NCUC agenda => NCSG Interest Groups

[William Drake]

Hello everyone,

It's great to see people expressing interest in doing some work on substantive policy issues. Now that we are finally past all the charter & election-related process stuff and have our teams in place, maybe we can start making some headway in pushing a noncommercial public interest agenda?   A question then arises as to how best to organize our efforts.  One option is to do it ad hoc, i.e. when an issue comes up in Council we form a team to draft inputs for consideration & possible adoption by the SG or constituencies.  Another option that may be more suitable for ongoing issues is to establish interest groups (IGs).  If people are motivated enough to make them work, these could foster sustained dialogue, community building, and institutional memory around the respective issues.  Which option makes the most sense will of course vary across cases.  The ad hoc approach is self evident, but for folks who weren't involved then or don't remember, it might be worth taking a second to revisit the IG approach.

We discussed the notion of IGs at some length @ two years ago in the context of the NCSG charter debate (see the list archive for details).  At that point the driving question was whether it made sense to organize the NC space into a bunch of issue-specific constituencies that would be board recognized and have Council seats hard wired to each, or instead to organize the SG into more flexible IGs that could be formed and dismantled on a bottom-up basis as needed.  The desire to avoid the SG degenerating into a bunch of turf conscious silos competing for Council seats (which wouldn't work anyway should we get to more than six) led many people to think IGs were the way to go, but then in Seoul the board agreed that Council seats would not be hard wired to constituencies and we could elect Councilors on a SG-wide basis, so that part of the impetus for IGs fell away.  Thereafter the IG movement stalled as the Charter progressed and we became a two constituency formation and…you know the rest.

Anyway, now that our structure is set, we might want to consider whether IGs could be a useful way for folks with particular specific interests to work together, including on a cross-constitutency basis.  Back when this conversation happened, a number of NCUC members expressed interest in doing IGs and we set up lists on the NCUC ning http://ncdnhc.org/groups.  Some signed up for "Interest Groups in Formation" on Development & Capacity Building (9 members), libraries (2 members), Scientific/Technical Academics/Experts (5 members), Freedom of Expression, Privacy, & Human Rights (7 members), individuals (3 members…don't recall what this was about), and consumer rights (6 members).  People also signed up for a bunch of other sub-groups related to particular Council initiatives, like the GNSO Operations Team.  Some of these groups had bits of dialogue for awhile, others not so much, and in any event all sort of drifted thereafter.

So my question is, would it be worth trying to reboot IGs on a SG-wide basis and situate these on the Confluence page https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Home?  Returning to Avri's list and Wendy's reply, 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 10/31/2011 06:24 AM, Avri Doria wrote:
>>> I don't speak for NCUC, but in developing NCSG policy, I'd love to
>>> convene people online and/or in real-time voice/chat to discuss issue
>>> areas for focus in the next 6-12 months.
>>> 
>>> Among those I see on the table:
>>> 
>>> Registrar Accreditation and Law Enforcement requests
>>> registrants' rights
>>> best practices for domain name suspension (it's happening;
>>> at least it should happen with due process checks and controls)
>>> UDRP review, and other TM-rights-protection mechanisms (RPMs)
>>> Engagement with developing countries
>>> Engagement with the GAC
>>> New gTLD roll-out
>>> Technical security and stability
>>> 
>>> ...and I'm sure I'm missing several.
>>> 
>>> I'd love to see volunteers from among the membership take leadership of
>>> issue areas and commit to watching for developments, tracking
>>> opportunities for involvement and NCSG response, and drafting issue
>>> analyses and public comments.
>>> 
>>> —Wendy

Establishing IGs on some of these ongoing items would seem a good way to do what Wendy's suggesting.  

I pushed the development IG http://ncdnhc.org/group/interestgroupdevelopment and Rafik, Amr, Fouad, Alex and Baudouin added comments…would those folks, and others who've expressed interest now, like to give it another shot?  We could try to advance the broader strategic questions we've tried to ask the board about, and that Katim's aborted initiative was supposed to take up, as well as be a home for specific items like tracking and advocating for JAS/applicant support.   What about the folks interested in consumer rights, include the RAA?  And why not have IGs on trademarks, copyright etc. to keep track of UDRP and related, a FOE/privacy/law enforcement IG, a security and stability IG, and so on….?

Should we maybe talk about this approach on the next policy call?

Best,

Bill


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