[CCWG-ACCT] A way to avoid the 'The Single Member Can Do Anything!' problem

Kieren McCarthy kieren at kierenmccarthy.com
Wed Sep 30 19:45:06 UTC 2015


I'm a little confused as to why people are confused. I think many of the
SOs and ACs have been quite clear in how they view things.

Both the RSSAC and SSAC have been quite explicit: we are not keen at all on
being expected to vote on ICANN issues, especially since the issues that
have been repeatedly raised do not interest us.

The ASO is very similar. It's not at all sure it wants a vote because it
doesn't want to get sucked into ICANN politics. But if it impacts numbers
or ICANN as an entity it would want to be involved.

The GAC is more complex but still understandable: we are willing to express
an opinion on many matters but we feel it is best to avoid a vote if at all
possible.

It strikes me that any decision by the internet community to challenge the
Board would have to account for each group's perspective.

Put simply, the powers under consideration - getting rid of the Board,
vetoing the budget and so on - should require having pretty much the whole
internet community on board. And that will not be achieved by trying to
force the less political parts of the organization into having to respond.

Trying to tell the RSSAC and SSAC that they will want a vote is entirely
the wrong way to get them on board with a solution. What they want to know
is that their views will be sought out and taken seriously on matters that
are likely to concern them. And that they will be left out of it the rest
of the time.

Their fear is that they will have to constantly follow ICANN shenanigans to
make sure that a big decision isn't made in their name.


My suggestion based on having watched the internet community work for many
years is to create a system that only involves the more technical parts of
ICANN once broad agreement has been reached in the rest of the community.

By then, the arguments should have been thrashed out sufficiently and
turned into a clear statement of concerns with a proposed solution. It
should then be a requirement that the other groups need to express a view
before it can move forward.

Once you have made the argument and got those groups on board and agreeing
informally with a proposal, then they are far more likely to be willing to
vote if indeed a vote is required to make it official. My bet would be that
if things got that far, the Board would rather find a compromise than risk
having the entire internet community rebuke them.

Using voting as a way to bring matters to a head works for some groups but
is the opposite of how others like to work. You can't impose your own
culture on others.



Kieren



On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 10:15 AM, Drazek, Keith <kdrazek at verisign.com>
wrote:

> Thanks Nigel.
>
> In no particular  order, my interpretation of the Board's written
> comments, what we heard in Los Angeles and from Fadi yesterday is:
>
> -- Introducing a different governance structure, i.e. membership, is new,
> untested, and cannot be proven to resist capture in the limited time
> available to meet the September 2016 date.
> -- Shifting authority from the Board to an untested membership body is
> potentially destabilizing and will be difficult or impossible to sell as
> not introducing risk at a delicate time.
> -- If we're going to shift authority, we must also shift a commensurate
> level of accountability, and the current SOs and ACs do not have sufficient
> accountability at this time.
> -- ICANN and its SOs/ACs need to be safe from capture from outside and
> from within; empowering the SOs and ACs without clear safeguards is
> problematic.
> -- Concentrating power in a new "sole membership" body is not balanced if
> it doesn't include all community members, and two groups (SSAC and RSSAC)
> have said they want to remain advisory.
> -- Shifting from consensus-based decision-making to reliance on a voting
> structure is not consistent with the multi-stakeholder model.
> -- The CCWG recommendation is too complex and difficult to
> explain/understand, so we need to make smaller, incremental changes that
> are more easily implemented and understood.
> -- A recommendation requiring a substantial governance restructuring will
> suggest that ICANN is currently broken -- a politically risky message going
> into the transition.
>
> I'm obviously not in a position to speak for the Board, but that's my
> non-legalistic reading of the concerns.  I'd be happy to be corrected if my
> interpretation is off-base.
>
> That was a reply to your question (a).  I can't respond to question (b).
>
> Regards,
> Keith
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org [mailto:
> accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Nigel
> Roberts
> Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2015 12:46 PM
> To: accountability-cross-community at icann.org
> Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] A way to avoid the 'The Single Member Can Do
> Anything!' problem
>
> Let's be Frank, here.
>
> I'm not entirely unreceptive to the view expressed to me by at least one
> Board member regarding the idea of a quick win.
>
> HOWEVER, despite the fairly emphatic nature of the Board's objection to
> membership model, I do not believe I have read or heard any rationale or
> reasons for their, apparently unanimous, position.
>
> Personally I have serious doubts about the Single Member model, although,
> probably, they are not the same doubts as the Board's.
>
> But that is the outcome of this WG, and it should not tear up months of
> work without a rationale. This is simply the IFWP and history repeating
> itself, otherwise.
>
> Apparently there is some legal difference of opinion between Sidleys and
> Jones Day on the technicalities. But I do not beleive that can be the only
> reason.
>
> So, can someone please explain, in simply, preferable non legalistic terms
> why
>
> (a) the CCWG proposal is unsuitable
> (b) the Board's proposal is more suitable.
>
>
> > That said, I'm not confident this would resolve the Board's concerns
> with membership, so we will need to consider all options available to
> deliver community empowerment, including variations of the sole designator
> implementation.
> >
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