************************** William J. Drake Senior Associate Centre for International Governance Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Switzerland william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch<mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake<http://www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake> ***********************************************************
Hi Adrian On Jun 14, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Adrian Kinderis wrote:
Bill,
. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle.
Is this not the same debate as “participatory vs representative”?
FWIW I'd say it's related but different. In our discussion prior I suggested we should allow participation subject to the agreed conditions rather than following a strictly representational model in which people could only "speak" through their Councilors, but I certainly didn't suggest that we're not elected to represent them. Whereas what Kristina seems to be saying is that only SGs can take decisions on nominees and Council action would hence be independent of the community, which would imply we don't represent it. But maybe I'm failing to read between these lines correctly...
For what it is worth, I share the same quandary.
I didn't realize the Council was so ontologically challenged. Would this merit a group conversation in some setting, e.g. the Saturday dinner? Bill
From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of William Drake Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 6:17 PM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hello,
It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels...
Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario.
The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction.
Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each?
Best,
Bill
On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement.
Chuck
From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.)
The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates.
To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios
Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates.
Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met):
Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step.
If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough.
From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hi Chuck
On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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.
Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor?
(One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.)
After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available."
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.
I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated.
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.
That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized.
4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered.
Best,
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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
*********************************************************** 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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
I think it is a great conversation topic. If we are not allowed to act without conferring with our SG's why is there a number of us. You may as well have one person with three votes (for the RrSG anyway...) Adrian Kinderis From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, 14 June 2010 8:59 PM To: Adrian Kinderis Cc: Gomes, Chuck; Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Adrian On Jun 14, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Adrian Kinderis wrote: Bill, . I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. Is this not the same debate as "participatory vs representative"? FWIW I'd say it's related but different. In our discussion prior I suggested we should allow participation subject to the agreed conditions rather than following a strictly representational model in which people could only "speak" through their Councilors, but I certainly didn't suggest that we're not elected to represent them. Whereas what Kristina seems to be saying is that only SGs can take decisions on nominees and Council action would hence be independent of the community, which would imply we don't represent it. But maybe I'm failing to read between these lines correctly... For what it is worth, I share the same quandary. I didn't realize the Council was so ontologically challenged. Would this merit a group conversation in some setting, e.g. the Saturday dinner? Bill From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org<mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org> [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of William Drake Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 6:17 PM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hello, It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels... Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario. The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction. Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each? Best, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill *********************************************************** William J. Drake Senior Associate Centre for International Governance Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Switzerland william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch<mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html<http://www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html> www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake<http://www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake> *********************************************************** *********************************************************** William J. Drake Senior Associate Centre for International Governance Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Switzerland william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch<mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake<http://www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake> ***********************************************************
Isn't this up to each group? I know the some constituencies have different rules for their councillors than we do in the RrSG. So I would have thought this is a perspective thing, each group having its own on the matter... Stéphane Le 15 juin 2010 à 08:50, Adrian Kinderis a écrit :
I think it is a great conversation topic.
If we are not allowed to act without conferring with our SG’s why is there a number of us.
You may as well have one person with three votes (for the RrSG anyway...)
Adrian Kinderis
From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, 14 June 2010 8:59 PM To: Adrian Kinderis Cc: Gomes, Chuck; Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hi Adrian
On Jun 14, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Adrian Kinderis wrote:
Bill,
. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle.
Is this not the same debate as “participatory vs representative”?
FWIW I'd say it's related but different. In our discussion prior I suggested we should allow participation subject to the agreed conditions rather than following a strictly representational model in which people could only "speak" through their Councilors, but I certainly didn't suggest that we're not elected to represent them. Whereas what Kristina seems to be saying is that only SGs can take decisions on nominees and Council action would hence be independent of the community, which would imply we don't represent it. But maybe I'm failing to read between these lines correctly...
For what it is worth, I share the same quandary.
I didn't realize the Council was so ontologically challenged. Would this merit a group conversation in some setting, e.g. the Saturday dinner?
Bill
From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of William Drake Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 6:17 PM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hello,
It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels...
Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario.
The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction.
Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each?
Best,
Bill
On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement.
Chuck
From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.)
The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates.
To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios
Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates.
Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met):
Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step.
If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough.
From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hi Chuck
On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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.
Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor?
(One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.)
After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available."
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.
I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated.
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.
That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized.
4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered.
