revised draft of NCUC comments on LSE Report on GNSO reform

[Carlos Afonso]

I agree with you, Robin.

--c.a.

Robin Gross wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I've updated and revised Milton's previous draft of these comments on 
> the LSE report. Below is the text of the proposed revised comments.
> 
> Please let me know what revisions you'd like in the next day because we 
> this is due on 22 December.
> 
> I don't think we necessarily have to comment on every LSE recommendation 
> - many are just to vague to be for or against. I'd prefer that we only 
> comment on the recommendations that we have definite opinions about.
> 
> Thank you!
> Robin
> 
> ====================
> 
> v.0.5
> Comments of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) on the
> GNSO Review: LSE Report and Recommendations
> December 2006
> 
> 
> ICANN’s Non-Commercial User Constituency (NCUC) welcomes the London 
> School of Economics (LSE) report on the GNSO and urges the Board to 
> implement many, but not all, of its recommendations.
> 
> Recommendation 1
> “A centralized register of all GNSO stakeholders should be established, 
> which is up-to-date and publicly accessible. It should include members 
> of Constituencies and others involved in the GNSO task forces.”
> 
> [no opinion developed]
> 
> Recommendation 2
> “GNSO Constituencies should be required to show how many members have 
> participated in the policy positions they adopt.”
> 
> [no opinion developed]
> 
> Recommendation 3
> “There needs to be greater coherence and standardization across 
> constituency operations. For this to work effectively, more ICANN staff 
> support would be needed for constituencies.”
> 
> * NCUC does not support recommendation 3. Constituencies should be 
> funded by ICANN so they can provide their own staff support for these 
> roles. It does not have to be an ICANN staff member that fulfills this 
> function and role, which NCUC agrees needs to be filled.
> 
> Recommendation 4
> “A GNSO Constituency support officer should be appointed to help 
> Constituencies develop their operations, websites and outreach activity.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 4 as it would enable constituencies, 
> particularly the less-funded constituencies to carry out the work of the 
> organization in a more consistent fashion.
> 
> Recommendation 5
> “Constituencies should focus on growing balanced representation and 
> active participation broadly proportional to wider global distributions 
> for relevant indicators.”
> 
> [no opinion developed]
> 
> 
> Recommendation 6
> “The basis for participation in GNSO activities needs to be revised, 
> from Constituency based membership to one deriving from direct ICANN 
> stakeholder participation.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 6 since many people or entities do not 
> fit neatly into any ICANN constituency and it is important the ICANN 
> hear from all viewpoints. Also, because hardly anyone in the public has 
> heard of the GNSO, participation in ICANN via the GNSO will not garner 
> much interest and remain at a low level.
> 
> Recommendation 7
> “The GNSO should improve the design and organization of the current 
> website, develop a website strategy for continual improvement and growth 
> over the next three years, and review usage statistics on a regular 
> basis to check that traffic to the website is growing over time and 
> understand more fully what external audiences are interested in.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 7. Since the website is the main tool 
> through which GNSO policy discussions are made available to the world, 
> it is extremely important the information be accessible and easy to 
> find. Most agree that ICANN should continue to upgrade its website, 
> including the GNSO website.
> 
> Recommendation 8
> “Document management within the GNSO needs to be improved and the 
> presentation of policy development work made much more accessible.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 8. Closely tied to recommendation 7, an 
> online document management system to better provide the public with GNSO 
> policymaking discussions and reports would be an important improvement.
> 
> Recommendation 9
> “The GNSO should develop and publish annually a Policy Development Plan 
> for the next two years, to act both as a strategy document for current 
> and upcoming policy work, and as a communications and marketing tool for 
> general consumption outside of the ICANN community. It should dovetail 
> with ICANN’s budget and strategy documents.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 9. Developing policy development plans at 
> the GNSO will encourage long-term thinking and prioritization of issues.
> 
> Recommendation 10
> “The GNSO and ICANN should work pro actively to provide 
> information-based incentives for stakeholder organizations to monitor 
> and participate in GNSO issues.”
> 
> [no opinion developed]
> 
> Recommendation 11
> “The position of the GNSO Council Chair needs to become much more 
> visible within ICANN and to carry more institutional weight.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 11. In general the GNSO needs to be more 
> widely recognized as the appropriate forum for public policymaking at 
> ICANN.
> 
> Recommendation 12
> “The policy on GNSO Councilors declaring interests should be 
> strengthened. Provision for a vote of ‘no confidence’ leading to 
> resignation should be introduced for noncompliance.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 12. Transparency and accountability 
> regarding the various interests of GNSO Councilors is always an 
> appropriate objective for good public policy making.
