[NCUC-DISCUSS] [Info] Call for candidates for NCUC Delegate to the ICANN 2017 Nominating Committee

[William Drake]

Hello

Thanks much folks for the various expressions of support.  I would indeed like to serve on the 2017 NomCom.  I worked pretty hard on the 2016 committee and am ready to do it again. 

As a couple people indicated, this is a position in which a second year makes sense because one’s effectiveness increases the more you learn the game and demonstrate an ability to listen and offer good judgement, etc.  That’s why the represented groups generally seem to reappoint their people, as has NCUC http://www.ncuc.org/participate/ncuc-appointments/.  (In fact a number of colleagues already indicated at our Helsinki meeting that they’d be back, which should help with the efforts I mentioned previously to improve our procedures and institutional memory).  It’s also why the 2014 Board Working Group on the NomCom recommended that the terms for all voting members should be for two years, with no member allowed to serve for two consecutive terms.  Its recs were set aside because key ones were horrid, but this one arguably made sense.

Looking to our future representation, perhaps I should say that it’s also a position in which veteran experience going in is rather helpful.  To be effective one needs background on the diverse players, interests and shared histories in the community.  I’d suggest that the best trajectory into the NomCom is to first serve in another capacity, e.g. NCUC EC or GNSO Council, where one has a group of colleagues and support to move up the learning curve.  In contrast, in the NomCom the NCUC rep is alone in a group of 15 votes/17 voices.   Advocating balanced, high quality appointments that are at least not hostile to noncommercial concerns can be challenging.   

Further to the last point — Ed rightly mentioned the intra-GNSO imbalance.  A number of us have indeed raised the lack of NPOC representation in various contexts and gotten pushback from the board.  Meanwhile the three CSG constituencies get four reps (two for the BC!) and contracted also gets two reps.  How this will evolve if/when we new DNS industry constituencies due to the new gTLD program is hard to say, but the above mentioned 2014 Board Working Group on the NomCom most certainly got it wrong in suggesting that NomCom should be restructured as follows to avoid “GNSO over-representation”:

‐ Five members appointed from the At‐Large Advisory Committee, with one from each Regional At‐Large Organization
‐ Five members appointed from the ccNSO, with one from each geographic region
‐ Five members appointed from the ASO, with one from each geographic region
‐ Four members appointed from the GNSO, with one from each Stakeholder Group
‐ Up to three members appointed from the GAC
‐ One member each from the IAB (IETF), SSAC and RSSAC

Luckily this generated an outcry and was not acted upon, but it indicates that composition is a can of worms to be reopened carefully…

Cheers,

Bill

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William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
william.drake at uzh.ch (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com (lists),
  www.williamdrake.org
The Working Group on Internet Governance - 10th Anniversary Reflections
New book at http://amzn.to/22hWZxC
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