[NCUC-DISCUSS] NCUC EC Elections 2013: Statement of Candidacy of William Drake

William Drake wjdrake at gmail.com
Tue Dec 3 12:02:40 CET 2013


Hello,

I accept the nomination to serve as for another year as the chair of the NCUC.


1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?

When I stood for election last year, my candidate statement laid out a reasonably ambitious but potentially doable agenda of enhancements that were intended to help us transition from being a rather loose network to a somewhat more integrated community with “higher levels of coherence, credibility, and effectiveness in the GNSO environment.”    https://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=NCSG-DISCUSS;1d8b901f.1211  I argued that we needed 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.  To these ends, I suggested some internal improvements to our structures and processes, including more regularized communication and status/progress tracking; better use of of electronic platforms; exploring the use of interest groups or other configurations to get people involved on policy issues of their choosing; and a more active EC in which each member would have defined responsibilities, including the coordination of specific functional tasks and associated teams of members.  In parallel, I suggested external improvements such as greater engagement in public comments and GNSO working groups; closer coordination with Councilors on Council activities; efforts to build better relationships with other constituencies, SGs, and ACs, staff and the board; and holding more policy conferences and events in order to raise our profile in the wider community, and to engage in outreach to potential members in the regions where meetings are held.

Some of this we managed to pull off, some of it we didn’t.  This is no surprise in an all volunteer network that comprises otherwise busy people who are spread around the world, and in which peoples’ ability to commit time and their perspectives on how thing should be done can vary.  Nevertheless, we did make some good progress on a number of fronts, and were at a minimum (as far as the available list archives shows) the most loquacious EC in NCUC history, so from my perspective at least it was a glass half full experience, or more.  But clearly much more could be done, and I’m standing for reelection in the hope that with a new year, a newly energized EC and a lot of important developments in and out of ICANN to push us along, more of what we’ve started together will come to fruition.  I would like to step aside a year from now for some new blood feeling that NCUC is in its best shape ever to advocate for noncommercial interests in ICANN.  I think this is achievable. 


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.

I have no conflicts of interest.  

The external associations and affiliations I mentioned in last years’ statement remain largely valid, e.g. I’m still a civil society member of the IGF’s MAG, active in various Internet governance civil society networks like the IGC and Best Bits, hanging around relevant processes at  the UN in Geneva,  teaching in the schools on Internet governance (Europe, Latin America, now Africa), sort of in ISOC, teaching global Internet governance and three other Internet-related courses at the U. Zurich, and so on, so I’m fairly immersed in this world.   I also served on the US delegation to the WCIT.  

Within ICANN, I guess recent experience would include things like being on various staff-driven groups like the ones for outreach, budget, SO/AC leaders, CROPP, etc.  In addition, I am in my fifth year as an elected member of the board of Euralo, and otherwise lurk around the At Large world.  I communicate a lot with staff and leadership on a variety of matters, and sometimes with our “house” colleagues in the CSG.  Re: NCSG, I have participated in most monthly calls, online discussions, activities at ICANN conferences, F2F Council meetings, etc.

Turning to recent experiences internal to NCUC, some of these have included:

Teams: I instigated and participated in all of these in line with my candidate statement last year.  Some drew coordination, members, and activity, others didn’t; the program team for Beijing and the e-platform team were the most active, finance and membership affairs sort of drifted a bit, and the bylaws revision group will I believe ramp up further in the months ahead.  In general, the construct does provide a platform for interested members to work with the EC on moving us forward on non-policy organizational matters, but they do require coordination and member engagement to stay vital.  We’ll see in the new year if there’s interest in using these, or in doing something else instead.  I also hope we'll reboot the bylaws-required Policy Committee in the new year.

E-platform Renewal.  I proposed and contributed to discussions on renewing our functionalities and content, but Tapani and Wilson did most the actual heavy lifting in establishing the new listservs and website etc., with help from others like Brenden, Sarah, etc.  There is still much to be done to fill in content on the website, which should be a priority for 2014; ditto the archive Roy is constructing for our policy documents.

Budgetary: I submitted six budget requests, all of which ICANN approved, to provide us with: funding for 3 people to go to IGF Bali; a one-day policy conference in Singapore next March; a one-day new EC retreat in Singapore (this may be held elsewhere, earlier, if we do a house meeting, which is currently under discussion); and new print publications (we’ll need people to contribute content next year!).  I have been working a bit with Milton in his capacity as our treasurer on our accounts and travel funding for EC members, will be reaching out in 2014 to our usual donors for more support.  I would like to be establish a policy of supporting, on a competitive basis, at least one traveler per ICANN meeting, someone who’s contributing to some process and needs to be there.  Last year’s EC talked about possible criteria but we have yet to formalize something and put it on the website; stay tuned.

