Bret Fausett wrote:
I know that in the year I served on the Nominating Committee, we tried very hard to use the Nominating Committee appointments to supplement the skills of the various groups for which we had responsibility (Board, GNSO, ccNSO, ALAC). We thought about what those groups needed, received input from the groups themselves about what was needed, considered input from the entire community about what was needed, and then found and appointed people to fill what we believed were the most important needs. In my year, this meant bringing some new faces to the ICANN Board. We especially looked for people with financial backgrounds, for the Board finance and audit committees. We wanted someone from China on the Board. It also meant appointing an older, more experienced face to the GNSO, which was having difficulties at the time, and which we thought could benefit from the experience of a former Board member. It meant bringing people with past experience in organization building and recruiting to the new and developing ALAC.
Thank you very much for this perspective, Bret. It certainly indicates that the process has some positives. However I still can't say that I see that benefit outweighing the negatives. To me, the main negative is the entrusting of a fairly small group, who are themselves selected on criteria that injects bias, to make judgement calls on what various bodies "need". Perhaps the broader community might have indicated different priorities and different needs. Certainly, since I have been involved in ICANN I have never _once_ been consulted, as an individual or as part of a group, on any issues related to work of the NomComm -- even from the person that this region's ALAC reps chose to represent our interests (a person, I might add, who is not even an at-Large but an employee of a registrar). So the consultative quality may have been part of what you personally added to the role but is certainly not a requirement. The NomComm, like the people it selects, are accountable to nothing but an abstract notion of what is "good for ICANN". I personally believe that this very notion _must_ be subject to definition and interpretation by the grassroots, the consumers of the Internet, so to speak. Keeping it within a group that is by nature elitist and unaccountable will likely ensure that the grassroots will have no influence in its work. And I can easily see a suitation in which the NomComm might see ALAC as being too rebellious and thus stack the NomComm appointees with people chosen because of their perceived capacity to put out the fire, so to speak. Perhaps that sentiment -- and its effect on the NomComm choices of ALAC reps -- already reflects such a perception. And the ALAC review draft seems intent on maintaining that status quo -- in fact regressing, by advocating the increase in the proportion of NomComms in ALAC. - Evan