Candidate Statement of Bill Drake [was Request to nominees in upcoming NCUC election]

[William Drake]

Hi
 
Now that I’m getting over the post-Baku hump, below are my responses to the EC’s questions to candidates.   I’ve used a new subject line as we might want to flag the candidate statements more clearly rather than risking their getting lost in the regions discussion (BTW there’s no reason we can’t update our website etc. to use ICANN’s regional nomenclature).

On Nov 13, 2012, at 11:13 PM, Brenden Kuerbis wrote:

> The current NCUC Executive Committee has developed a list of questions to help the NCUC membership learn more about the nominees. If you have been nominated, please take a moment to complete and post to the list answers for the following questions:
> 
> 1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?

I am standing for Chair in this election in the hope of collaborating with the EC and the larger membership on efforts to take NCUC to higher levels of coherence, credibility, and effectiveness in the GNSO environment. Having just completed two terms on the Council, I am more convinced than ever that constituency activities have to comprise more than holding vibrant listserv discussions, endlessly debating internal SG dynamics, and supporting a smallish group of members who are willing and able to roll up their sleeves as NCSG Councilors, working group members, and public comment respondents.  We need to find ways to engage more people, function more as a team, and clearly and consistently advance our values and views rather than let others the ICANNsphere define our narrative.  Enhancing our presence is particularly important now in light of the rapidly shifting landscape regarding new gTLDs and their implications for the evolution of GNSO structures.
 
Internally, I would suggest that we need to institutionalize improvements to our structures and processes.  Given the tight timeline and the press of events, we did not manage to have the sort of constituency-wide dialogue needed to amend our charter in time for this election.  Nevertheless, we can pursue improvements within the existing framework, and if consensus emerges through debate and experience revise the charter accordingly next year.  What I’d propose for consideration includes, inter alia:
More internal communication to keep track of our activities and take stock of our progress per item, potentially to include monthly or at least regular constituency calls with minutes or other records.
Greater utilization of electronic platforms, whether the ncuc.org site, the confluence site, or others (social networks etc.) to facilitate coordination, collaboration, transparency, inclusion, and in particular institutional memory.
It’d be worth determining whether there could be member interest in rebooting interest groups http://ncuc.org/groups or some similar configurations for people who have specific interests they’d like to explore with like minded colleagues, perhaps to later feed into GNSO processes.
A more active EC team in which each member has defined responsibilities entailing at least one or two hours of individual work per week beyond reading email.  I’d love it if EC members would each take the lead on coordinating specific functional tasks and assemble work teams of interested members to deal with items like:
o   In-reach and engagement of existing members, updating of the membership list
o   outreach to potential new members (it’d also be nice if each regional representative could bring on a few folks from their regions per year)
o   e-platform improvement and updating
o   external communications/publicity
o   finance (dealing with the ICANN budget process, external fundraising for initiatives, etc.)

Or something like this…to be discussed… This is the kind of functional division of labor I’ve seen work better in other civil society organizations and coalitions, including ones I’ve led, and some evolution in that direction could be helpful.  What plainly has not worked well is for everything to just default to one maxed out volunteer.  The chair should coordinate, facilitate, catalyze (not in the chemical sense), lead from behind, participate in the above functions, etc., but not try or be expected to do everything solo.  That is a broken model.
 
Externally, I’d argue for more attention to, inter alia:
Public comments, as well as other analyses and statements.  We should also ensure that people are aware when we’ve contributed significantly to a process or decision so we’re not written out of the stories told about it, which I’ve seen happen repeatedly.
Getting people into working groups and drafting teams.  We should leverage the new travel slots that ICANN’s provided so that people know if they put a bunch of energy into such work they may get support to attend the meetings at which their issues come to a head etc.
Closer coordination with NCSG Councilors on Council activities.
Strengthening our relationships with other constituencies, SGs, and ACs, staff and the board.  Fadi’s arrival provides an opening in that he has expressed receptivity to our concerns and has fully embraced some particular items I/we have long advocated regarding outreach, strategic relations with developing countries, etc.
Sorting out the disaster that is the Noncontracted Parties House and seeing if we can arrive at some modus vivendi with the CSG.
Making the sort of policy conferences we did in San Francisco and Toronto a regular part of our portfolio of annual activities.  The ones we’ve done got good reviews and reflected well on NCUC in the wider community.  We should be sure to leverage these for outreach to potential members in the regions where meetings are held.
These are just some of the activities I’d like to be part of as Chair and an EC member.
> 
> 2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.

