[council] Draft Council letter on the ARR

[William Drake]

Hi Alan

On Jan 19, 2010, at 10:09 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:

> 
> Bill, there is a line in the draft which says "We agree with the draft that Review team members are not to "represent" particularistic interests, and that they should be broadly neutral and focused on the collective good of the ICANN community as a whole."
> 
> Can you point out where the document it says this?  I can find a bunch of references saying that the do represent the AC/SOs, but not the opposite.

You raise a valid concern, and perhaps the language could be clearer.  There is of course representation to the extent that AC/SOs nominate "their" people. The question is, what happens from there?  The draft proposes that the call for candidates include, as a desired skill, capacity to make "abstractions from personal opinions."  This is poorly worded; I presume it's supposed to mean judgments that are not based on those opinions, rather than abstract inferential reasoning that is based on them.  It goes on to say more clearly that "the individual opinions of evaluators should not interfere with the rigorous analysis of findings;" that the Selectors should pick people based on their skills (by inference, not their or their nominating group's opinions); that there should not be a public comment on the identity and personal characteristics of members; and that the teams, once constituted, are to have autonomy in selecting operating procedures, terms of reference, definition of tools and targets, gathering data, and conducting neutral evaluations rigorously based on indicators and evidence.  So the drafting team read all this as implying that reviewers are there to act as autonomous experts who'd neutrally assess information with an eye toward advancing the collective good, rather than promoting the private agendas of particular stakeholders.  Of course, this is aspirational, and in reality one's personal/group views may color how evidence is assessed, at least to some extent, but then that'd be open to challenge by colleagues if it crosses the line.

It was with all this in mind that we added the language about RT members needing to periodically update their AC/SOs on main trends, being able to solicit input from their AC/SOs, and being prepared to pass along unsolicited input from their AC/SOs, when really merited.  The hope was that this would balance RT autonomy and obligation to assess neutrally with an appropriate level of openness and communication to one's AC/SO.

If you don't think that's sufficient, and that RT members should in fact be there wearing the hats of their nominating entity and start sentences like "well, from the perspective of xxx, we think that....," of something similar, feel free to propose language to that effect and see if you get takers.  It just wasn't how the drafting team read the doc or envisioned the process, and there's at least some grounds for believing that approach would result in a more politicized, negotiation/bargaining style of interaction.

Cheers,

Bill