Status update on NCSG Charter

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

I have owed this list a status update on the progress we are making with the NCSG approved charter. 

As you probably know it was submitted to the  Board and the Structural Improvements committee.  It was also one of the discussion topics for our NCSG face to face meeting with the Board.  As anyone who listened to the recording of the NCSG - Board meeting knows (I believe it is posted with the all the other recording from the meeting), the Board was not really into discussing it with us as it was in hands of the Structural Improvement Committee.

Several of the members of the NCSG had a meeting with the SIC while in Brussels.  Attending from the NCSG were Debbie, Mary, Milton, Rafik, Rosemary and me.  Attending from the SIC were Ray Plzak, Mike Silber, George Sadowsky, Jean-Jacques Subrenat, and Jonne Soininen. As chair of the Board Governance committee Dennis Jennings was also in attendance.  Raimundo Beca as a member of the previous SIC was also present as was David Olive, Rob Hoggarth and others from staff. (those who were there should let me know if i forgot anyone).  The meeting lasted a little over an hour.

It became clear from almost the beginning that the charter as we have approved it, would not be sent to the Board for approval by the SIC.  Instead they wanted to work out several issues with us first.    they do not want to present the Board with a charter it rejects.

Among their concerns were (note: some of my understanding came from the meeting and some subsequent discussions - this has been an ongoing part of my job)

1. That we make clear that we would accept a centralized auditing scheme for SG finances that might be introduced.  This was the smallest of the issues and one to which we readily agreed, though I was not sure we needed to amend the charter for that. 

2.  That there was concern with our use of the term Interest-groups versus Constituencies.  Specifically:
  a. It turns out the SIC are looking for a consistent definition of what it means to be a constituency across SG groups.  Even to the extent of speculating that there might be Constituencies again in the future in the Registries and Registrars SGs once the new GLTDs are established, e.g. the city TLD Constituency.
  b. That Constituencies are linked in the by-laws to financial resources and nomcom seats and the like.
  c. And most importantly that when a policy recommendation is put forward and Constituencies comment, they want to know who that Constituency is.  This was an convoluted topic that took some discussion and was not resolved until my skype call with Dennis.

3. That they wanted a way to be sure that:
   a. that SGs are not captured by a single faction
   b. that new constituencies could join an SG
   c. that there was a common way for new constituencies to be added to SGs

Further conversation showed that the real crux of the matter is the Board view of its oversight responsibilities. The Board is not ready to relinquish their role in approving the formation and renewal of Constituencies within SGs.

My first, somewhat intemperate reaction, to this demand of the board for oversight was to declare that we had perhaps reached an impasse as we insisted on a bottom-up process by which the SG decided on new Interest-Groups or Constituencies, whatever they were called.  I was immediately assured that this was not the case and that we could work out the issues.

The meeting broke up with a mutual agreement that we would continue to talk and that no one, not even me, was ready to declare an impasse at this point.

And we have continued talking.  I have had conversations with Ray and several of the Board members while still in Brussels and I know that some of the others who attended the meeting have had their own contacts after the meeting.  I also had a skype conversation with Dennis.  I have also been included in a discussion of the SIC group working on the criteria of what it means to be a Constituency.  

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So the talks are ongoing.

In these conversations we have come to several tentative agreements that need more work and that needing vetting with the membership that approved the NCSG version of the charter, i.e. you all.

Some of the points of discussion and possible agreement (agreed upon wording still needs to be developed on everything):

A. -  The name Interest-Groups will not work. Changing the by-laws to make Interest-Groups the equivalent of Constituencies in all respects is a bit too much  of a challenge for the Board and they expect for legal. They want Constituencies, but are willing to accept the following principles:

  1. The election of council members and the NCSG chair will continue to be done by the membership as the NCSG approved charter defines.  Ie.  It is accepted that there is NO mapping between constituencies and council seats.  Election on a SG wide basis is accepted.

