[NCUC-DISCUSS] Pilot Program

[Mueller, Milton L]

When people claim that this is being "rejected out of hand" they are beating down a straw man. NCUC's EC has already decided to carefully evaluate the difference aspects of the proposal and decide how to respond. It is the people who view this as unambiguous "help" are the ones we need to watch out for. 

There may be a division here between people with more long term experience with civil society in ICANN and an understanding of how it evolves, and those who are newer. To the newer people, it seems we are looking a gift horse in the mouth. To the older ones, it looks more like a Trojan horse ;-) or to be less pejorative, like part of a long term evolution in which capacity is sucked out of autonomous stakeholder groups and concentrated in professional ICANN staff, which tacitly in many subtle ways is concerned mainly about the survival of the corporation.

Let me respond specifically to some of Ayden's points: 

> -----Original Message-----
> As Kathy and others have
> pointed out, keeping up with other groups in the GNSO has always been
> challenging. I would hate to see the gap in capacity to engage meaningfully in
> policy discussions grow as a result of other groups getting support that we
> may dismiss as undesirable.

This argument assumes that our capacity will increase via staff support. It's a false assumption. Under some models, responsibilities will simply be outsourced, and control of it lost. Under other models, it may be helpful, but limited and not that different from what already happens (e.g. collecting past documents).

There is no free lunch here. Either we have the capacity to do policy development or we don't. If we use ICANN staff and they are truly under our control, then we have to tell them what we want, when we want it, and how to do it - all of which requires a substantial amount of knowledge of the policy process and substance. We also have to be able to tell the rest of the constituency whether the outsourced work was useful or adequate or not. If we are able to do that, we will still have to do a lot of work. If we are _not_ able to do that, then staff will be taking over our policy development functions, full stop.

Our biggest problem now is that there are so many policy processes going on and we tend to fall behind the curve on agenda-setting and WG formation. Certain interests opposed to us have succeeded in controlling agenda-setting and WG process in ways that are not favorable to our issues. E.g., what is really a single issue, such as Whois/RDS, is split up over several working groups and the agenda/charter of each of them is defined in a way that fails to raise the larger issue. This is a problem that CANNOT - repeat, CANNOT - be changed by staff support. The problem originates at the GNSO Council level, mainly, and with the fact that Most of the council is composed of business stakeholder groups whose participation is part of their full time job. 

> And since this is a pilot project, I suggest that we take part in it, see how we

Take part in what? There is a checklist of about 15 items. That is precisely what we have to assess. To go into that assessment without being fully aware of the dangers of capacity absorption by staff is dangerous.

> So what’s the worst that could
> happen?

Organizational dynamics indicate that once key capacities are absorbed by a well-funded staff you will never get them back again. The worst that could happen will not be obvious, like a train wreck, but subtle and evolutionary. Think of the boiling frog. 

> In my relatively limited experience on GNSO working groups, policy staff play
> a crucial role in terms of performing research and collecting documents for a
> working group’s consideration. They also do a great deal of drafting, trying to
> capture the contributions of working group members, as well as drafting the
> eventual consensus decisions that find their way into the working groups’
> preliminary and final reports. It doesn’t seem to me that they inappropriately
> influence the policy outcomes in any way. I see no reason to expect this from
> a staffer attached to this group. Besides, it’s not like we’d let anyone get
> away with that. :)

No offense, but your experience is very limited. How many policy processes have you seen end to end? 
So much capacity has already been absorbed by staff that you are not even aware of how agenda-setting functions, assessment of public comments, and drafting are often biased, especially in the formation of WGs. Part of that bias comes from the other SGs, of course, but tend to get magnified by staff. 

However, a lot of the stuff you see happening IS good support - and applies at the WG level. That is, it facilitates the work of a Working Group or of the Council, which is appropriate. So we have to assess this proposal very carefully, and suspiciously. 
Rafik and the EC are developing an alternative proposal. 

--MM