[council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments

[Gomes, Chuck]

I am glad that the dialog on this is continuing because we have to
resolve this in Brussels and to facilitate that that the amendments
should be proposed as much in advance as possible.

 

I personally support the motion as proposed because I think the required
threshold of 60% of each house for any additional candidates provides
more than enough protection to ensure SG support.  That would require 5
affirmative votes for the CPH and 8 affirmative votes of the NCPH, so no
SG could control the vote, not even with the NCA vote.  With that
protection, it seems problematic to add more complexity to the process.

 

At the same time, if there are those who cannot support the original
motion as is, I think I could support a modification that would do the
following:

1.       If the Council decides to try to improve the diversity of the
pool of GNSO endorsed candidates, they would first consider those
alternate candidates proposed by the SGs, if any.  (One flaw with this
as Bill noted in our meeting last week is that an SG could submit all
remaining candidates as alternates.)

2.       If the Council is unable to approve any additional candidates
to improve diversity of the pool using only  SG proposed alternates,
then they could consider the entire set of candidates requesting GNSO
endorsement.

3.       I would add one new wrinkle to this: SG's should only propose
alternates that are of a different geographical location or gender than
their primary candidate.  In fact this would probably be a useful
amendment to the original motion.

 

Regarding Wolf's suggestion that this process should only apply to the
next two RTs, I am not convinced that this is necessary.  As I said in
our meeting, if we discover that the process needs to change at any
point before any of the next reviews, in this cycle of reviews or in
subsequent cycles, we could do it.  At the same time, if we do not see
any need for changes, we will have a process in place and ready to go
without starting another work effort.

 

Note that I added a few comments below including the following: "I am
going to assume at this point that the original motion is what is on the
table for 23 June and any amendments to that need to be submitted
again."

 

Chuck

 

From: owner-council at gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council at gnso.icann.org]
On Behalf Of William Drake
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 12:23 PM
To: GNSO Council List
Cc: Kristina Rosette; Knobenw
Subject: [council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments

 

Hi

 

On Jun 11, 2010, at 12:34 AM, Rosette, Kristina wrote:





#3:  Understood.  To the IPC, however, having a slightly more
complicated process at the SG level is far preferable to having the
Council take on an SG role and make nominations independent of the
community.  If that's absolutely necessary, the circumstances under
which the Council can do so should, in the IPC's view, be narrow,
specifically delineated, and of "a last resort" nature. That's what the
proposed amendments are intended to do.

 

Thanks Kristina for explaining your position.  While it's not a huge
deal, I do have a different perspective.  Since Council will hopefully
vote on this on the 23rd and everyone may not be focused on the fine
points of this little item, I guess I should say why.

 

The process agreed in May by the drafting team, which comprised reps of
all SGs, was designed to facilitate the simplistic, most apolitical
routine handling of the recurring RT endorsement requirement possible.
So instead of having competitive elected slots 5 and 6 as we tried with
the ATRT maiden voyage, we scaled back to each SG being able to have one
endorsement selected in accordance with its own internal process-zero
inter-SG stuff required.  We also downscaled the diversity objectives
close to the vanishing point to avoid that being a source of stress for
anyone (except NCSG, which would prefer it to be stronger).  The
relevant bit of the latter is:

 

"3.  In making their selections, stakeholder groups SHOULD [not must]
give due consideration to the following diversity objectives:
*Unless the applicant pool does not allow, no more than half of the
GNSO's nominees SHOULD come from the same geographical region; and
*Unless the applicant pool does not allow, the GNSO's nominees SHOULD
not all be of the same gender."

 

In other words, normative encouragement but not a binding requirement,
subject to availability in the first place of a candidate pool that
would allow us to even try (which, it is easy to imagine, may not be the
case in some cycles).

 

"4.  The Council will consider the resulting list of up to four nominees
at its next teleconference.  If the list does not meet the above
mentioned diversity objectives, the Council as a whole MAY CHOOSE [or it
may not] to endorse up to two additional candidates from the applicant
pool who would help to give the list of GNSO nominees the desired
balance. In this case, the Council would hold a vote during its
teleconference, with sixty percent support of both houses represented in
the Council being required for endorsement.  If no candidate obtains
that level of support, the list of endorsements obtained via the
bottom-up process of stakeholder group nominations will be deemed final
and forwarded to ICANN."

