[council] AWOL and the reform proposals

[Avri Doria]

Hi,


I sent the following in to the gnso-improvements list during the  
meeting on Monday.

a.

----

To the members of the committee:


First I thank the working group for its efforts and find myself in  
agreement with much of the report.

While I agree that the GNSO Council should not be a legislative body,  
I am concerned about scope in your definition of "management." The  
report seems rather explicit in defining management solely as  
responsibility for process. I think that the notion of management  
needs to be expanded to include responsibility for Policy management.

I think the idea of the Council only being responsible for process  
management is too limited. And while I accept the arguments that this  
will make recruitment much more difficult, not only among  
constituencies and stakeholder group, but within the Nomcom process,  
I think that this is the lesser of the problems with this approach.

I support the idea of Working Groups, despite the challenge involved  
in creating working groups that are of sufficiently diverse and of  
manageable size. I think that the Council needs to remain responsible  
for the policy activities and output of the working groups. Not only  
do I think that councillors should be chosen as stewards for these  
Working Groups, but I believe that the Council should have a role in  
determining whether the policy recommendations are compatible with  
ICANN mission and core value and other policy recommendations. Beyond  
this there is a need to make sure that the various policy  
recommendation are not seen individually but are seen in the light of  
other policy processes and efforts. This does not mean that the  
council should be able to reject the work of a working group because  
it disagrees with the conclusions. It does mean that the council  
should be able to return policy recommendations to the working group  
with policy issues and concerns that it believes are not adequately  
dealt with.

I agree with the comment that Thomas Narten made, it is critical for  
the council to have a voice in deciding whether the policy  
recommendations of a working group are good for the Internet  
community. To me, this means that the council must retain a policy  
management role.

Avri

On 2 nov 2007, at 06.59, Philip Sheppard wrote:

> Fellow Council members,
> many apologies for missing the meetings in LA this week but alas my  
> duties as IPRA president intervened.
> And I was flying during our voting meeting so could not dial-in  
> without bankrupting the BC.
>
> Anyway, it seems that some good progress was made on many issues  
> (though I note not on the politically sensitive issue of IGOs).
>
> GNSO reform
> The reform proposals pose some fundamental challenges to the  
> heritage we guard known as the bottom-up process.
> While we may differ in outcomes with respect to constituency  
> boundary changes, it may be productive to have debate on some of  
> the wider issues of the reform proposals.
> In particular it would be good to know fellow Council members views  
> on the objective that Council should manage the PDP but not decide  
> (if I may paraphrase).
> This objective is separate to its implementation (eg work groups )  
> for which I see little need to debate as we do them anyway when we  
> believe they are right to do.
>
> But I am concerned that the objective may weaken Council by  
> diminishing the incentive for participation.
>
> It would be good to learn of opinions on this.
>
>
>
> Philip

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