Best,
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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
*********************************************************** 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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
see my comments interspersed below. I'll be offline (for ICANN matters) until tomorrow. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 4:17 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hello, It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels... Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. KR: The distinction between additional and substitutive was not clear to me and to many others. (I suspect it was the multiple uses of the word additional.) I'm pleased to know it's truly additional; that's helpful. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. KR: See note above. I've included below a revised step-by-step. Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG) and endorses all four. However, diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the alternate candidates named by the SGs. If selecting one or two of these alternate candidates will result in a slate that overall meets diversity goals, Council may endorse up to two of them in addition to the candidates endorsed in Step 1. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario. KR: No need to worry. This was a misunderstanding. The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction. KR: see above. Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. KR: No, Bill. The language I suggested was: Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. As my language proposed, the Council would first look to the additional (perhaps calling them alternate as I've done above would be helpful) candidates, if any, identified by the SGs. (The bolded language above) If considering the alternate candidates does not meet the diversity goals (the italicized language), the Council then looks to the entire pool. Chuck's interpretation of my proposal is correct. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. KR: See above as to what I proposed. As for common sense and courtesy, it would be great if we could rely on that. However, in the absence of a procedure to the contrary, there's no guarantee. That's not something we're willing to leave to chance. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each? KR: There's no need for snarkiness, Bill. Best, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, 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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
See my comments below as well. I think we now have a common understanding, at least among Bill, Kristina and I. And I think that brings us closer to possible agreement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 9:39 AM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments see my comments interspersed below. I'll be offline (for ICANN matters) until tomorrow. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 4:17 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hello, It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels... [Gomes, Chuck] There may always be a challenge in drawing this line. I think we should error on the side of making sure that we involve our respective groups as much as possible when we represent their views but there will be times when other factors put some limitations on that so we need to be able to deal with those factors as well. Two that come to mind are: 1) imposed time restrictions; 2) the need to collaboratively work with other ICANN organizations. I don't know that I need to comment on the first one except to say that we need to try to allow as much lead time as possible to make decisions when it is in our control so that we can adequately consult with our group members. Regarding the second factor, a reality that we have to deal with is that other groups such as the ccNSO and the GAC do not operate in the same way we do; in particular, they do not have the same procedural requirements as we do nor do they apply the representational concept as we do. How can we be cooperative in working with them when our processes differ in a lot of ways. We obviously cannot impose our processes and requirements on them and if we are rigid about how we do things, it could come across as being unresponsive. So what am I saying? I think there needs to be some balance and flexibility, especially on issues that involve issues for which the Council has already established fairly clear positions, either formally via published recommendations or informally via Council discussions. Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. KR: The distinction between additional and substitutive was not clear to me and to many others. (I suspect it was the multiple uses of the word additional.) I'm pleased to know it's truly additional; that's helpful. [Gomes, Chuck] And I am pleased that I didn't misunderstand. Kristina, does this change your possible amendment in anyway? Will you be able to submit your proposed amendment by Tuesday or soon thereafter? To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. KR: See note above. I've included below a revised step-by-step. Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG) and endorses all four. However, diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the alternate candidates named by the SGs. If selecting one or two of these alternate candidates will result in a slate that overall meets diversity goals, Council may endorse up to two of them in addition to the candidates endorsed in Step 1. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. [Gomes, Chuck] This is what I had understood in our meeting last week. Step 2 does provide the opportunity for more direct input from SGs and in that regard is very good. As long as that happens in advance as proposed, it should not lengthen the time of the process and that is a positive as well. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario. KR: No need to worry. This was a misunderstanding. The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction. KR: see above. Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. KR: No, Bill. The language I suggested was: Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. As my language proposed, the Council would first look to the additional (perhaps calling them alternate as I've done above would be helpful) candidates, if any, identified by the SGs. (The bolded language above) If considering the alternate candidates does not meet the diversity goals (the italicized language), the Council then looks to the entire pool. Chuck's interpretation of my proposal is correct. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. KR: See above as to what I proposed. As for common sense and courtesy, it would be great if we could rely on that. However, in the absence of a procedure to the contrary, there's no guarantee. That's not something we're willing to leave to chance. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each? KR: There's no need for snarkiness, Bill. Best, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, 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 www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
Hi Kristina, Ok great, we just misread bits of each others' wordings (how could that ever happen in a list discussion..?). So your proposal is not four only and not that Council can never discuss people in the pool who weren't listed by SGs, but rather that it cannot discuss them unless the ones who were listed do not enhance diversity. Capito. I'd still prefer the more open approach and suspect this will unnecessarily routinize strategizing etc, but whatever. So if you send an amendment tomorrow we're good to go. Two questions on that: *Will you be taking on board as well Chuck's suggestion,
On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
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.
