[CWG-Stewardship] The PTI board

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 02:36:09PM -0400, Avri Doria wrote:
> And are we sure that ICANN will always fund all for the services for
> ever more?
> If IANA wants to improve some aspect of its capitalized capabilities and
> ICANN says no, is that the end of the story.

No, but we're not carving letters in granite, either.  In the event
there is a deep, abiding, and unresolvable conflict between ICANN and
PTI, then we'll have a crisis and have to deal with it.  We have no
way of knowing now what form that will take.  We cannot possibly
create a board that will be ideally suited for all logically possible
worlds.  What we have before us is a specific set of responsibilities
with specific directly-affected users.  We should solve that problem,
and not work on problems we do not have, cannot describe concretely,
and may never face.

> > 3.  "Degree to which it is responsive": Responsiveness is dealt with
> > under the service level expectations for the various communities.
> > This shouldn't be the job of the board, because it's the job of the
> > CSC.
> 
> And after all of the ICANN escalation processes who is it  that is
> responsible for decision on how to deal with it? 
> Is this all in the hands of the ICANN Board?

Yes.  Or anyway, on the ICANN side of the operation.  How the customer
deals with that is how the customer deals with it.  This is _exactly_
the same rationale for why the IETF will not give up its termination
language: the ultimate power is that of the customer to go find
someone else to do the work.  Why should this case be different?

> vastly would be, at least > 10
> adding two people is not vast in my opinion, though they do represent a
> a vast number of stakeholders, that is true.

And a set of interests that have approximatley no direct stake in the
actions of IANA.  The moment one starts adding representatives to the
board who have an agenda that is anything other than, "Make this
narrow clerical function go well," one invites pet projects to become
part of the task.  We see this over and over again, and there is a
pretty good argument to be made that it is part of the problem we're
trying to address with ICANN accountability.  So we should keep the
focus very narrow.

> Optimist.

That is only the second time in my life anyone has hurled that epithet
at me, and I believe the other time had to do with IANA transition as
well :)

> I believe you need someone assigned to deal with crisis before they happen.

Yes, sure, the board must be able to cope with a crisis.  That's what
"board" means.  But I don't to begin with see why adding more people
to the board is likely to increase its resilience in that way.
Moreover, it's not clear to me that the skills needed are going to
come from the GAC or ALAC.  In order to answer these questions, we'd
need to have some inkling of what sort of crises we're likely to see
and what challenges they represent.  What are the crises that you
think could arise?  I can imagine a budget one, or a serious problem
with the staff, or something like that.  Why would adding ALAC and GAC
representatives help?   What other crises are you thinking of?

Best regards,

a

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com