[CCWG-ACCT] The GAC made me do it

Mueller, Milton L milton at gatech.edu
Sun Feb 21 22:34:08 UTC 2016


Steve
I think Andrew got the issue exactly right. I do not see how your answer even engages with his argument, which is that nearly all of the community has agreed that when board actions are challenged for being out of mission by following GAC advice, that the GAC should not be in a position to rule on that.

Claiming that the GAC does not have "extraordinary power" does not answer Andrew's argument. Whether the GAC has extraordinary power or not, if it advises you (the board) to do something that the rest of the community thinks is outside of the bounds of the bylaws (which it has a demonstrated tendency to do) the GAC should not be a decisional member of the empowered community that decides whether we get to challenge that action. 

>From that premise on, it is all arithmetic, as Andrew showed:

> > This is a choice entirely within the GAC's power.  It must choose.  If
> > it chooses to be board-advisor-GAC, then it is in effect choosing that
> > it prefers that mode of operation to being part of the wider Empowered
> > Community mechanism.  In effect, a GAC choice can reduce the possible
> > actors in the Empowered Community to four.  Otherwise, the GAC is in a
> > position to insist on advice it gave being considered first by the
> > board, and then that the GAC can also participate in the judgement of
> > the Board's actions.  That's the very "two bites" problem that we were
> > trying to solve.  I believe that in most organizations (including many
> > governments), it would be regarded as surprising that a participant in
> > the to-be-judged action also gets to be one of the judges.

You have not refuted this, as I said before you have not even engaged with this. 
This increases my suspicion that the board's position is based on a political calculus, not on good governance or accountability criteria.

Further, it is clear from the reaction you have gotten that the board is not proposing a "friendly amendment." In these rules of procedure, a friendly amendment has to be accepted by the group that proposed it, and clearly it is not. 

I am deeply disturbed by the board upsetting a consensual compromise, and a very difficult one, for the third time in this process. I wonder if you have any appreciation of the potential costs of this, particularly when it involves an issue as sensitive as the role of national governments in ICANN. 

Dr. Milton L. Mueller
Professor, School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology


 


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