*And/or merging yours with Wolf-Ulrich's On Jun 10, 2010, at 10:48 PM, <KnobenW@telekom.de> <KnobenW@telekom.de> wrote:
The 2nd "Resolved" should read: Resolved further, that the GNSO Council should implement the Endorsement Process for all future AOC review team selections, including the “WHOIS Policy” and the “Security, Stability, and Resiliency of the DNS” Review Teams;
Cheers, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Rosette, Kristina wrote:
see my comments interspersed below. I'll be offline (for ICANN matters) until tomorrow.
From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 4:17 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hello,
It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels...
Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive.
KR: The distinction between additional and substitutive was not clear to me and to many others. (I suspect it was the multiple uses of the word additional.) I'm pleased to know it's truly additional; that's helpful.
To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call.
KR: See note above. I've included below a revised step-by-step.
Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates.
Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG) and endorses all four. However, diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the alternate candidates named by the SGs. If selecting one or two of these alternate candidates will result in a slate that overall meets diversity goals, Council may endorse up to two of them in addition to the candidates endorsed in Step 1. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step.
From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario.
KR: No need to worry. This was a misunderstanding.
The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction.
KR: see above.
Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here.
KR: No, Bill. The language I suggested was:
Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
As my language proposed, the Council would first look to the additional (perhaps calling them alternate as I've done above would be helpful) candidates, if any, identified by the SGs. (The bolded language above) If considering the alternate candidates does not meet the diversity goals (the italicized language), the Council then looks to the entire pool. Chuck's interpretation of my proposal is correct.
In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy.
KR: See above as to what I proposed. As for common sense and courtesy, it would be great if we could rely on that. However, in the absence of a procedure to the contrary, there's no guarantee. That's not something we're willing to leave to chance.
But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each?
KR: There's no need for snarkiness, Bill.
Best,
Bill
On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments
Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor?
(One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available."
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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated.
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.
That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized.
4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates.
So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill
www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
It would be good if you can include my suggestion Kristina. That would avoid a separate amendment. But it is your call. Chuck From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 12:05 PM To: Rosette, Kristina Cc: Gomes, Chuck; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Kristina, Ok great, we just misread bits of each others' wordings (how could that ever happen in a list discussion..?). So your proposal is not four only and not that Council can never discuss people in the pool who weren't listed by SGs, but rather that it cannot discuss them unless the ones who were listed do not enhance diversity. Capito. I'd still prefer the more open approach and suspect this will unnecessarily routinize strategizing etc, but whatever. So if you send an amendment tomorrow we're good to go. Two questions on that: *Will you be taking on board as well Chuck's suggestion, On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. *And/or merging yours with Wolf-Ulrich's On Jun 10, 2010, at 10:48 PM, <KnobenW@telekom.de> <KnobenW@telekom.de> wrote: The 2nd "Resolved" should read: Resolved further, that the GNSO Council should implement the Endorsement Process for all future AOC review team selections, including the "WHOIS Policy" and the "Security, Stability, and Resiliency of the DNS" Review Teams; Cheers, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Rosette, Kristina wrote: see my comments interspersed below. I'll be offline (for ICANN matters) until tomorrow. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 4:17 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hello, It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels... Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. KR: The distinction between additional and substitutive was not clear to me and to many others. (I suspect it was the multiple uses of the word additional.) I'm pleased to know it's truly additional; that's helpful. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. KR: See note above. I've included below a revised step-by-step. Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG) and endorses all four. However, diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the alternate candidates named by the SGs. If selecting one or two of these alternate candidates will result in a slate that overall meets diversity goals, Council may endorse up to two of them in addition to the candidates endorsed in Step 1. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario. KR: No need to worry. This was a misunderstanding. The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction. KR: see above. Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. KR: No, Bill. The language I suggested was: Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. As my language proposed, the Council would first look to the additional (perhaps calling them alternate as I've done above would be helpful) candidates, if any, identified by the SGs. (The bolded language above) If considering the alternate candidates does not meet the diversity goals (the italicized language), the Council then looks to the entire pool. Chuck's interpretation of my proposal is correct. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. KR: See above as to what I proposed. As for common sense and courtesy, it would be great if we could rely on that. However, in the absence of a procedure to the contrary, there's no guarantee. That's not something we're willing to leave to chance. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each? KR: There's no need for snarkiness, Bill. Best, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