 

And to facilitate this, para 2 suggests that, "Each stakeholder group is
ENCOURAGED to identify in its internal deliberations (notification to
the Council would be helpful but is NOT required) one or two additional
candidates whom it could support, if available, in the event that the
diversity procedure... is to be utilized."

[Gomes, Chuck] As I said above, I think we should amend this to say,
"Each stakeholder group is ENCOURAGED to identify in its internal
deliberations (notification to the Council would be helpful but is NOT
required) one or two additional candidates whom it could support, if
available, in the event that the diversity procedure... is to be
utilized.  Any additional candidates should be from different
geographical regions or of different gender than the primary candidate."

 

So, for example, a scenario: ICANN puts out a call for applicants, and
as happened with the ATRT, 12 of them are apps to represent the GNSO
(over time, and on topics narrower than accountability and transparency,
it's likely the pools will get even smaller), 8 of which are from the
US, 2 of which are from women.  And say that from this pool, the SGs
endorse 3 or 4 American men and no women.  In this case, the Council
could decide (or not) that it might be preferable for its nominees to
look a bit more representative of the global Internet community and that
we should at least consider adding 1 or 2 more from the 8 remaining in
the pool, subject to the agreement of 60% of both houses (which
presumably means that only viable, noncontroversial candidates would
have a prayer of making the cut).  Of course, even if we succeeded in
agreeing on such nominations, it's highly likely that (as with the ATRT)
the Selectors would ultimately pick the candidates that had been
supported by the four SGs in the first place.  But at least the optics
would be better.

 

What the IPC is proposing is that only applicants that SGs have
previously designated as acceptable back-ups could even be considered by
the Council for this purpose.[Gomes, Chuck]  I didn't understand it as
this restrictive.  I thought Kristina said that the SG alternatives
would be considered first; then if that didn't result in a successful
resolution, other candidates could be considered.  In which case

 

*Rather than sort of casually considering who they could support in the
event a diversity vote arises, each SG would probably feel compelled in
each cycle to spend time reaching agreement on back-ups and formally
notify the council of these in order not to be at a competitive
disadvantage relative to other SGs.  So the added cycles of carefully
parsing all the files and engaging in strategic calculations and
negotiations become the norm rather than the exception, which is what
dropping competitively elected seats 5 & 6 was supposed to spare us
from.

 

*One can readily imagine situations in which only a few (or even none)
of the 8 get these second-level endorsements, and they're not the
candidates that would add diversity to the pool.  Council's hands would
then be tied, we couldn't even have a discussion about the merits of the
others and try to persuade each other, even if the prohibited persons
actually would add diversity and maybe bring stuff to the table that not
everyone recognized at the outset.  We just lock in on our first
preferences, don't budge, and potentially do nothing about diversity
even when there were reasonable options.

 

Anyway, relative to other things on council's plate the differences and
relative merits of these two approaches may not seem like a big deal or
something that warrants a two-screen email.  But since there is a
choice, I'd rather go the route that trusts the Council and gives it the
option to make reasoned choices through community deliberations rather
than politicizing things and tying its hands.  And on a philosophical
level, I guess I don't agree that the possibility of Council making a
group decision is an improper usurpation of SG sovereignty; the nominees
are, after all, supposed to represent the GNSO.

 

Some of us at least would like to be able to vote on the original motion
agreed by SG reps in the drafting team, and as such I regard the
amendment as "unfriendly" (meaning merely "not better").  If nothing
else, maybe we can amuse the audience in Brussels.  

 

An entirely separate matter is CSG's proposed amendment by Wolf-Ulrich
to the effect that we should only adopt this process for the next two
RTs (rather than as a standing model, which is what the drafting team
was asked to propose) and presumably renegotiate the process again (and
again...?).  Will IPC and CSG be merging their amendments or shall we
address these separately?

[Gomes, Chuck] Please try to finalize amendments to the original motion
as soon as possible, ideally by 15 June (but this is not a requirement).
Because amendments were being made on the fly verbally and via email
during the meeting, I am going to assume at this point that the original
motion is what is on the table for 23 June and any amendments to that
need to be submitted again.

 

Cheers,

 

Bill

 

 

***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
 Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html

www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake

*********************************************************** 

 

 

 



 

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