Hi, On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 02:06:08PM +0000, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
One concern I have about your proposed variation is the use of a NomCom like approach. The NomCom as it is configured today is made up of people who are selected by the multi-stakeholder community but once they are selected they are really not accountability to the groups that select them. They are presumably accountable to the public interest but that is an ill-defined concept that means different things to different people and I am not sure that will ever change and maybe it shouldn't except with regard to the issues of security and stability, which I think there is broad agreement.
I probably don't fully understand the worry here, but before I start I should note that this was sort of a throw-away. The real point I was trying to make is that the proposal as circulated is partly gated on getting the RIRs and IETF to appoint people to a newly-created board, on hammering out agreements (across three organizations) about how to structure that board, and maybe even on working out new legal agreements and so on. I am not convinced this will be easy. So, I was suggesting that, by using the straight subsidiary approach we might be able to skirt all those problems, and I said "nomcom" becuase it's a mechanism we're all at least somewhat familiar with. (Note that it needn't be the same nomcom as is used to build the ICANN board. These two boards ought to have different functions.) Anyway, your worry suggests that the point of the PTI board is to represent the various groups. I suppose that's one approach, but another is to decide that the PTI board is just a board of PTI, and that representativity is not that important. This might be a practical answer if the IANA's remit is conceived narrowly enough. On the other hand, if various groups think that representativity is important enough, maybe the right thing to do is direct appointment from all the ICANN stakeholder communities, with right of recall. I wouldn't be opposed to that, _provided that_ the IANA board was clearly disempowered to be used as an appeals mechanism for policy disputes. That is, the PTI could function the way NTIA officially does in asking, "Did the ICANN process follow its own rules?" It should _not_ be permitted to try to re-examine the policy considerations that went into a decision. This is exactly the way the IANA works now. In my opinion, completely independent board appointments that cannot be recalled are actually more likely to ensure that sort of behaviour, but I can imagine an argument for the opposite conclusion. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com