That shouldn't be a problem, but I'll confirm. K ________________________________ From: Gomes, Chuck [mailto:cgomes@verisign.com] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 12:07 PM To: William Drake; Rosette, Kristina Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments It would be good if you can include my suggestion Kristina. That would avoid a separate amendment. But it is your call. Chuck From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 12:05 PM To: Rosette, Kristina Cc: Gomes, Chuck; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Kristina, Ok great, we just misread bits of each others' wordings (how could that ever happen in a list discussion..?). So your proposal is not four only and not that Council can never discuss people in the pool who weren't listed by SGs, but rather that it cannot discuss them unless the ones who were listed do not enhance diversity. Capito. I'd still prefer the more open approach and suspect this will unnecessarily routinize strategizing etc, but whatever. So if you send an amendment tomorrow we're good to go. Two questions on that: *Will you be taking on board as well Chuck's suggestion, On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. *And/or merging yours with Wolf-Ulrich's On Jun 10, 2010, at 10:48 PM, <KnobenW@telekom.de> <KnobenW@telekom.de> wrote: The 2nd "Resolved" should read: Resolved further, that the GNSO Council should implement the Endorsement Process for all future AOC review team selections, including the "WHOIS Policy" and the "Security, Stability, and Resiliency of the DNS" Review Teams; Cheers, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Rosette, Kristina wrote: see my comments interspersed below. I'll be offline (for ICANN matters) until tomorrow. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 4:17 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: Rosette, Kristina; GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hello, It seems there are two levels to this discussion. The broader one concerns the nature and role of the Council. Kristina argues that the Council " has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role," and that "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." I wasn't around when the veterans among us were having the constitutional discussions leading to Council reform, so I guess I'm not sufficiently clueful on how everyone sees this. While I understand that Council is now supposed to be more a coordinator/facilitator of community processes than the doer of all things, I did not take this to mean that it cannot legitimately make decisions via votes on matters like adding a person or two to enhance the diversity of the GNSO's RT nominations because that would be acting independently of the community. I thought we were elected to represent our respective slices of the community and after consulting with them could act in their names, and if they don't like what we've done we get unelected in the next cycle. So then what decisions can we take that do not constitute acting independently of the community, where's the boundary line? If I'm the only one who is perplexed I hope someone will straighten me out in Brussels... Anyway, on the issue at hand, Chuck your understanding of the drafting team's proposal is not different from everyone else's. The text clearly says "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 to endorse up to two additional candidates..." Two additional is additive, not substitutive. KR: The distinction between additional and substitutive was not clear to me and to many others. (I suspect it was the multiple uses of the word additional.) I'm pleased to know it's truly additional; that's helpful. To my knowledge, the notion that after considering diversity options the Council would endorse only four (Kristina's Step 2, below) is new, it wasn't included in the amendment language she sent to the list (quoted at the bottom) and I don't recall anyone suggesting it on the call. KR: See note above. I've included below a revised step-by-step. Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG) and endorses all four. However, diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the alternate candidates named by the SGs. If selecting one or two of these alternate candidates will result in a slate that overall meets diversity goals, Council may endorse up to two of them in addition to the candidates endorsed in Step 1. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. From my standpoint, this is even more problematic than what we were talking about previously. It would either a) astronomically politicize the process by raising the prospect that Council could overturn SG's one-per endorsements, leading to inter-SG squabbling over whose gets dumped and associated bad feelings...and talk about undercutting SG sovereignty!; or b) create really strong disincentives to do anything to enhance diversity in order to avoid that scenario. KR: No need to worry. This was a misunderstanding. The whole point of the drafting team proposal was to make the process simple and apolitical, driven in large part by the fact that the ATRT model with the two competitive seats appeared to generate a lot of confusion and agitation within one SG in Nairobi. This proposal would plunge us far in the opposite direction. KR: see above. Circling back to what we were talking about yesterday, the text below that Kristina sent Thursday during the call says, "the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2." That plainly means only those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, there's no misunderstanding here. KR: No, Bill. The language I suggested was: Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. As my language proposed, the Council would first look to the additional (perhaps calling them alternate as I've done above would be helpful) candidates, if any, identified by the SGs. (The bolded language above) If considering the alternate candidates does not meet the diversity goals (the