[NCUC-DISCUSS] Call for volunteers to comment on the 1st Finance Committee Operational Procedures draft (OP)

[Ayden Férdeline]

Thato,

Thanks for drafting this. It is great to see that the Finance Committee is active again. In principle I support having internal operating procedures, but I guess my concern is, do we need so many? We are talking about a very small pot of money here; relative to what the NCSG has in the bank (metaphorically speaking, as the NCSG does not even have a bank account), are we engineering too many procedures for its oversight? I'm also concerned that the Finance Committee seems to be overstepping its remit; it is not an internal auditor, the finances of the NCSG's constituencies are not its responsibility. I see a lot of text around appropriating resources for the Finance Committee itself -- travel slots, 20% of any and all NCSG funds for administrative incidentals, etc -- but no language around what the Finance Committee will actually do for the NCSG. Will it be scrutinising ICANN's annual budget and working with the Policy Committee to prepare a comment? Will it be working with the Executive Committee and the Policy Committee to submit Additional Budgetary Requests to support our campaigns and policy work? I'd hope so, and it might be helpful to think about how the Finance Committee can help the NCSG and our members where it really matters: defending and protecting non-commercial uses and users of the Domain Name System.

Best wishes, Ayden

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On 16 July 2018 10:36 AM, Thato Mfikwe <thatomfikwe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> I am glad to announce that the [Finance Committee of NCSG](https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Committees-2018)is now in place and ready to tackle governance issues within NCSG to ensure the high levels of transparency and accountability as enshrined in section 2.6 of the NCSG charter in relation to the NCSG Finance committee. The current members of NCSG FC are Farzaneh Badii (NCSG Chair), Remmy Nweke (NPOC rep) and Thato Mfikwe (NCUC rep). The FC will periodically upload its documents on the [NCSG FC Wikispace](https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Finance+Committee#Information-175761693)for the community to keep upto date with current and planned activities and have access to committee-generated action plans, reports and documents, so  lookout for monthly updates.
>
> Please note the FC has not been fully operational in past years with no historical financial records or operational guidelines to show for the past FY activities, thus the current committee intends to build and establish this important pillar of NCSG governance. The NCSG FC does not have an account, has no agreed formula on how funds should be distributed by the NCSG EC to constituencies and has had no visibility within NCSG activities yet, therefore a solid OP will be critical in getting the ball rolling to put NCSG FC on its right pedestal.
>
> The NCSG Finance Committee [Operational Procedure Draft document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XBL9khOhzxRRu5BiwCNeGu4suSfAw3tHFnNldeirnJQ/edit)is available for comment, please note that the FC has only had discussion around the OP but no formal consensus has been reached yet.
>
> The Finance Committee DRAFT OP is built upon and guided by clauses contained in the [NCSG Charter](https://gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/ncsg-charter-05may11-en.pdf) (Section 2.6) which was adopted in May 2011, a long standing document that guides activities and operations of NCSG and all its committees.
>
> The comment process will start today, 15 July 2018 and end on the 3rd of August 2018 at 12am UTC, upon which, the FC will review comments, make necessary resolutions and send the second draft OP to the NCSG EC for approval and adoption.
>
> At the same time, the Finance Committee would like to know if there are any major points that we (FC members) might missed in the coverage of this Operational Procedure?
>
> The NCSG FC welcomes your comments with relevant rationale and looks forward to speaking with you more about how to best support the NCSG community activities throughout the year.
>
> Hoping to sharing a bit more on the NCSG FC updates in the next call later on, thanks.
>
> Yours in development,
>
> Thato Mfikwe.
>
> NCSG Finance Committee Chair
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/attachments/20180716/a7db5396/attachment.html>