  2. That the NCSG-EC will still have the principle task of approving/disapproving/renewing constituencies with the following conditions:

       i. after we take any such action (whether approval or disapproval) it is sent to the Board for review
      ii.  it they disagree with an NCSG decision, the EC and the Board discuss  the decision and the reasons for disagreement.
     iii.  they come to agreement on what to do next.  This could for example be another way to kick off the appeals mechanism.  We have not discussed this step in any detail yet.

 3. There is in principle agreement to a two stage process for Constituencies as we described in our charter. I.e.,  apply for candidacy as a constituency and then once activity/contribution is proven, approval as a full Constituency. Two issues fall out of this:

     i. We are still discussing the nature of proof of activity/contribution, but we all accept that a constituency needs to be functional and contributing before it is approved for full status.  The question now is how we define the conditions in a predominantly objective way.  I do not know what their ideas on this are yet, I have proposed things like:

               o  participation in at least two working groups with at least 50% participation for 6 months
               o  submission of at least 4 constituency statements on items under public review
               o  a vibrant culture of cooperative work as demonstrated by mailing lists traffic or other group work mechanisms.
               o contributions in the EC, PC and FC on which they will have observer status as candidate constituencies.

    ii.  There needs to be two ways in which a cConstituency can apply for candidate status:  either through the SOI process as we have defined in our charter or through the Staff administered NOIF process.  It would still be up to the NCSG-EC to review and approve, or not, the applications and the process once accepted as a candidate Constituency would be identical.  The predominant reason, as I understand it for the inclusion of the NOIF is because of outreach and an assumption that ICANN can reach a larger swath of possible applicants.  It also provides a mechanism by which Constituencies can be applied for in any SG using a similar method.

4. We have not yet discussed this at length, but there is a question of whether there needs to be any restrictions to the number of Constituencies a member can belong to. There is some concern about a member belonging to too many and using that to elect/influence several members of the Executive Committee (EC), Policy Committee (PC) or finance committee (FC).  It may be necessary to restrict members to voting within one constituency for the EC, PC and FC representatives.

B - They want some wording added about adherence to ICANN defined fiscal rules

C - They are concerned about the criteria under which someone who woks for an organizational member can also be an individual member of the NCSG.  They accept that being a registrant in ones own right is a good enough reason for individual membership in this case, but there is discomfort with advocacy being a sufficient reason for individual membership when their company is already a member.  They are concerned that allowing many members of an organization member to also become individual members magnifies their vote in terms of council seat and thus may be prone to gaming. We need to discuss limiting this case of someone being both an employee of an organizational member and an individual member to those who own their own non commercial domain names.  This only applies to voting, of course as many employees of an organizational member as wish can be participants and contributors.

D- We may need to review some of our voting threshold and quorum requirements.

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The mutual goal is to have a charter that can be approved in October so it is done before the next meeting.  The agreement I have with them is that since we have already voted on and approved a charter which they are not accepting, it is up to them to now approve a charter with the negotiated changes and to present that to us for our approval.  We would then hold another vote to see if we accept the new charter or not. I apologize for subjecting people to yet another vote, but since our appeals mechanism also requires a percentage vote of the membership, it is something we need to learn how to do in a less painful and more routine manner.

As the discussions move along I will describe what is being discussed and take whatever feedback you all offer.  I understand that I have to both succeed at getting a proper bottom-up charter from the Board that meets the principles expressed in the current NCSG charter and that I have to convince the NCSG that I have done so.  I will certainly consider it a failure if they approve a charter this group can't accept and I am  definitely interested in your comments as we move along.  I will try to make my next emails on these topics more limited to one topic, but needed to finally get this report to you all.

I invite those who were at the meeting or who had separate conversations with the board to add and correct my reporting.  And of course I invite discussion.  I am sure I have more explanations if asked about particular points.

Thanks and apologies for taking so long to report.

a.