> 
> Recommendation 13
> “Fixed term limits should be introduced for GNSO Councilors either of 
> two two-year terms (as applied in some Constituencies already) or 
> perhaps of a single three-year term.”
> 
> * NCUC strongly supports recommendation 13. In order for there to be an 
> even playing field across all constituencies, they should all have term 
> limits. Otherwise the constituencies who do have limits have an 
> advantage over those that do not in directing GNSO policy work over 
> time. Being a GNSO councilor should not be a “career”, but rather a 
> public service done only for a few years. The GNSO election structures 
> should discourage career GNSO councilors and encourage the widest range 
> of participation and a diversity of viewpoints. NCUC supports a standard 
> two or three term limit of two-year terms for each constituency.
> 
> Recommendation 14
> “The GNSO Council and related policy staff should work more closely 
> together to grow the use of project-management methodologies in policy 
> development work, particularly focusing on how targeted issue analysis 
> can drive data collection from stakeholders (rather than vice versa) .”
> 
> * NCUC does not support recommendation 14. The GNSO policy decisions and 
> recommendations should be made by the various constituencies, not by 
> ICANN policy staff as the text supporting this recommendation suggested. 
> ICANN policy staff officers best serve in the role of facilitators of 
> the discussion, not arbiters of competing policy issues.
> 
> Recommendation 15
> “The GNSO Council should rely on face-to-face meetings supplemented by 
> online collaborative methods of working. The Chair should seek to reduce 
> the use of whole-Council teleconferencing.”
> 
> * NCUC does not support recommendation 15. Even if ICANN were able to 
> pay for the travel costs of the meeting participants, it is unlikely 
> NCUC members (or members of other constituencies) can donate a number of 
> days of their time to attend more face-to-face meetings. Most NCUC 
> members (as with other constituencies) have full-time jobs that do not 
> allow for frequent face-to-face meetings at different corners of the 
> globe for ICANN policy work. NCUC supports getting as much work done via 
> telephone and email as possible, and to rely upon holding face-to-face 
> meetings, only when absolutely necessary.
> 
> Recommendation 16
> “The GNSO Councilors should have access to a fund for reasonable travel 
> and accommodation expenses to attend designated Council meetings, 
> instead of having to meet such costs from their own resources as at 
> present.”
> 
> * NCUC strongly supports recommendation 16. The lack of funding 
> available to constituencies is one of the biggest impediments to 
> participation at ICANN meetings. ICANN should be serious about its 
> attempt to engage in policymaking by providing for the travel of the 
> councilors doing the work of the organization. ICANN should 
> automatically fund the reasonable travel costs of all GNSO council 
> members and an executive member of each constituency to ICANN Board 
> members. ICANN should also provide for the reasonable travel costs of 
> task force members who are carrying out the work of the organization.
> 
> Recommendation 17
> “The GNSO Council should make more uses of Task Forces. Task Force 
> participants should be more diverse and should be drawn from a wider 
> range of people in the Internet community, and national and 
> international policy-making communities.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 17. Better use of task forces would help 
> the GNSO to carryout its work much for effectively and through a wider 
> range of stakeholders.
> 
> Recommendation 18
> “An ICANN Associate stakeholder category of participation should be 
> created, so as to create a pool of readily available external expertise, 
> which can be drawn upon to populate Task Forces where relevant.”
> 
> * NCUC supports recommendation 18. A new means of obtaining more 
> diversity of viewpoints and a broader range of expertise would be a 
> useful input into GNSO policy making discussions.
> 
> Recommendation 19
> “The current GNSO Constituency structure should be radically simplified 
> so as to be more capable of responding to rapid changes in the Internet. 
> The Constituency structure should be clear, comprehensive (covering all 
> potential stakeholders) and flexible, allowing the GNSO to respond 
> easily to rapid changes in the makeup of Internet stakeholders. We 
> suggest a set of three larger Constituencies to represent respectively 
> Registration interests, Business and Civil Society.”
> 
> * NCUC strongly supports recommendation 19. The LSE report suggests that 
> GNSO be restructured into three basic groupings: the registration supply 
> industry, business interests, and civil society. NCUC agrees that this 
> is a cleaner and more workable constituency structure than now exists. 
> There are important details to be worked out, however.
> 
> The existing structure gives business, particularly entertainment 
> companies or other intellectual property interests, too much power in 
> GNSO policy making and an unfair advantage. Non-commercial interests 
> should be given equal weight to commercial interests in GNSO policy 
> making as a matter of principle.
> 
> Recommendation 20
> “A reorganization of the GNSO Constituencies would also allow the 
> Council to be made somewhat smaller (we suggest 16 members) and hence 
> easier to manage.”
