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

[Mike O'Connor]

egad.  sorry Jonathan, i didn’t mean to cut you out of the conversation — i’m still struggling to get through email and didn’t see your reply.

i agree, this is a conversation that can easily wait for a while.

mikey


On Feb 5, 2014, at 11:46 AM, Jonathan Robinson <jrobinson at afilias.info> wrote:

> 
> 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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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 


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