At Large White Paper

[Dan Krimm]

Enjoying this most substantive exchange.  Staying in observational mode
except for this one point (addressed in two pieces):


At 12:34 PM -0500 12/24/12, Avri Doria wrote:

>>  In the NonContracted parties house, we have to recognize that
>>> the world is not strictly divided between the Non-Commercial and
>>> Commercial and there are Registrant/User groups that have both aspects,
>>> and that there are a variety of technical stakeholders who need a varied
>>> representation model.
>>
>> [Milton L Mueller] disagree.
>> [Milton L Mueller] Basically you, and many people in ICANN, are spending
>>an inordinate amount of time chasing after the chimerical idea that some
>>kind of perfect representational structure can be frozen into place and
>>will perfectly correspond to everyone's identity. Stop chasing that
>>ideal, it will never be found, any more than you will find the end of the
>>rainbow.
>
>Actually I have been arguing for the more adhoc structure for a while, I
>just accept that constituencies exist and that they should get seats on
>nomcom etc.  So i figure it is good to use the system we have got.
>
>I do not think we have ever debated the nature of a sustainable &
>evolvable organizational structure, so I doubt you know my views of
>dynamic organizational architectures.
>
>
>> What we need is simple: A basic balance of power/interests among
>>industry suppliers, trademark/brand interests and noncommercial users.
>
>the need is simple.
>the way to achieve it complex.
>
>> One of the biggest problems with the current structure is the idea that
>>new constituencies - and thus new power centers and resource demands -
>>can be created at any time. We already know that this is a never-ending
>>source of political gamesmanship and until and unless it stops, we will
>>have to pay great attention to this internal stuff instead of actually
>>developing policies.
>
>I do not quite understand how you simultaneously seem to argue for an
>evolving structure but with no new entities.
>
>As for wasting time with structure instead of policies, I think most tend
>to work on both recognizing that in an organization like ICANN the one
>affects the other and dirempting them into two different classes of thing,
>one 'that is a waste of time' and one 'we should be doing'  misses the
>point.
>



I'm very interested in this idea of "dynamic organizational architectures"
and will look forward to learning more about it.  The two biggest
challenges to such an idea seem (to me) to be:

 (1) How do you define an effective flexible structure in a formal way?
Because there is a need for formality in order to assure some form of
accountability -- what is it exactly that one must be accountable to? --
this circumventing of accountability is the big danger in ad hoc
organizational structures.  Seems that maybe there would need to be some
formal mix of formality and informality (i.e., not *everything* is ad hoc,
there is a formal definition of "how to ad hoc" the structure), but I'll
leave that to you.  :-)

 (2) There is only finite human/collective bandwidth to address everything,
and there is a danger of encountering the equivalent of "thrashing
time-share job-control" if the organizational issues take up too much of
the bandwidth.

This second point is distinct from diremption per se.  One must admit that
structure and policies are different topics at least, and perhaps different
categories of topics.  But the metaphor from (perhaps old-school)
multi-user systems does encourage thinking of them as distinct in some
important operational ways.  If you take up most of your finite resources
managing the process, there is little left to address content, even
(especially) if it uses the same processor.  At the very least it often may
slow things down, which is problematic if content is on a deadline.

This was a fully intentional strategy in the US Senate over the last
several years, for example (and quite effective with regard to that
intent).  To fall into this pattern unintentionally would be ironic and
perhaps even self-defeating.  (But is it really unintentional?)

In any case, if you've been thinking about this for some time, you probably
have some fairly interesting ideas to draw on, and I for one would love to
explore them on the merits.

I see this (organizational and representational structure) as a defining
issue in the very existence of ICANN as I've come to understand it having
jumped in only several years after its origin.

Dan


--
Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author alone and do
not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.