[NCUC-DISCUSS] NCUC Diversity Matters

[William Drake]

Hello

The discussions of the NomCom position and broader issues pertaining to diversity have gotten a bit entangled.  If we want to have a focused discussion of the latter let’s do so.  I’d like to raise a number of points in this regard, picking through messages in my morning mail.

> On Aug 4, 2015, at 6:53 PM, Stephanie Perrin <stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> 
> While I have already indicated my support for Bill, may I also suggest, as a tired multiple commentator on the Westlake GNSO review, that we need to ensure a lively, diverse field of candidates for all these positions, so that we are not fulfilling the criticism of not enough rotation of senior (travel-funded) positions in our constituency/stakeholder group.

It should be noted that the criticism mentioned was included in the first draft from Westlake as part of an effort by certain actors selected by staff to dump on NCUC for strategic purposes.  We challenged this and other unfair characterizations with actual numbers that demonstrated the inaccuracies, and they were removed from the final report.  So I am not sure why a discredited piece of propaganda is being cited as a rationale for anything here.

> I suspect noone will want to run against Bill, but we do need to have elections, not acclamations.

Please not that this is not an election, it’s an appointment to be made by the EC.  For these we often don’t get enough volunteers stepping forward, and indeed in my time I’ve often had to pester and follow up repeatedly with people to get one good candidate for any given slot. So having a choice is a bit of a luxury, but let’s not confuse the two processes.

The facts on Nomcom and other NCUC positions are nicely summarized by Amr:

> On Aug 4, 2015, at 8:31 PM, Amr Elsadr <aelsadr at EGYPTIG.ORG> wrote:
> 
> I will note that there has been an African representing the NCUC on the NomCom immediately prior to our current NomCom representative. Furthermore, the NCUC has regionally elected officers to the NCUC executive committee (EC), for which we have elections every year. In addition, the NCUC EC, not too long ago, selected an African member as the beneficiary of the NCUC travel policy. In this respect, I believe (and please correct me if I am mistaken) we are unique in the GNSO. I don’t think it is just to say that Africa has been under-represented by our constituency.


I would add two points here. First, the NCUC EC is by design an optimal path for people who wish to begin to get engaged.  We will launch an election cycle in November in which all positions are open to contestation, including five regional representatives.  Serving on the EC is a great way to get one’s feet wet in constituency work without having to immediately become an expert on the IRTP Part C or whatever…it’s a way to get acclimated before moving into hard core policy.  Second, for other positions, such as GNSO Council, NCUC long had regional diversity requirements, and since the formation of NCSG these have been retained.  Hence we’ve consistently had and have NCSG Councilors who are NCUC members from the global South.

In addition, with respect to the NomCom, Peter offers an important clarification:

> On Aug 5, 2015, at 6:00 AM, PeterGreen <seekcommunications at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> When we say regional diversity, especially in this case--selecting a NCUC delegate for 2016 NomCom,  it is to say that NomCom would consider regional diversity of its members for the whole NomCom structure, it is not advising Stakeholder Groups or Constituencies to select delegates on a special regional basis, other criteria should also be considered. Saying so, I think regional rotation is not appropiriate for a NomCom Delegation selection. 


It is indeed helpful not to misread the call for candidates.

And Arun also adds important considerations:

> On Aug 5, 2015, at 10:06 AM, Arun Mohan Sukumar <arunmohan.s at gmail.com> wrote:


> Diversity by region should, however, not be an article of faith. The candidate's background must be weighed against her activity and participation in NCUC. Offering candidates from under-represented regions who rarely correspond or attend ICANN meetings does more disservice to the constituency that serve any real cause.
> 
> 2. Diversity in regional representation is not necessarily correlated to diversity in perspective. If an NCUC representative from a developing region is beholden to the same set of entrenched, institutional interests, say as the ICANN Board and reluctant to challenge status quo, that would be worrisome. Personally, I would rather vote for or support individuals from developed countries offering sound criticism of ICANN policies. For e.g., IP Justice appears to be run by individuals from US and Europe, but I cannot appreciate enough their flagging of IPR concerns which matter enormously to countries, like India.


Turning then from the NomCom to the broader question:

1.  Of course we can always do better with diversity, and some of us have tried.  This is why I’ve been organizing outreach events at meetings around the world, working with the other SOACSGCRALO chairs on an engagement initiative, instigated the NCUC Travel Support Policy, and have been talking to the Fellows at each ICANN meeting.  Such efforts have been showing some results, which is part of why NCUC’s membership has doubled in the past three years, with quite a few new members coming from the global South.  It is also relevant to why Walid organized the Membership Survey (which alas has not engendered much discussion here).  We are trying, but this is volunteer work, and unlike At Large we do not have five staff members or a big set of geographically dispersed covered travel slots to work with.  

2.  In order to get a better sense of our own diversity (which I suspect we may not all realize), I asked Maryam on 24 July to embark on a new project in the ten hours per week she does for us: to figure out and post to the website the geographic and gender make-up of the NCUC membership.  It would be good to maintain and update such a profile going forward. As usual Tapani being the king of the data base has been helping, and has so far come up with the following break-down:

count | icannregion
-------+-------------
   21 | [TBD—we need to contact some members with gmail etc. accounts and ask their countries]
   46 | LAC
   77 | AF
  100 | NA
  104 | EUR
   88 | AP

The final numbers will be different when the 21 TBDs are sorted, but the relevant point here is that the current count indicates that half our members are from the LAC, AF, and AP regions.  This undoubtedly compares well with other parts of ICANN.

3.  Re: a gender count, Tapani points out that a) we may not be able to guess the ID of some names, and b) some folks might not like to be counted as simply M or F.  We would need guidance on how to proceed with this.  We could just leave out a gender count, but personally I’d think that unfortunate because I know we have a lot more women than many other parts of ICANN, and when people toss around generalizations like the Westlake report saying the GNSO is mostly white men from the North it’s nice to be able to say well, that’s not us.  So if we wanted to include such a count, I guess Maryam would need to ping members individually and we could trifurcate into M, F, and NN (not known) for nonrespondents or persons who don’t want to say….?

Ok, I’ve covered more than enough ground here. Feedback very much welcome.

Best

Bill



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