> 
> * NCUC strongly disagrees with recommendation 20. While the Council 
> should be made smaller, the details for implementing that vague goal are 
> unsupportable.
> 
> We disagree with the report's proposal that registration suppliers and 
> business users be given 5 votes on the policy making Council, while 
> civil society be given only 3. This kind of discrimination against a 
> particular sector of societal interests is unjustified. Nothing in the 
> factual findings of the report supports this discrimination. The report
> does not even mount an argument for it. We suggest that the supply 
> industry be given 5 members, and business and civil society each given 
> 4, with the remaining 3 appointed by the NomCom.
> 
> We note that the existence of three "at large" GNSO Council members 
> appointed by the Nominating Committee does not compensate for this 
> inequality. The NomCom-appointed Council members can come from any 
> constituency; the NomCom contains diverse interests and is not 
> guaranteed to appoint members sympathetic to civil society.
> 
> How the civil society representatives on the Council are selected is 
> very important condition upon our support. We note that the concept of a 
> "civil society" category leaves unresolved issues about the relationship 
> between NCUC and ALAC. While we strongly favor a more unified structure 
> for civil society participation in ICANN, NCUC representatives are 
> elected under a formal and legitimate membership structure, whereas the 
> process of selecting ALAC Board members is complicated and 
> non-transparent. As long as ALAC and GNSO are structurally separate, and 
> ALAC's structures are incomplete, civil society representation within 
> the GNSO will have to be mediated by NCUC.
> 
> Recommendation 21
> “The definition of achieving consensus should be raised to 75 per cent. 
> Weighted voting should be abolished. Both measures could be used to 
> create more incentives for different constituencies to engage 
> constructively with each other, rather than simply reiterating a ‘bloc’ 
> position in hopes of picking up enough uncommitted votes so as to win.”
> 
> * NCUC does not support recommendation 21. The LSE Report proposes to 
> raise the threshold for a "consensus policy" to 75% of the vote. We do 
> not support this recommendation and would prefer to retain a 2/3 super 
> majority as the threshold for "consensus." Under the LSE proposal, 
> supplier interests and business interests could, if only 4 of their 
> representatives agreed, prevent a 75% majority from forming and thus 
> block any policy. The public interest advocates in civil society, even 
> if they were completely unified, could not exercise such a veto. This is 
> not a correct balance of policy influence. Moreover the very high 75% 
> requirement would basically freeze the status quo in place. If the 
> status quo were a very good state of affairs, this might be an 
> acceptable approach. The LSE’s recommendation would give commercial 
> interests an automatic veto over the public-interest without any 
> explanation or justification.
> 
> If representation on the council is to be weighted, it is reasonable 
> that the registration industry, whose survival depends entirely on ICANN 
> contracts and policies, have some kind of special status in the outcome 
> of policies. They need to be protected against various forms of 
> crippling regulation or expropriation at the hands of GNSO Council
> legislators who do not have to directly bear the costs of their 
> policies. But there is no legitimate reason why commercial interests 
> should be given the same veto power while non-commercial ordinary 
> Internet users denied it. We also think that registrars and registries 
> often have conflicting interests and therefore it is better for there to 
> be wider representation for them in order to accommodate this structural 
> difference.
> 
> Recommendation 22
> “The way in which the GNSO Council votes to elect two directors to the 
> ICANN Board should be changed to use the Supplementary Vote system.”
> 
> [no opinion developed]
> 
> Recommendation 23
> “The amount of detailed prescriptive provision in the ICANN Bylaws 
> relating to the operations of the GNSO should be reduced. ICANN Bylaws 
> should outline broad principles and objectives for the GNSO but the 
> detailed operational provision (including the section on the PDP) should 
> be transferred to the GNSO Rules of Procedure. This would allow the GNSO 
> to agree amendments and to introduce new innovations in its working 
> methods and time lines in a more realistic and flexible way, while 
> operating within ICANN’s guiding principles.”
> 
> *NCUC supports recommendation 23. The current structure in the ICANN 
> Bylaws is far too micro-managing of the GNSO work to be useful. Much of 
> the detailed prescriptive provisions in the ICANN Bylaws for GNSO work 
> should be removed. The GNSO is the best position to manage its internal 
> operations and objectives.
> 
> 
> Recommendation 24
> “Both ICANN and the GNSO Council should periodically (say once every 
> five years) compile or commission a formal quantitative and qualitative 
> assessment of the influence of the GNSO's work on developing policy for 
> generic names. This should include an analysis of how the GNSO's 
> influence with national governments, international bodies and the 
> commercial sector might be extended.”
> 
> [no opinion developed]
> 
>