Outreach: I talked up NCUC to the ICANN fellows at the meetings, as well as at the IG schools, the IGF, and elsewhere, and did some online outreach, all resulting in some new memberships.  Others, particularly Ed Morris and Rafik, were very active as well.  The data base Tapani built and connected to the website shows that as of today, NCUC's membership has reached 313 members from 78 different countries, including 88 noncommercial organizations and 225 individuals.   This is pretty good, but we need to find ways to do more effective Inreach and get people involved beyond listserv subscribers, e.g. in drafting policy positions, joining GNSO WGs, and so on.

Brochure: Milton and I drafted NCUC’s first outreach brochure, and Roy translated it into Spanish.  I worked with ICANN publications staff to get them produced and distributed at meetings.

ICANN Meetings: I organized the Constituency Day events and related stuff, represented NCUC in various workshops, meetings with the community and leadership, etc.

Events:  I co-organized our workshops in China with other team members, and organized our workshop at the African School of IG in Durban.  I also organized or co-organized 3 successful IGF workshops with NCUC as lead or co-sponsor.  New members joined subsequently.  I worked with others to organize last year’s house meeting, and am currently involved in discussions on a house meeting and a civil society roundtable for 2014.  

Election: I organized this process with an enormous assist from Tapani on the voter check in and data base.

I’m having trouble remembering everything else at the moment but in general think I’ve been a reasonably active chair.


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 imitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.

I would guesstimate that I put in on average about two days a week on NCUC-related work, depending on what’s going on.  In the weeks prior to ICANN meetings the time commitment is notably higher.  There are apparently no limits on my ability to attend meetings.


4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
 
I send a lot of mail (hopefully not too much) to the members list trying to keep people apprised of current initiatives and issues.  I had hoped at the outset to do regular concise periodic reports like this http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/2013-January/011500.html but as my mail volume and work load grew this fell by the wayside.  It would be good to make another effort at this, and also just for the record to share the minutes of EC meetings beyond the EC list as well.  

Another useful initiative might be to provide listserv “mission reports” or blogs or something about the ICANN meetings for members who are unable to participate on the ground or remotely.   Prior to meetings we always have a flurry of traffic about Constituency Day, the NCSG and Council meetings, any workshops we’re doing and so on, etc., and then after the meetings ncuc-discuss goes a bit dark, in part because attendees are burnt out or catching up on other work they’ve ignored for over a week.  We should find a way to keep people better informed, before and after the events.

It would be even better if we could have a more systematic and collaborative approach to this, whether via the EC or the Membership Affairs team.  This and other items will be discussed with the new EC at our retreat in the first quarter of 2014.


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).

NCUC will continue to grow in membership, but again, once they’ve joined we need to do much more to get more people actively involved within the constraints of people’s bandwidth.  Rebooting Interest Groups might be one way.  Providing some travel funding to those who’ve committed time and energy to GNSO Working Groups or NCUC/NCSG initiatives could help, as might the CROPP program.  While it doesn’t always happen, usually when people have had the chance to physically attend an ICANN meeting they tend to get more engaged on an ongoing basis.

We need to reboot the Policy Committee and get back to making policy statements, responding to Public Comment Periods and reports like the ATRT’s or staff’s, etc.  There’s no contradiction between us doing this at a constituency level and continuing to work through NCSG on Council matters.  We have budget available now for print publications, and it’d be good to be able to go into ICANN meeting with Issue Briefs or similar laying out NCUC views on the hot topics of the day.

On initiatives like Fadi’s Internet governance forays, there is a real opening for us to serve as a source of ideas and organizational credibility when they claim to be multistakeholder with CS participation.    In this case, we’ll be involved in the Cross Community WG, we’ll organize a policy conference in Singapore that could engage the whole community, our written inputs would undoubtedly be welcomed, etc.  I hope that we can also take more of a lead on thinking through e.g. what it means to promote the public interest (whether people like the term or not, it’s in the Affirmation of Commitments), human rights and development with respect to GNSO and ICANN policies.  

My sense from dealing with ICANN staff, leadership, and stakeholders is that NCUC's credibility and political capital have grown.   We need to leverage that more effectively this year.



**********************************************************
William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
william.drake at uzh.ch (w), wjdrake at gmail.com (h),
  www.williamdrake.org
***********************************************************

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