[RSS GWG] On the definitions of "Stakeholder Communities"

[Robert Carolina]

Dear Friends

In our last telephone meeting I feel that we experienced some terminology confusion related to the subject of "Stakeholder Communities." I suspect this arises from our discussion of principles in which we have already drawn some principled distinctions between (at least) two different TYPES of Stakeholder groupings.

While the taxonomy or these two sets is reasonably well reflected in the principles document, I suspect that we are experiencing confusion because we have not developed intuitive defined labels to describe them. I suspect that we need to remedy this. If we are confused in our discussion now, the community will be equally or more confused later.

Thus I suggest we provisionally adopt a few working labels. Once we are comfortable with these we can revise the "stakeholder community identification" principles accordingly.

Set out below is my first attempt to adopt more intuitive labels for the two sets we have been discussing.


1) "Participant Stakeholder Communities"

This label (or whatever we select to replace it) would describe those stakeholder communities that meet all of the criteria we have discussed for full participating in the RSS governance structure. I.e., each such community would be guaranteed some form of representation in the governance structure.


2) "Other Stakeholders"

This label (or whatever we select to replace it) would describe those stakeholder groups that have not yet fulfilled all criteria to become a Participant Stakeholder Community. Perhaps because they have not been identified as having a "direct operational dependency" on the RSS. Or perhaps because they have not organised into an observable "community."


Using these defined terms, I believe that the Principles as they stand tell us that we should go on to:

A) Identify all Participant Stakeholder Communities using the Principles as an analysis framework;

B) (later) find an appropriate representation model to assure that each Participant Stakeholder Community is specifically represented in the RSS Governance Structure ; and

C) assure that we find some mechanism that permits Other Stakeholders (as an undifferentiated group) to contribute their ideas to, and otherwise observe, the RSS governance process.


I hope that we can make some use of these, or some other form of, defined terms in our ongoing discussion of this issue. I think it will help us move forward more easily.

Kind regards

Rob


--
Robert Carolina
General Counsel
Internet Systems Consortium
+447712007095 (mobile, WhatsApp, Signal)
rob at isc.org
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