[council] framing the discussion on SGs and role of the Council

[Jonathan Robinson]

I am sure there are all sorts of nuances that we could tease out here.

However, I think I am pretty well aligned with Avri's view outlined below.

The Council's primary role is management and co-ordination of policy work in
the GNSO.
The fact that all GNSO groups come together in or around the work of the
Council is challenging and often requires voting.
But, it also puts us in a privileged position to assist with broader GNSO
co-operation / coordination.

We shouldn't drop the MSI discussion. It may well be that it becomes
appropriate for the Council to formally respond / provide input to the MSI
Panel or to the CEO regarding the work of the panel and how it links with
that of the Council and the GNSO.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri at acm.org] 
Sent: 04 February 2014 21:30
To: Council
Subject: Re: [council] framing the discussion on SGs and role of the Council


Hi,

(I changed the topic yet again)

I do not believe I have the ability to educate you on this, nor would I
presume to do so. What I can do is present arguments in support of my
position.

I think the problem is in the framing of the discussion.  We are not
oversight of the whole GNSO.  I did not know you were suggesting oversight
for the GNSO.  I tend to think of each of the SGs self-organizing in terms
of their internal issues, with the Board's by-your-leave - of course.  I do
not believe further oversight of SGs is needed beyond what the SIC already
does.

What is sometimes needed is coordination, an aggregation point where the
various SGs can come together and work on common goals - if and when they
wish. The council can be useful in such facilitation.  SGs can also put
together other constructions, such as the current 'for counting purposes
only' Houses*.  They are useful to the degree that the components, the SGs,
decide to use them.  Not in an authoritative manner, but as a organizational
focusing point. Perhaps there are things that the Houses wish to make common
cause on and they are free to self-organize any sort of coordination
function they wish to organize. 
Likewise other cooperative projects between Houses or between constituencies
can form and reform based on the patterns of cooperation and be issue based.

So I see the council as oversight of the policy process, not the SGs.  I
also see as the place where the SG can naturally come together enabling us
as council members to also be useful in encouraging our separate SGs to work
together as a way of achieving various goals. I also see the council as a
service organization that can be used by the SGs when they have a common
cause, aka GNSO consensus, to effect changes beyond GNSO policy.

avri

* (Have we actually managed to make Houses useful for anything other than
counting votes yet?)

On 04-Feb-14 15:26, Mike O'Connor wrote:
>
> hi Avri.
>
> i love it when i blunder into something like this.  interesting!  so i
hijacked the thread over to it's own new one so we don't unduly tangle up
the MSI discussion.
>
> i don't hold this as an absolute do or die issue - but if the Council has
authority and responsibility for the *whole* GNSO, i think we've got some
figuring-things-out to do.  i've been laboring under the notion that the
heads of the SGs and constituencies had responsibility and authority over
their respective organizations and that the Council truly is a policy
council.
>
> can you point me at the right places to go learn more about this topic?
i'm in that "oops, i'd better go educate myself" mode at the moment.
>
> thanks for the heads up,
>
> mikey
>
>
> On Feb 4, 2014, at 9:46 AM, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> On 04-Feb-14 10:02, Mike O'Connor wrote:
>>> which brings me to the last idea for this post.  i wonder whether we 
>>> need *two* GNSO Councils - a Policy Council (us) and a Leadership 
>>> Council comprised of the heads of the SGs and constituencies who 
>>> elect their own leader to coordinate and drive the work of those 
>>> functional bodies.
>>
>>
>> While this is the sort of thing that the review of the GNSO can come up
with, I personally think it is a really bad idea that will confuse things
even further.
>>
>> I think that the GNSO has one leadership council, the GNSO Council, not a
GNSO Policy Council but a GNSO Council.  And while there are those who have
had a long standing campaign to denature the GNSO Council to make it less
then it is supposed to be, the only real effect of splitting the leadership
into two councils would be to weaken the GNSO and promote inter-council
conflict on whose responsibility something was.  Finger pointing would be
the order of the day.
>>
>> Definitely something I will argue against on every opportunity.
>>
>> avri
>>
>
>
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