italicized language), the Council then looks to the entire pool. Chuck's interpretation of my proposal is correct. In yesterday's message she instead proposes what Chuck suggested on the call, that the rest of the pool could in fact be considered, but only after Council has discussed SGs' back-up endorsements. This is better from the standpoint of those of us who think Council should be able to consider the whole pool, but as I said yesterday it's not obvious why we would need to legislate what we would undoubtedly do anyway based on common sense and courtesy. KR: See above as to what I proposed. As for common sense and courtesy, it would be great if we could rely on that. However, in the absence of a procedure to the contrary, there's no guarantee. That's not something we're willing to leave to chance. But if it makes folks happier....While we're at it, maybe we should also codify the precise sequence of the discussion, i.e. the order in which SG back-ups get considered and the time allotted to each? KR: There's no need for snarkiness, Bill. Best, Bill On Jun 14, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: All this makes me think that my understanding may be different than everyone else. I understood that endorsements by the SGs would remain regardless of what the Council might do to improve diversity. If the Council was successful at gaining support for one or two candidates that improved the diversity of the pool, then the pool of endorsed candidates would increase to 5 or 6 depending on whether one or two additional candidates were selected. The difference as I understood it between what Kristina proposed and the original procedure, which is apparently wrong, was that the step in the original procedures the Council would look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement while what I thought Kristina suggested was that the Council would first look at SG named alternates first and only if that was unsuccessful would they look at the full slate of candidates seeking GNSO endorsement. Chuck From: Rosette, Kristina [mailto:krosette@cov.com] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:17 PM To: William Drake; Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Knobenw Subject: RE: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments I hope I'm responding to the most recent message. If not, would someone please forward it? (All of my email rules have disappeared and I now have thousands of messages in my in box.) The concern driving the proposed amendment is that the Council's role has been greatly restricted in the restructuring and the initially proposed mechanism goes beyond that role. The greater specificity in the process, the greater the certainty. There was concern that the Council would move directly to the broader applicant pool without considering the SG additional candidates. To avoid any confusion about my proposed amendments (and it appears there may be some), here's the step-by-step for the two scenarios Scenario 1 (diversity goals met with SG nominees): Council receives 4 nominated (or whatever we're calling them) candidates (1 from each SG), diversity goals are satisfied, so Council endorses all four candidates. Scenario 2 (diversity goals not met): Step1: Council receives 4 nominated SG candidates (1 from each SG), but diversity goals are not met. Step 2: Council then considers the 6 additional candidates (2 SGs named 1, 2 SGs named 2) named by the SGs. If consideration of these additonal candidates results in a slate that meets diverseity goals, Council endorses 4 candidates. If not, see Step 3. Step 3: Council then considers all remaining persons in the applicant pool (e.g., all persons who submitted applications but weren't nomiated by SGs or identified as "additional candidates). The last sentence in my number 4 was directed to this step. If my proposed amendments did not make that clear, please let me at what step they weren't clear enough. ________________________________ From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:30 AM To: Gomes, Chuck Cc: GNSO Council List; Rosette, Kristina; Knobenw Subject: Re: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments Hi Chuck On Jun 13, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote: 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. Wouldn't we do this anyone as a matter of courtesy and common sense without codifying it? If there's a pool of 8 candidates and SGs have come to internal agreement that they could support persons x y and z, presumably their reps would indicate that when the conversation begins and we'd commence talking about x y and z before moving on to the five nobody had yet preferred. Would anyone really say well, your SG may like Ms. x but I refuse to talk about her and insist we start with someone nobody's said they favor? (One flaw with this as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all remaining candidates as alternates.) After I said that, somewhat in jest, Kristina specified in the amendment, "notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available." 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. I'd favor that, but not if it's tied to prohibiting the Council from even considering people who were not so designated. 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. That's what you suggested as an alternative. Kristina's text says 3. Change third bullet of #2 to read: Each stakeholder group is encouraged to (a) identify in its internal deliberations and (b) notify Council of one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity procedure outlined in item 4 below is utilized. 4. Change the now-third sentence of point 4 to read: If, however, the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole may choose to endorse up to two additional candidates, from among those identified by the stakeholder groups under item 2, who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. If consideration of these additional stakeholder group-identified candidates does not meet the diversity objectives, the Council may refer to the GNSO applicant pool to identify these additional candidates. So anyone in the applicant pool who has not been specifically endorsed for possible consideration could not be considered. Best, Bill www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake ***********************************************************
participants (6)
-
Adrian Kinderis -
Caroline Greer -
Gomes, Chuck -
Rosette, Kristina -
Stéphane Van Gelder -
William Drake