[CCWG-ACCT] Cruz / NTIA: Time to Get Expert Advice

[Malcolm Hutty]

On 29/09/2015 14:13, Arun Sukumar wrote:
> Agree fully with Avri, and Ed's suggestion. It is important to feel the
> pulse of the hill, but that need not be the CCWG's driving consideration.
> 
> It is commendable that this group has not lost its bearings on
> accountability principles despite the noise surrounding the proposal's
> "acceptability" to the NTIA/USG.
> 
> What's acceptable or who's electable are pretty subjective notions, as
> the rest of the world is finding out from this US prez campaign :)

I agree with Arun and others.

Getting professional public affairs advice on likely reactions to our
proposal (and to the Board's) certainly sounds like a good idea. But we
should be careful not to mislead ourselves with it.

What are we actually planning to ask? Would Congress support our
proposal? Would they prefer it? Would they dislike it sufficiently to
pass legislation to block it?

These are very different questions to each other.

Moreover, any advice, no matter how well informed, is only a guess based
on the current situation. That naturally devalues our ability (or
others' ability) to influence the outcome. So if we were to effectively
outsource our decision-making to professional political advice of what
is "achievable", that wouldn't be only an improper dereliction of duty,
it would also be foolish.

For this reason, while I am happy for us to go ahead with this project,
I think we should concentrate less on trying to second-guess others and
more on winning support for our own work.

Kieren's recent suggestion is an excellent starting point for a
checklist, and it isn't even entirely new: I believe Thomas has already
made a start on a more legible explanation of our proposal.

This is where we should focus our efforts: on building support for our
proposal, not on assembling excuses for abandoning it.

-- 
            Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523
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