[CCWG-ACCT] Aresteh proposal to resolve Recommendation 1 and 11 issues

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

I preface this by noting that I'm not a member of the CCWG.

On Fri, Feb 05, 2016 at 04:20:11PM +0000, Jorge.Cancio at bakom.admin.ch wrote:

> 
> Any Board decision with public policy implications will (inter alia) and almost always have considered a GAC advice on such an issue.
> 
> Hence, with your overbroad and -as we have said from the start- discriminatory carve out/exclusion, the GAC would be excluded from any community decisions precisely when public policy issues are at stake.
> 

In my opinion, the above characterisation appears not to acknowledging
the GAC's agency.

The point of the carve-out is to give the GAC a choice.  It can issue
advice, in the special meaning of that word for the purposes of the
board's deliberations.  In that case, the board needs a supermajority
to take the decision not to follow the GAC advice.  By implication,
therefore, in the absence of the supermajority the board needs to
accept the GAC advice and implement it.  In order for the rest of the
community to be ok with that arrangement, the rest of the community
wants to ensure that the GAC can't also try to force re-consideration
of the same advice in case the board does reject the advice by
supermajority.

The GAC has another choice, though, with respect to any decision with
public policy implications.  The GAC could decline to issue "advice"
with the special meaning above, and instead (say) issue a position
that does have GAC consensus but that is not issued as formal advice
to the board.  In that case, the 60% threshold wouldn't be invoked,
but the GAC would retain the freedom to act within the Empowered
Community framework.  (I think it obvious that any actual board would
take into consideration such a "non-advice" position; I hope we won't
have to debate probabilistic statements about future possible states
of affairs.)

In other words, the current "package deal" proposal actually gives the
GAC a new option for action.  But it does so on the condition that the
GAC work in the way other ACs will also work.  I think that's an
entirely reasonable thing to require, and the GAC _still_ has the
freedom to opt out of that by issuing the formal advice that causes
the supermajority rule to apply instead.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com