please send comments on this draft RE: Transparency

[Alex Gakuru]

Great statement!

Many community members also feel discouraged from participating in
lengthy and quite involving policy processes where the final output is
not shown to them or is secretly moulded or submitted to the Board. A
staff's upper hand and final say  scenario is bad for the community
and the Board and can only be interpreted as only good for themselves.

regards,

Alex

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Robin Gross <robin at ipjustice.org> wrote:
> Below is first draft joint NCSG-ALAC statement on the need for transparency
> of the Secret Board Briefings.
> The stmt isn't something that we would release or publish this week.
>  However, Avri and I may meet with  ALAC this afternoon to discuss this
> draft.  So please send any comments on this draft so we can bring those into
> this mtg today in a few hours.  We will have a revised draft after the mtg.
>  Thank you.
> Robin
> -------
> For many meetings now,  the topic of Staff Briefing to the Board and
> Transparency has been on the table.
> While understanding that there indeed some briefings that should remain
> confidential between the Board and the Staff especially those within its
> fiduciary capacities and those encumbered by personal privacy consideration,
> there are also many issues that require transparency.
> Within the categories that require transparency there are two separate types
> of issue.
> The first type are briefings that concern an Advisory Committee or a
> Supporting Organization.  In the case of this type of briefing, it is not
> appropriate for the Staff to be making unverified claims about and AC or SO
> without the knowledge of that AC and SO.  Without AC or SO verification of
> the contents of a briefing, the Board is left making its evaluation based on
> rumor and may make decisions based on erroneous information.
> The second type of briefing are those that concern the policy work for which
> the SOs are responsible and on which the ACs must advise.  For the Board to
> be making policy decision based on information that has not been reviewed by
> the community constitutes gaming of the bottom up policy process and gives
> one member of the community, the paid staff and undue advantage over the
> other participants in the community.
> We request that the Board change its policy so that the briefing of the
> types discussed above be made available to the correct audience; the first
> type being made available to the SO or AC in question and the second type be
> made available to the community.
> After the policy has been received we request that recent briefings that
> have contributed to various decisions also be released.
>
>
> IP JUSTICE
> Robin Gross, Executive Director
> 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
> p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
> w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org
>
>
>