[Rt4-whois] Chair nominations invited for the WHOIS Review Team - Acceptance and Vice Chair

[Smith, Bill]

It is heartening to see both the interest in and support for the proposed candidates for Chair and Vice-Chair. I am encouraged by the activity on the list and hope that we continue to use email as an important means of progressing our work. In my experience, collaborative/collegial use of email can significantly enhance the work of groups between telephonic or face-to-face meetings; especially when those groups are "geographically challenged". It facilitates discussion of important topics between meetings frequently enabling both more informed and faster decision making.

With this in mind, I'd like to suggest that we may have the cart before the horse in our discussions/decisions with respect to a Chair and Vice-Chair. I believe that it is imperative that we all understand, and agree to, both what we are working on and how we will perform the work, before we formally select a Chair, and if necessary a Vice-Chair. Establishing a charter prior to formally selecting a chair is common practice at many organizations that have well-established processes, e.g. OASIS, W3C, and IETF. I believe we would be well-served to follow their model.

Let me be clear that this is a *process* issue, not a personality issue. I believe the proposed candidates are well-qualified and further believe it is likely that they will be selected. However, before we take that action, it is important that we understand the scope of our work, and the rules that we will adhere to. 

Fortunately, the AOC establishes a clear basis for our work. Using the language from the AOC, minimally adapted for the purpose of defining a scope, I suggest that our scope is:

________________________________
To assess the extent to which existing WHOIS policy and its implementation:

*	is effective,
*	meets the legitimate needs of law enforcement, and
*	promotes consumer trust.

This assessment will include an analysis and determination of ICANN's performance against the AOC requirement that ICANN implement measures to maintain timely, unrestricted and public access to accurate and complete WHOIS information, including registrant, technical, billing, and administrative contact information.

________________________________

For process, we have the A&T Review Team's Terms of Reference Methodology that can serve as a basis for us and I suggest we use that as appropriate for our needs. I would also suggest that for anything beyond the specifics we might lay out in out ToR, we use Roberts Rules as our process document. It has proven effective in any number of situations and allows us to have well-established processes without the need to define, debate, and agree on them.

Finally, I think we should take Rod Beckstrom up on his kind offer to serve as chair and facilitator, and to do so until we can agree on what our charter is and how we will go about our work.

(A simple example of the types of process decisions we might need to make is related to Wilfried's note - do we allow proxies? Or absentee voting? If we do, how do we determine if quorum is established?)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rt4-whois-bounces at icann.org [mailto:rt4-whois-bounces at icann.org]
> On Behalf Of Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 8:52 AM
> To: Olivier ITEANU
> Cc: rt4-whois at icann.org
> Subject: Re: [Rt4-whois] Chair nominations invited for the WHOIS Review
> Team - Acceptance and Vice Chair
> 
> Dear Team!
> 
> Olivier ITEANU wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > Dear All,
> > Considering that I am very new in the Icann process (I was part of it
> > in 2001), I do not know personally Kathy and Emily
> 
> Nor do I, actually I don't think that I have "conciously" met anyone
> in the team before. Thus I do not feel in a position to suggest any
> individual for this position.
> 
> > but it seems that
> > many of you know each others and know them: if there is a consensus
> > on them, that's fine for me, Kathy and Emily seem very competent for
> > the job.
> 
> Nevertheless I am fine with the 2 ladies being nominated already.
> 
> > However, if there is another candidate, I think that we need an
> > urgent coming out !
> > Olivier
> 
> As there's only a slim chance that I can call in (and if at all, from
> my mobile phone in listening mode because I will be on a train), I'd
> like to submit my support for Kathy and Emily to serve as chairs of the
> team.
> 
> > Olivier ITEANU - mailto:oiteanu at iteanu.com
> 
> Best regards,
> Wilfried.
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