Constituencies yet again (aargghhh)

[Nuno Garcia]

Well said, Bill!

Nuno Garcia
(as member of academia and NCUC member)

On 25 October 2012 10:25, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:

> Hi
>
> On Oct 25, 2012, at 3:02 AM, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
>
> Universities/Academics (the current NCUC leadership could grow that
> without much pain)
>
>
> This keeps coming up. I thought it had been put to bed last time (almost
> all
> the academics currently in NCUC indicated it was a bad idea.
>
>
> Indeed, it's deja vu all over again.  Not clear why or what it adds rather
> than subtracts, especially when NCUC member should be focusing on an
> election, a decision on a charter rebuild, and much more, but here we are
> anyway.
>
> To me, the rationale for new constituencies ought to be that they bring to
> the table new players with distinctive interests that cannot be
> accommodated within existing constituencies, and which have the necessary
> level of member commitment to actually weigh in constructively on GNSO
> policy discussions.  When NPOC started out as essentially an intellectual
> property-promotion group (sorry, but it was) one could at least say ok,
> that's different, NCUC takes a more skeptical approach to such claims, so
> there's new members, engagement, and a distinct mission.  That many of us
> felt that these objectives would be better placed within the CSG is a
> secondary issue.  Since then a lot of the IP lobbying has been redirected
> from trying to build a new constituency to circumventing the GNSO process
> and going directly to the board and GAC.  In the meanwhile new folks have
> come in and taken NPOC in a different direction which I gather is intended
> to speak to the operational concerns of small developing country NGOs.
>  Since NCUC has long had small developing country NGOs among its membership
> I've become less clear about the distinctiveness dimension, but am hopeful
> that at some point NPOC will start to articulate unique GNSO policy
> positions that demonstrate the utility of having two constitutencies will
> similar and sometimes overlapping compositions and priorities.
>
> In the meanwhile we have also had a failed proposal for a consumer
> constituency that never really articulated any sort of coherent reason for
> being and why its view could not be accommodated within existing
> structures.  So when Evan says
>
> I think that was the PoV of the people who were trying to create the
> (since abandoned) Consumer Group Constituency a few years ago. I was close
> to (but not a part of) that effort, and found a resistance that, at the
> time, took me by surprise. So long as diversity of power within the NCSG is
> seen as a zero-sum game (ie, anything new must come at the expense of
> influence of the NCUC) such resistance will exist. The wearing down of the
> CGC attempt into oblivion (my PoV) has not been good sign to anyone else on
> the outside seeking the diversity that Avri advocates (and with which I
> personally agree).
>
>
> I have to say this is a rather self-serving misconstruction, sorry.  There
> was NO convincing case made for the new group.  None, zip, nada.  NCUC also
> addresses consumer issues. And it came at a time when there was a
> presumption that launching a new constituency would automatically get one
> hard wired GNSO council seats, so it looked a lot like, indeed, a zero sum
> effort grab travel slots and other goodies for no particular purpose.
>  Maybe if the approach and presentation had been different, but from the
> outset it was a bit adversarial, and hence encountered more skeptical than
> y'all come reactions.  But it was the CC folks who gave up, nobody in NCUC
> told them to go away.
>
> [And parenthetically, this is the sort of thing that Avri and I just
> disagree about liaisons coming into host grouping and stirring up stuff
> based in their home org's biases and inadequate information…had I thought
> this was my role as liaison to ALAC, boy I'd have played those four years
> rather differently….there'd have been ample opportunities to stick my nose
> in ALAC's biz and point out the instances of dysfunction, nondemocratic
> decision making, etc.  But I didn't think it was my role.]
>
> Now we have this proposal for a cyber cafe constituency.  Since they are
> mostly commercial in nature, I cannot understand why they want to be in
> NCSG rather than CSG.  On the other hand, CSG makes it almost impossible to
> create new constitutencies.  They've worked out a three way division of
> spoils, including council seats, are even unable to agree a SG chair, and
> are even unable to get consensus to comply with deals they made in writing
> with us (the Vice Chair of the NCPH is supposed to rotate between CSG and
> NCCSG, but apparently they don't want to rotate).  So because another SG is
> allowed to operate a closed shop, new constituency proposals default to us
> whether they fit or not.
>
> Like Milton, I am utterly unable to get my head around the benefits of
> multiplying constituencies for multiplicity's sake.  Sure we could ask for
> more seats on noncoms, but so what.  Beyond that, all it does is divide up
> the energies that should be devoted promoting share public interest values
> and noncommercial concerns in the GNSO process to construction of mutually
> exclusive sand boxes with apparently different levels of access to and
> support from senior staff.  All I've seen over the past four years (and
> recall that before NPOC, there was CP80 crowd that wanted a "child
> protection"/censorship constituency) is endless turf squabbles that have
> absorbed people's scarce bandwidth and made if difficult if not impossible
> to focus on the effective representation of our interests in GNSO
> processes.  We can't staff working groups, file public comments, or do any
> of the other stuff needed to be serious players because we're so caught up
> with managing our in-house follies.  Occasionally our most hard core
> stalwarts like Wendy, Mary, Avri, Robin, Kathy, Rafik and Milton manage to
> break through and just get something done, and often it makes a
> difference——for ex., whether members know it or not, we have actually
> managed to more privacy protection and related civil liberties issues up
> the agenda of late, the board has endorsed our approach.  But we could be
> doing much much more, without all the staff support bestowed on ALAC, if
> were to spend less time re-litigating over an over how to divide up the SG
> so as to give one grouping some perceived advantage of the other.
>
> If and when we receive strong proposals from new groups whose interests
> cannot be accommodated within existing structures and who are truly
> noncommercial and committed to doing serious GNSO work, that will be fine
> and we can decide what to do.  Until that time, I would hope we could focus
> on our own knitting.  Both NCUC and NPOC have a ways to go to become more
> well organized, accountable, and effective bodies.  Why not focus on that?
>  For NCUCers, the priority should be electing a new Executive Committee
> whose members will significantly increase their levels of individual and
> collective commitment to performing the basic tasks we need done to make it
> a vibrant and growing group.  EC slots cannot be nominal titles for
> business cards, they have be for people really willing to work on defined,
> languishing functions like member inreach, outreach, finance,
> communications, web resources and so on—the nuts and bolts of any effective
> civil society body.  It's great we've had many people throw their hats into
> the ring for EC slots, and I hope that all understand that the newly
> elected EC will have to do a lot more work to get NCUC off the mat and
> fully, consistently in the game.
>
> Bill
>
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