motion on Chatham

[Andrew A. Adams]

> While I agree that open and accountable minutes of meetings is the
> preferable default, the CH Rule sometimes arises from the inability of a
> delegate to announce an organisation's position until a process is complete
> or the appropriate spokesperson issues a statement. For example : Fred from
> ALACISH says a rough consensus is in favour of the motion with an amendment,
> but there are still three tiers of committees who must sign off on it -
> minutes to show that "a delegate supported the motion with an amendment".
> Likewise, the suits may only be authorised to negotiate, vote on procedural
> motions without prejudice to further stakeholder opposition or tentatively
> agree pending white smoke from Head Office. 
> 
> Accordingly, Mary's suggestion to allow some members of discussions to
> declare a matter under CH rules in exceptional circumstances gives what some
> at these meetings will consider to be useful wiggle room; enabling ongoing
> discussions without the names being recorded in the minutes. 

I stand by my earlier statements that Chatham House Rules (in my opinion) 
should only be used to ensure an open debate of highly contentious issues 
where "sacred cows" are likely to be present and a full airing of the issues 
is needed. For actual policy-making Chatham House undermines accountability 
and, as has been pointed out, the potential abuse of such rules outweighs 
their benefit on the rare occasions it might be appropriate. Delegates from 
organisations should be properly briefed and given appropriate authority or 
they lose their voice. Delegating organisations will soon learn to ensure 
that they have their internal processes sorted out, if they lose influence.

One of the general issues non-commercial users (within and outside the NCUC 
per se) have been raising since day 1 with ICANN is a lack of transparency 
and (therefore) accountability over some of the fundamental structures of the 
net.


-- 
Dr Andrew A Adams, School of Systems Engineering
The University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AY, UK
Tel:44-118-378-6997 E-mail:a.a.adams at rdg.ac.uk
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sis00aaa/

>From 1st April 2010:
Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo