NCUC & NCSG diversity & participation

[Adam Peake]

At 11:17 AM +0200 8/6/09, William Drake wrote:
>Hi Adam,
>
>I'm fine with restating openness to dialogue etc 
>as you suggest.  Not that we haven't before.
>
>Would like to pick up on one specific bit:
>
>On Aug 6, 2009, at 9:37 AM, Adam Peake wrote:
>
>>The NCUC does not have membership (or 
>>significant membership) from international 
>>consumer organizations (noted in many recent 
>>comments from the board and others as a missing 
>>constituent in all of ICANN), nor for the 
>>largest academic communities, libraries, R&D, 
>>etc.
>
>This may well be "noted" by the board and others 
>but it is patently untrue 
>http://ncuc.syr.edu/members.htm.   Just more 
>disinformation.  
>(BTW I also noted some on the transcript of the 
>ALAC call, e.g. Nick saying that the NCUC 
>proposal does not allow board approval of 
>constituencies...facts don't matter if one can't 
>be bothered to learn them).
>
>Which is not to say that it wouldn't be great to 
>have more groups with "consumer" in their title 
>etc.


Bill, I know the NCUC membership has been 
growing, both organizations and individuals.  But 
I got the impression ICANN was hoping (expecting) 
participation from groups representing new 
non-commercial players, and also larger national 
and international representative organizations. 
I think the commercial side of the user house was 
expecting this too, at least that's how I read 
some of the emails.

Example in the library space, ALA has been a 
member for many years, but there are hundreds of 
similar organizations around the world, and then 
there's IFLA <http://www.ifla.org/>

There's been a lot of talk about consumer 
organizations: most countries have a national 
consumer organization, or many industry/sector 
related groups, and there are regional and 
international bodies (Consumers International, 
Jeremy Malcolm now works for).  These 
organizations are being encouraged to form a 
constituency in their own right, but that 
shouldn't stop them transitioning from the NCUC, 
or NCUC trying to help that constituency to form.

Each year the board selects a member of the 
NomCom to represent "Academia & Research" (you'd 
think an NCUC related group).  They just selected 
a guy called Jan Gruntorád, CEO of CESNET, the 
Academic research network for the Czech Republic. 
Past selections have been people with similar 
backgrounds, large academic R&D networks (NRENs). 
Board obviously feels that it's a non-commercial 
community not represented in the NCUC (except for 
KAIST.)

Very difficult to sell ICANN to these types of 
organization, I don't see the board being able to 
do a good job of this without help, and the NCUC 
could do well by offering to help.  It'll take 
outreach and money.

About Nick's comment.  Perhaps an example of 
people forgetting what was actually in the NCUC 
proposal because we've not been asked to discuss 
it, just concentrating on the SIC.

Adam

>Perhaps this needs to be a larger, more focused 
>discussion sometime, but while I think of it 
>it's worth mentioning that there is also a claim 
>in said circles that our members are not all 
>sufficiently active and hence our diversity is 
>just on paper, which in turn is supposed to 
>allow for "capture" by a small cabal.  This of 
>course is held against us as well, and will be 
>relevant in the NCSG.  As you know, the staff's 
>"Suggested Additional Stakeholder Group Charter 
>Elements to Ensure Transparency, Openness, 
>Fairness and Representativeness Principles" 
>hold, inter alia, that "It is important that the 
>Board and the community have the ability to 
>determine what parties comprise a particular 
>GNSO structure and who participates in an active 
>way....[hence] Each GNSO structure should 
>collect, maintain, and publish active and 
>inactive member names identified by membership 
>category (if applicable)"
>
>I raised concerns about the reasoning and 
>operational implications of this on the last 
>GNSO call, but they were pretty much brushed 
>aside.  
>So I guess in some unknown manner members will 
>have to show sufficient signs of life on a 
>frequent enough basis for staff to deem them 
>active and consider their views to "count" when 
>constituencies state positions.  Oh, and meeting 
>attendance lists must be published and will be 
>considered too.  At least, all this undoubtedly 
>will apply to nomcomm constituencies, business 
>ones may get the usual pass from the standards 
>to which we're held.
>
>And now I have to reply to the council list 
>about this claim in the SOI that we are "not yet 
>sufficiently diverse or robust to select all 
>six"...sigh.  Pushing back on relentless disinfo 
>does get tiring...
>
>Bill