[At-Large] GNSO Council Motion on Cross-Community Working Groups

[William Drake]

Hi Nicolas

On Jan 18, 2012, at 8:21 PM, Nicolas Adam wrote:
> 
> So on the 3 options, I don't know which i would push. Note that I sometimes expect the people that are able to do politics and compromise to use my principled opposition as best they see. This is why i voted for them. I try to give munition as well as myopinion but I am happy to defer to our elected representatives who are in positions to see more globally (and strategically) than I can with my limited experience .... .

I've asked Council to defer this to San Jose, so there's time for us all to mull how to approach...
> 
> Bill, a few questions (for when you have time, of course, and with thx in advance):
> 
> why wouldn't an amendment pass?

There's a pretty strong desire across the industry SGs to have clear, consistent, and (in my view, overly) restrictive rules for how CCWGs operate.  This reflects a number of factors, e.g.  Council is all about process formalization, which has long driven NCUC a bit nuts.  I guess the most charitable interpretation I could give it is that for companies with skin in the game and contracts, lawyers, and potential legal action as the environment this is somewhat understandable, but it extends down to all levels of minutia and circumstances where such considerations wouldn't seem so imperative…there've even been meetings at which people said that our informal topical chat dinners with the board should be minuted and so on…it's just become so instinctive that it's the default.  From that perspective, CCWGs apparently look like out of control exercises that could spin the earth off its axis.

There is also fear that CCWGs could try to set "Policy" and thus end-run around Council, particularly in cases where there's opposition or a desire for changes in some corner of the GNSO.  In principle it's understandable that SGs and their reps would want to preserve their prerogatives and roles under the Bylaws, and indeed we presumably wouldn't want to see this happening a lot more than it already does since that'd equally erode our ability to meaningfully participate and influence things.  In practice though this concern has arguably been overblown, inter alia for reasons Avri's mentioned.  Here and elsewhere, the JAS WG process brought this to a head, e.g. lot of people got freaked out about JAS reports and recs going to the board for consideration before Council had managed to act on them.  The story here would take a few pages to really lay out and I don't have time now, maybe someone else would care to recapitulate.  There's also the related and problematic boundary between what's policy and what's implementation of extant policy etc.

So from the various industry standpoints, insisting that CCWGs proceed from single joint charters and everything waits while the respective SO/ACs go through their processes---which in the GNSO case can be particularly laborious given the diversity of interests and the org culture---is viewed as imperative. But several of us said yesterday, this seems overly restrictive and one could imagine cases in which other chartering SO/ACs might want a more flexible approach.

Again, JAS was at the core of this—I don't recall similar complaints about JIG, Rec. 6, or other CCWGs.  The baseline notion in telecom and other sectors that regulation should balance a little between commercial and social considerations (for universal service, nondiscrimination etc.) just doesn't seem to be accepted as applicable by some in this field.  Problem is, Council approved the original charter, and all the discussion that led up to that should have made clear some sort of balancing could ensue.  But things changed post hoc for reasons I won't get into here…Maybe Avri, Rafik or others would care to amplify.

> and what was the outreach vote that had the GNSO divided?

Another long story…we've discussed this recently on the monthly calls (for which there are transcripts and recordings) and list, but the bottom line was there was a working group that put forward a plan for a multistakeholder Outreach Task Force gnso.icann.org/drafts/otf-draft-charter-18oct11-en.pdf comprising reps of the SGs that'd assess GNSO-related outreach (particularly viz. developing country folks) and provide an umbrella framework for coordination of efforts going forward; a lot of people had expressed support for the concept and it didn't seem likely to be a major bone of contention; at the 11th hour CSG decided to oppose the motion on this on the grounds that everything should be done at the SG/constituency level with resources provided, and asked for a deferral so they could propose an alternative, which was presented as likely being reasonably minor amendments that'd preserve the overall effort; NCSG supported the motion which had already been deferred twice and was laying around forever, and asked for a vote; we lost, in part because CPH thought CSG should have more time if they wanted; and at the next meeting, on the 12th hour, CSG came back with a motion that basically set aside the OTF (surprise!), which nobody seconded, so it wasn't voted, which left the issue in limbo and to be revisited in San Jose.  To which I should add that there's also a broader ICANN-wide staff-led outreach discussion about which it is apparently impossible to get the documentation; hopefully by SJ more will be clear and we can take a holistic look at how outreach is done.  We also need an intra-NC conversation, since apparently we're not all on the same page about outreach as an objective.
 
> 
> Can someone comment on the economy/culture of vote trading/politics between both GNSO's SGs? is there for instance a recent paper recounting recent negotiations or some such?

I know of no such research.  Would be very interested to read it if someone wanted to take a crack, though.

Best

Bill
> 
> 
> On 18/01/2012 8:04 AM, William Drake wrote:
>>> >  I believe that anyone who does vote for it, should be ready to support its principles in any negotiation or risk the same approbation you are concerned about now.  To hope that it will be ok, because ALAC will object may not be the most advisable course.  Then again, US politics has taught me that there does not need to be a necessary connection between how one votes, what one says and what one does, so in the long run, perhaps it is only karma and doing what you think is right that matters.
>> US politics is a rich vein to mine for depressing lessons, but I'm not sure I'd like to embrace that one.  I do suspect though that any SO/AC, not just ALAC, that enters into discussion with GNSO will only accept rules of engagement they find amenable, so even if GNSO sez it wants x that's not the end of the matter.
>> 
>> We could defer, amend, both.  Any thoughts on my suggestion in that regard?

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