Board appointments to fill 3 non-commercial seats on the new Council (from Roberto)

Thu Oct 1 14:07:06 CEST 2009

Hi Bill,

Thanks for forwarding this on from the ALAC open list.  I am sure many
of us would have missed reading that archive.

I, for one, agree with Roberto about us needing to work together (even
if he was speaking to ALAC and not NCUC at the time - we all do need
to work together).

I also want to take a brief a moment to celebrate the fact that the
Non Commercial Community  has 6 representatives incoming to the
Council; finally correcting an inequity that has existed for a very
long time.  Finally bringing the Non Commercial representatives into
balance with the Commercial representatives in the Non contracted side
of the house.

I also celebrate that two of the new picks are members of the NCUC,
one institutional and one individual.

Maybe some will see it as the Pollyanna in me, but I see this as a
good thing and look forward to the future opportunities.

a.

On 1 Oct 2009, at 07:38, William Drake wrote:

>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: "Roberto Gaetano" <roberto at icann.org>
>> Date: October 1, 2009 1:26:07 PM GMT+02:00
>> To: "'At-Large Worldwide'" <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
>> Cc: 'Marco Lorenzoni' <marco.lorenzoni at icann.org>
>> Subject: Re: [At-Large] Fwd: Board appointments to fill 3	non-
>> commercial	seats on the new Council
>> Reply-To: At-Large Worldwide <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
>>
>> Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I am not absolutely sure, but I'm reasonably confident the
>>> best person to send comments to is Marco Lorenzoni -
>>> Marco.Lorenzoni[at]icann.org.
>>> He's Director for Organisational Reviews.
>>
>>
>> I copy Marco in this message, but I think that the questions asked
>> are
>> really for the Chair of the SIC to answer.
>> I am sure that we are going to have a very interesting debate in
>> Seoul about
>> this, but I can anticipate a few comments.
>>
>> First of all, the interaction with the community.
>> The process that the Board has chosen is modeled on the NomCom,
>> although
>> simplified. This means that the first step has been a call for
>> candidature,
>> issued, if I remember correctly (staff might correct me and/or give
>> exact
>> references), in the beginning of August, with deadline the end of
>> August.
>> Public discussion of the candidatures was explicitely excluded, in
>> the same
>> way as you do not have public discussion of the candidatures
>> presented to
>> the NomCom.
>> It is extremely unfortunate that most of ALAC has not paid
>> attention to the
>> call, that I am sure was posted. Some parts of ALAC were well aware
>> (I
>> remember having had a discussion on the EURALO list, for instance),
>> and I
>> was assuming that all of ALAC was. The reason why I state that it
>> was an
>> unfortunate fact, is that we have received only 14 candidatures. I
>> believe
>> that at one point in time staff will publish the summary, including
>> percentages by geographic region and gender.
>>
>> Second question, how the selection was done.
>> The whole purpose of the exercise was to appoint people who were
>> part of the
>> non-commercial community that was not sufficiently represented. That
>> included, but was not limited to, geographic regions not
>> represented by the
>> other NCSG councillors, constituencies to be formed, gender equality.
>> For geographic regions, we noted that the current NCUC councillors
>> are Bill
>> Drake (NA, although with EU domicile), Mary Wong (AP, although with
>> NA
>> domicile) and Carlos Souza (LAC). The obvious absence was Africa. We
>> considered, therefore, to have an African appointed as a priority.
>> For constituencies, we noted thyat the a Consumer Constituency had a
>> petition under approval process, that the technical research and
>> academia
>> has a theoretical representation (one representative appointed
>> yearly to the
>> NomCom) but no practical presence in the GNSO, that philantropic
>> institutions have a growing importance, that non-commercial
>> registrants are
>> also not represented. But here comes the problem. With the narrow
>> set of
>> candidates it has been all but easy to cover these needs.
>>
>> Third question, about the individuals chosen.
>> I have to admit that I do not like to make public statements about
>> the
>> quality of the candidates when I am part of the panel who makes the
>> decision, and even less I would like to get into discussions on
>> possible
>> alternatives and why the SIC has ended up in not considering them.
