[NCUC-DISCUSS] Revising the NCUC Bylaws
Avri Doria
avri at acm.org
Sun Aug 9 16:34:28 CEST 2015
Hi,
The point is, unless it revises it charter to conform to the NCSG
charter, NCUC is not properly chartered.
This remains a liability. In fact had the NCSG Executive Community done
its chartered duty of periodically reviewing Constituencies for
conformity to the NCSG charter and for viability, we would have already
been cited and put on warning. We are also lucky that the Board's SIC
has never decided to undertake such a review.
When we mix the NCSG compliance issues with other desires, the
discussion get confusing. One we need to do, one we might want to do.
One is rather quick and easy, and one is possibly hopelessly complicated.
Somewhere someone spoke about those eager to do something about this.
I tried once to fix the NCSG computability issue, but the effort was
abandoned after people decided to mix fixes that were necessary for
conformity with the NCSG charter and aspirational improvements. We
essentially completed the work necessary for NCSG compliance, though it
never got a review or scrubbing.
I am not volunteering for this task. I think I already did it once.
What I have volunteered for is to be a voice that periodically reminds
us of work we have not done that we need to do. I do this at least once
a year, often at election time. The NCUC charter needs to be brought
into compliance with the NCSG charter. Everything else is aspirational
gravy.
avri
On 09-Aug-15 04:03, James Gannon wrote:
> I still haven’t seen anyone volunteering to actually do the work of
> migrating NCUC to this new era… I think any may be underestimating
> the effort and hours of work that will need to go into such an
> undertaking.
> With regards to the NomCom the position will be filled as per the
> bylaws, Peter Green I believe is compiling a shortlist for the EC to
> consider.
>
> And If I can note, changing the bylaws is not going to get people
> engaged in the work of NCUC, while I understand that not everyone has
> the availability to be on the frostlines its important that people
> begin to step up and contribute, particularly those who are looking to
> run in elections or be nominated for leadership positions. We need
> more people to do the legwork on NCUC business, we need people to
> draft comments, we need people to actively join and participate in
> working groups, we need people to step up and do the unglamorous work
> that doesn’t come with a title or a position but is the work that
> keeps NCUC alive and running, and most importantly relevant and a
> powerful voice in ICANN.
>
> So my personal suggest is before we run off and start revising the
> bylaws, why don’t we try and get our regional members more engaged
> in a bottom up manner, Remmy and others seem very interested in taking
> a position on this so guys why don’t you start by doing some
> additional outreach to our African members, try to get them to engage
> on the grassroots of NCUC, seek out those with special skills who
> might be able to contribute to our work or even just show how diverse
> the NCUC membership is by being more active in the broader ICANN
> community for NCUC.
>
> I think that working on regional diversity in a practical way will do
> much more to further the goals than rewriting the bylaws.
>
> -James
>
>> On 9 Aug 2015, at 07:18, Sonigitu Ekpe <soekpe at GMAIL.COM
>> <mailto:soekpe at GMAIL.COM>> wrote:
>>
>> Hello Bill and all great Fellows,
>>
>> Great discussions so far.
>>
>> My suggestion is to work towards migrating NCUC to the desired
>> destination of a stronger NCUC at all cost. At the end it will be
>> very fruitful.
>>
>> Warm regards.
>>
>> On 8 Aug 2015 20:23, "Remmy Nweke" <remmyn at gmail.com
>> <mailto:remmyn at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Bill for all the efforts as usual.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I suspected this may take a while given your
>> narration herein, hence we commenced discussion on this earlier
>> in the week, it was nice to roll up our sleeves.
>>
>> However, as much as I would love to be part of the renew team for
>> the review, God helping us with His mercies, I think its ideal to
>> start the process.
>>
>> But my questions now is what should be our resolve on NomCom
>> while we prepare for the future and why the EC waited these long
>> without taking decisive step on how to handle this given
>> prevailing challenges and status of NCUC knowing fully the route
>> abi nitio.
>>
>> Thirdly, we needed to decide on if we should remain with the
>> statusquo or work towards migrating NCUC to the desired
>> destination of a stronger NCUC at all cost, instead of waiting
>> indefinitely for ICANN board to decide the next role.
>>
>> Can you also lead us into other likely lull in adequate
>> delegation that may affect NCUC through until when likely the
>> review will be resolved, outside our forthcoming election?
>>
>> Regards
>> Remmy Nweke
>> @ITRealms
>>
>>
>>
>> ____
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>> On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 5:57 PM, Stephanie Perrin
>> <stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca
>> <mailto:stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for taking this initiative Bill. I am not going to
>> volunteer because I am up to my ears in privacy and council
>> work, and do not have any bandwidth to spare on this. All
>> blessings on the willing who are prepared to step forward and
>> work on this.
>> Good luck!
>> Stephanie Perrin
>>
>>
>> On 2015-08-08 11:18, William Drake wrote:
>>> Hello
>>>
>>> Buckle your seat belts, this is a ten minute ride.
