[council] Enhancing ICANN Accountability | ICANN - Proposed Next Steps for the Process

[Jonathan Robinson]

For clarity, I should highlight that I raised three points on the call with the CEO, which I believe to be connected as follows:

1. Workload / resourcing
2. Bottom-up and what is understood by this
3. Representation & weighting

N.B. I am not convinced we are setting the agenda on the question of 4 or 5, merely stating that 2 or 3 doesn't work in most if not all cases.

There was a spontaneous suggestion from Fadi of some sort of intercessional workshop to discuss and better understand these.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri at acm.org] 
Sent: 29 May 2014 16:15
To: council at gnso.icann.org
Subject: Re: [council] Enhancing ICANN Accountability | ICANN - Proposed Next Steps for the Process


Hi,

On 29-May-14 10:55, john at crediblecontext.com wrote:
> By setting the agenda on a question of "4 or 5" we miss the larger 
> point of empowering the muilti-stakeholder, consensus-driven, 
> bottom-up process.  If that is too messy a place for the IANA contract 
> to reside (which, I think, is Fadi's goal in all of this), then so be it.
>  


I think that while there is support for a multistakeholder process, there is far less support for, or agreement on,  a bottom-up model.

I believe senior management has more a representative model in mind.
For example according to the by-laws,  we elect Jonathan as the chair of the GNSO, he therefore speaks for the GNSO when he wears his Chair of the GNSO hat.  Obviously he can't be the spokesperson in everything, so then the GNSO council should be able elect someone else to be the representative for the issue under discussion.  On the case of the IANA committee, it is believed, we should be able to elect 2 people to represent us.

That is, they expect us to be able to elect representatives.

On the other had, we have varying degrees of trust of elected representatives.  Some want to keep the power as close to the bottom as they can, which is incompatible with entrusting representatives, and they want to bring every issue back to vox populi.

Both the representative model and the 'check with the people before very decision' model are multistakeholder, and both can even be described as bottom-up, but one is a lot more bottom-up than the other.

The problem with comparative body count for the committees, is they are offering a representative model whereas many in GNSO seem to want a more of an ambassadorial model where the 'ambassador' to the group from each SG has to be in constant contact with her capital before she can speak.

avri