Within ICANN:
I can’t really remember everything I was involved in during my four years on Council, but know that I was very active in Council-level debates, where I push our concerns on JAS applicant support, cross-community WGs, outreach, and other issues.  In terms of the drafting team/working group-level, I led the process of defining the procedures for GNSO AoC review team member selection; was heavily involved in revisions to the GNSO operating procedures (e.g. voting remedies); and participated to varying degrees in groups on WHOIS, registrant rights, Council restructuring, etc.  I was also involved to varying degrees in broader ICANN groupings, e.g. Katim's developing country initiative, ICANN Academy, etc.
I served for four years as NCUC’s (and by extension, it seemed, NCSG’s) liaison to the ALAC, in which context I spent a lot of cycles organizing joint working and social gatherings at meetings, as well as encouraging bits of inter-meeting collaboriation.
I’ve participated heavily in some special NCUC initiatives like planning the policy conferences.
I am also in my fifth year an elected member of the Board of Directors of EURALO (the European At-Large Structures).
 
Outside ICANN I’ve been very involved in broader Internet governance and related processes:
 
I am a member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), nominated by the civil society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) and appointed by the UN SG.
I was a founding member of the IGC, and frequently helped draft statements and made oral interventions for it throughout the World Summit on the Information Society process.
I was a member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance, nominated by the IGC and appointed by the UN SG, and was heavily involved in the development of the IGF.
I am a member of the Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
I was a member of the Group of High-Level Advisors of the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development, and before that the policy group of UNICT TF, but this seems to have gone belly up.
I am a former President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
In the 1990s, I was an active participant in the TPR public interest group coalition that lobbied the US Congress and Clinton Administration on Internet issues, telecom reform, etc.
I’m a member of the US delegation to World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) and have been on US delegations to several other ITU meetings, i.e. the 1997 and 2001 World Telecom Policy Forums.  I have good relations with US and other government folks and others in the Internet governance ecosystem that could be of some relevance to the NCUC role.
I’ve been an ISOC member since 1996 and have been a consultant to it etc.
I also work on such things with my academic hat on; http://www.williamdrake.org [biography] and http://uzh.academia.edu/WilliamDrake [publications] if anyone’s interested.
I have no conflicts of interest outside my own head.
> 
> 3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency.  What  level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis?  Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person. 

I will at a minimum do what is needed, and depending on how things go and whether we get into a cooperative groove will go beyond that.  A priori I imagine this means @ 10 hours a week depending on what’s going on, more in the run-up to and aftermaths of ICANN meetings or when we have some big initiative in the works.
> 
> 4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?

Members can expect regular communications and solicitations of input from myself and hopefully others on the EC.
> 
> 5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Be concise (200 words maximum).

I’ve partially addressed this in my answer to question 1, but would add that clearly in the near term the new gTLD process is going to continue to raise issues on which NCUC has staked out important global public interest concerns that might otherwise have been overlooked, e.g.

We will need to keep a close eye on the growing role of governments and particularly LEAs, and should be prepared to respond to GAC early warnings, requests, advice, etc. that could point toward limitations on FoE and other NCUC values. 
We will also have to remain focused on the efforts of various groups to secure special protections (the ICRC/IOC debate was a harbinger of things to come, and the IGOs’ demands, and the GAC’s response to the PDP, are certainly interesting).
Our long-standing concerns with excessive intellectual property protection claims and WHOIS will only become important and complex in the new gTLD environment.
Hopefully we will succeed in engaging the board and community on the new regional strategies, the outreach initiatives, and the geopolitical aspects more generally. In particular, I will continue to urge creating some mechanisms for the transparency of and community participation in the work of the Global Relationships Committee, and on the sort of issues in Tarek Kamel’s new portfolio.


I hope the above is sufficient for present purposes.  Thanks again to those who endorsed my candidacy, and to all others who will now consider it.

Cheers,

Bill


***************************************************
William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
University of Zurich, Switzerland
william.drake at uzh.ch
www.williamdrake.org
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