please send comments on this draft RE: Transparency

Thu Mar 11 12:00:50 CET 2010

All,

I understand you may be meeting with ALAC about this now; so my comments
are below in red.  

Debbie

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For many meetings now,  the topic of Staff Briefing to the Board and
Transparency has been on the table. - I agree with Mary's comments below
about this leading sentence.

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 issues.

The first type is 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 is 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 makeing policy decisions based on information that has
not been reviewed by the community seems contrary to the principle of
transparency and equal access that are at the core constitutes gaming of
the bottom up policy process and could 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.

Debra Y. Hughes l Senior Counsel 
American Red Cross 

Office of the General Counsel  
2025 E Street, NW 
Washington, D.C. 20006 
Phone: (202) 303-5356 
Fax: (202) 303-0143 
HughesDeb at usa.redcross.org <mailto:HughesDeb at usa.redcross.org>  

________________________________

From: Non-Commercial User Constituency
[mailto:NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Mary Wong
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 4:03 AM
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: please send comments on this draft RE: Transparency

Great effort, thanks Robin & Avri, and it's an excellent idea to have
this as a joint statement with ALAC. Just a few specific comments for
now:

- I'm not sure the first sentence is the best lead-in to the substance
of the comment. For instance, I'm not sure what "on the table" for "many
meetings" mean. May I suggest changing it to something along the lines
of having serious and longstanding concerns over the inaccuracies
contained in staff reports/comments to the Board that are not shared
with the relevant groups and overall ICANN community?

- when talking about the second type of briefing, instead of saying
"constitutes gaming", can we say "can constitute gaming"? Also, I
understand why we are including a reference to "paid staff" but I wonder
if the point can be better made in another way (can't think how at the
moment, unfortunately - maybe change it to a reference about equal
access to the Board between paid staff and volunteer, unpaid community
members when it comes to information critical to the Board's decisions
and that directly concerns those members?)

Hope that helps. I'm happy to help clean up and edit the final statement
too, if you like.

Cheers

Mary 

Mary W S Wong

Professor of Law & Chair, Graduate IP Programs

Franklin Pierce Law Center

Two White Street

Concord, NH 03301

USA

Email: mwong at piercelaw.edu

Phone: 1-603-513-5143

Webpage: http://www.piercelaw.edu/marywong/index.php

Selected writings available on the Social Science Research Network
(SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=437584

>>> 

From: 

Robin Gross <robin at IPJUSTICE.ORG>

To:

<NCUC-DISCUSS at listserv.syr.edu>

Date: 

3/11/2010 3:36 AM

Subject: 

please send comments on this draft RE: Transparency

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

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