>>>
>>> On the recent free range thread that was supposed to concern
>>> filling the NomCom slot, several people expressed the view
>>> that it is high time to revise the bylaws. If people are
>>> indeed prepared to roll up there sleeves and work on this
>>> now, fine, let’s do it. Please be aware though that this
>>> is a lengthy process because once we work out a text we find
>>> more suitable, it then has to be cleared through the
>>> relevant staff and then the ICANN Board’s Structural
>>> Improvements Committee (SIC). Both will undoubtedly suggest
>>> or demand changes, so we can expect probably a half year
>>> delay from when we submit a revision to when the SIC finally
>>> gives its blessing. This means that we will not be able to
>>> have a member vote to approve the revision until the
>>> November-December 2016 NCUC Election. But we can begin the
>>> process now, and it will fall to the EC and Chair to be
>>> elected in a bit over three months to bring it to fruition
>>> in the first quarter and send it off to the power that be.
>>>
>>> A little background for those who are new to this item. To
>>> refresh my memory, I looked through about 80 saved messages
>>> on the subject going back to 2011 and the ncuc-discuss
>>> archive (which is always a fun way to get a sense of how
>>> much we’ve grown and changed over the years).
>>>
>>> Our current bylaws were Approved in September 2009. I tried
>>> to find records of the discussion around this but cannot; we
>>> were dealing simultaneously with GNSO restructuring and the
>>> chartering of the NCSG, both of which were big battles with
>>> board/staff/business, and everything in the ncuc-discuss
>>> archive is on these. Back then we tended to do a lot of
>>> work via informal channels so that must have been where the
>>> bylaws were evolved, but alas I can’t find relevant saved
>>> messages and can’t reconstruct what the thinking was. I
>>> had just joined NCUC and the GNSO council, so I don’t
>>> think I was involved, but the people who did the work are
>>> still here on this list and can always fill in the blanks if
>>> they like.
>>>
>>> By 2012 a number of us started to notice gaps between a) the
>>> bylaws and how we were now actually operating, given the
>>> rise of the NCSG, and b) the NCSG charter and the NCUC
>>> bylaws. Re: the former, among the more notable gaps were
>>> (and are) that: we no longer have a policy committee; do not
>>> charge membership dues; don't have a Secretary-Treasurer
>>> (just a Treasurer); and EC members generally don’t
>>> “Ensure that members from their region are made aware of
>>> and respond to calls for comments by members of the Policy
>>> Committee on Working Group and other Council and
>>> other ICANN policy.” Re: the latter, for ex: the NCUC
>>> charter reads like one can join without first joining NCSG
>>> (solved by the Join web form), and the NCSG charter and NCUC
>>> bylaws allocate different numbers of election votes to large
>>> and small organizations (solved by simply following the NCSG
>>> model). As should be obvious from the list, none of these
>>> problems actually were significantly disabling in terms of
>>> the basic functioning of the constituency, but they did seem
>>> like things that merited fixing from a good governance
>>> standpoint.
>>>
>>> In April 2012 the then Chair, Konstantinos Komaitis took a
>>> crack at some revisions, but didn’t finish before he had
>>> to step down due to job stuff. So then a few of us—Amr,
>>> Avri, Nobert, Milton and myself——began to play with
>>> revisions in a Google doc
>>> version. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eMYs3_odaFN01piVcvMAuxAu_nJyqX2oGYK1o10QuIU/edit
>>> I no longer recall why we abandoned the effort, but probably
>>> it just didn’t seem pressing as the constituency was
>>> functioning and other stuff was going on.
>>>
>>> In the December 2013 election I became chair and Ed and
>>> Tapani joined the EC. Both really felt we needed to revise.
>>> I was trying to start up this notion of “teams” that
>>> would assemble EC and regular members to perform different
>>> organizational functions, and so we created a Bylaws Team
>>> and set up a mail
>>> list http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bylaws,
>>> which about 20 members joined. I raised the issue at
>>> multiple Constituency Day meetings but the conversations
>>> weren’t terribly deep and engaged. We did however have a
>>> little discussion on the bylaws list between August-October
>>> 2013, but then after we consulted with staff and realized
>>> there was no way we were going to be able to get a revision
>>> through them and the board in time for members to vote on it
>>> in the next election, the effort sort of wandered off.