>> However, there are a couple of things I can say.
>> About Rosemary Sinclair, she is the president of the INTUG, which
>> is an
>> international umbrella organization who has several national consumer
>> organizations as members. The fact that ATUG, her employer, is a
>> consumer
>> organization mainly oriented to business users has been considered,
>> but on
>> the other hand it has also been considered that the organizations
>> in INTUG
>> are covering a wide spectrum, geographically and in terms of interest
>> groups. There are two points to be taken into account: the first is
>> that if
>> the objective is ultimately to build a consumer constituency, the
>> president
>> of the largest consumer organization worldwide could be a good
>> starting
>> point, and the second is the commitment Rosemary has made to work
>> in the
>> interest of the non-commercial users worldwide during her tenure at
>> the Name
>> Council. Noting also that we have checked the references, I have
>> personally
>> no doubt that she will be very useful for the non-commercial user
>> community
>> and instrumental in outreaching to different consumer organizations
>> that are
>> now not involved in ICANN.
>> About Debra Hughes, I confess that I am extremely surprised by the
>> reaction.
>> The International Red Cross has been one of the most frequently
>> quoted
>> examples of the type of organization that we hoped to get involved
>> in the
>> NonCommercial User community. Just few weeks ago in a letter to
>> some Board
>> members Robin Gross pointed out the fact that now the Red Cross has
>> joined
>> the NCUC. I find most surprisingly to have objections about having a
>> representative of this reputable international organization, twice
>> Nobel
>> laureate, integrate the Name Council. While I do agree that she has
>> an IP
>> lawyer backgroung, I would like to stress that she is not in the
>> Council as
>> an individual, but as a representative of her organization. I
>> wonder how
>> many Registries and Registrars are represented in their
>> constituencies or
>> stakeholder groups by lawyers. And even ALAC itself has appointed
>> years ago
>> a representative to the NomCom who was working for a Registrar. So
>> what?
>> Maybe it would have been less contentious to have somebody with a
>> different
>> profile, but I personally feel happy that, given the exceptionally
>> small
>> number of applicants, we have found people who are well above the
>> minimum
>> requirements for the job.
>>
>> I would also like to add a last consideration.
>> People have different interests, wear different hats, what is
>> important is
>> how they engage for accomplishing the mission given to them. There
>> are a few
>> tasks for these "special" NCSG Cousellors. One of them is outreach,
>> in
>> particular in their community. Another one is the ability to work
>> together
>> with people who have different views, as this will be the case in the
>> Council, but even in the House or the Stakeholder Group. Staff has
>> done the
>> ground work, and prepared tables; the SIC has discussed for several
>> days,
>> online, by phone and in person, and has formulated a
>> recommendation; the
>> Board has discussed the recommendation and approved it during a
>> teleconference. There has been a lot of work put in, in good faith,
>> by a lot
>> of people for getting this accomplished on time to have the GNSO
>> Council
>> seated in Seoul, which will mark a historic change in the GNSO.
>> What I will ask now is to give the chosen people, who have little
>> or no
>> previous experience of ICANN, the benefit of the doubt, and judge
>> them by
>> their actions in few months from now, and not prejudge them based
>> on line
>> items on their CVs. The Council has to work together, the NCSG has
>> to work
>> together, to start pointing fingers a few hours after the
>> appointment is not
>> a good way to start. Watch their actions closely, criticize them
>> bitterly
>> (but politely) if they take positions that in your opinion are
>> against the
>> non-commercial community, but please wait until they act for passing
>> judgement.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Roberto
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>
> ***********************************************************
> William J. Drake
> Senior Associate
> Centre for International Governance
> Graduate Institute of International and
>  Development Studies
> Geneva, Switzerland
> william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
> www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
> ***********************************************************
>
>