>>> After the next election, I asked another EC member to lead
>>> the Bylaws Team, but after some months it became clear
>>> nothing was going to be done. After this, as I explained on
>>> the bylaws list,
>>>
>>>> On Apr 1, 2015, at 10:48 AM, William Drake
>>>> <wjdrake at gmail.com <mailto:wjdrake at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I then reach out to several veterans including the folks
>>>> who did the last version and said look why don’t we just
>>>> take a week and do this, and the view was why bother when
>>>> what we’d really like to do is see if we can’t move to
>>>> the integrated SG model we advocated at the dawn of NCSG
>>>> rather than doubling down on the dysfunctional constituency
>>>> silo model. So I started poking around with some board
>>>> members and asking do you think it’s conceivable we could
>>>> ever get the board to accept that, and got varying
>>>> responses, some encouraging us to make a proposal and some
>>>> saying that’d probably set off a more divisive holy war
>>>> do you think it’s worth it. Then the GNSO Review process
>>>> was launched, in which context the structures of interest
>>>> aggregation in the GNSO will be debated. The initial draft
>>>> from the consultant was full of agenda-driven nonsense,
>>>> which we and others have pushed back on, and we’re now
>>>> waiting to see what the revision will look like. The
>>>> consultant are to provide this in late April, and then the
>>>> community review team will provide input, there’ll be a
>>>> public comment period, etc. By the BA meeting I would hope
>>>> we will be able to have a more focused discussion, which
>>>> together with the pending churn of the Board Structural
>>>> Improvements Committee should provide clarity on the larger
>>>> picture going forward. If the upshot is that we are
>>>> permanently wedded to a system that basically just wastes
>>>> peoples’ time and distracts energies from policy work
>>>> etc, then I would be happy to try once again to work with
>>>> whomever is willing to spend some cycles to redo the Bylaws
>>>> and align them with the current realities of the
>>>> constituency’s role in the SG. But we’re not there
>>>> yet, and expending the time now while things are up in the
>>>> air and people are swamped with other items doesn’t seem
>>>> so sensible. I don’t believe the board is thinking about
>>>> this or in a position to act anytime soon with all else
>>>> that’s going on in parallel.
>>>
>>> And subsequently, there arose further uncertainty due to the
>>> accountability process and the various membership models—I
>>> was getting contradictory advise about how things might be
>>> organized, whether NCUC was going to have to become a legal
>>> entity, etc. So my sense was, let’s wait until we see
>>> what’s decided in Dublin (assuming something is) and then
>>> decide how to proceed.
>>>
>>> But waiting makes some vocal folks unhappy, so fine, let’s
>>> start now anyway. Of course, revising the bylaws is in
>>> effect saying to the board that we are content to live with
>>> the fragmentary C/SG structure they gave us, so we can
>>> forget about having some sort of integrative civil society
>>> formation like in every other open governance body, but I
>>> guess this is the path of lest resistance.
>>>
>>> Here’s how I propose we proceed:
>>>
>>> 1. I will ask Maryam to take the Bylaws Team and its mail
>>> list out of mothballs and add them
>>> to http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams/
>>> and http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo. It
>>> would make sense to have the conversations there, as back
>>> and forth over whether article II.1.c should say “a”
>>> or “the” will not be of interest to everyone on this
>>> main list. I therefore encourage everyone interested in
>>> this question, and especially those who have complained
>>> about lack of action on it, to join the Team and its list
>>> and take a lead in moving things forward. Conversely, any
>>> members who signed up in 2013 but no longer want to be there
>>> can just unsubscribe.
>>>
>>> 2. People involved may wish to compare
>>> http://www.ncuc.org/governance/bylaws/ with the changes
>>> proposed in 2012
>>> at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eMYs3_odaFN01piVcvMAuxAu_nJyqX2oGYK1o10QuIU/edit.
>>> You could work off of the latter, or simply start over with
>>> a clean slate, whichever. It might make sense to begin by
>>> working in “Comment Mode” so you don’t disturb the
>>> text until some consensus has been reached.
>>>
>>> 3. It might be useful to begin by making a list of things
>>> that should be changed in order to conform with actual
>>> practice and the NCSG charter. And a list of things that
>>> might be “nice to add” or delete. Build consensus in the
>>> team around these, develop a revision with line by line
>>> comments.
>>>
>>> If something can be assembled over the next two months, we
>>> can schedule a hour or more at Constituency Day in Dublin to
>>> go through it and discuss any particularly important
>>> decisions, like whether some sort of Policy Committee would
>>> still be needed for when the constituency wants to express
>>> its own views separate from a SG-wide consensus. I also
>>> would argue for establishing a Vice Chair, and if we’re
>>> going down this route, registering with the US tax
>>> authorities as an independent entity so we can take
>>> donations more easily. Inter alia. Anyway, if we came out
>>> of Dublin with some broad consensus, then it will be easier
>>> for the new EC and the Bylaws Team to move this to
>>> conclusion be the end of the Q1 2016 and get it off to staff.
>>>
>>> Ok that’ enough for one message…
>>>
>>> Any thoughts, feedback, etc?
>>>
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>>>
>>> *********************************************************
>>> William J. Drake
>>> International Fellow & Lecturer
>>> Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
>>> University of Zurich, Switzerland
>>> Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency,
>>> ICANN, www.ncuc.org <http://www.ncuc.org/>
>>> william.drake at uzh.ch
>>> <mailto:william.drake at uzh.ch> (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:wjdrake at gmail.com> (lists),
>>> www.williamdrake.org <http://www.williamdrake.org/>
>>> /Internet Governance: The
>>> NETmundial Roadmap /http://goo.gl/sRR01q
>>> *********************************************************
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org <mailto:Ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org>
>>> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ncuc-discuss
>>
>>
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