Hi all<div>As much as I want us to strengthen the accountability process, it amounts to gagging or censoring the councillors in the case of directed voting.</div><div><br></div><div> We should allow those we have elected to act on our behalf, that is trust and report back to us, that is the climax of participatory engagement of stakeholders and take responsibility for their actions or inactions.</div><div><br></div><div>I am sure there is no voting among the councilors that happens by accident, which means councillors will be forewarned of the pending vote round. In such a case we may take a queue from Stephanie by way of alerting leadership of the group we represent if not the entire house to bounce the opinion off them, which I think some of us have used same methodology in the past, which amounts for collective responsibility.</div><div><br></div><div>On the other hand, Bill raised the issue of briefing during meetings which is not out of place and should be support so as to carry everyone along, otherwise we can consider quarterly briefing, depending on our meeting schedules.</div><div><br></div><div>Regards</div><div>Remmy<br><br>On Wednesday, August 17, 2016, Stephanie Perrin <<a href="mailto:stephanie.perrin@mail.utoronto.ca">stephanie.perrin@mail.utoronto.ca</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<p><font size="+1"><font face="Lucida Grande">I think this is an
excellent idea. Personally, I think we should at least
coordinate council votes, if not direct them. I always tell
folks how I am going to vote, but frankly a better process is
necessary, especially with the important matters coming before
us on human rights, accountability, and privacy. Time to
debate a better process. Councillors have to be accountable
to the folks they represent.</font></font></p>
<p><font size="+1"><font face="Lucida Grande">As for a one pager on
each council meeting....hardly that onerous, with 6 councilors
taking turns that is two reports each a year. I am not
looking for more work, but this does not seem impossible.<br>
</font></font></p>
<p><font size="+1"><font face="Lucida Grande">Stephanie Perrin</font></font><br>
</p>
<br>
<div>On 2016-08-17 4:39, William Drake
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
Hi
<div><br>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>On Aug 16, 2016, at 23:38, Robin Gross <<a href="javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','robin@ipjustice.org');" target="_blank">robin@ipjustice.org</a>> wrote:</div>
<br>
<div><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;float:none;display:inline!important">Agreed.
It is important for members to become more acquainted
with our representatives and resumes are extremely
helpful for that.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
<div>Sharing candidates’ resumes is not a bad idea. But I’d
like to suggest we go beyond this. Two issue we might want to
consider on tomorrow’s call:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>When I joined Council in 2009, we discussed the need for
better reporting to members as to what their reps were
actually doing in Council. We launched an attempt to deal
with this by having Councilors take turns doing brief reports
about Council meetings. Alas it didn’t get far, after a couple
times the sense of urgency faded, people told themselves
“well, members can always look at the Council archive to see
what’s happening," and the effort drifted off. But of course
it’s actually not easy for a member to dive through the
Council archive and try to reconstruct what’s happening, and
it’s not so hard to compose a one or two paragraph summary of
a monthly Council meeting indicating how our reps voted on
which issues, especially if the workload is rotated among six
Councilors, making it just a few times per year each. So
while it’s a bit uncomfortable suggesting work to be done by
others, I’d like to put this idea back on the table ahead of
our Meet the Candidates call tomorrow. It need not be an one
onerous thing, and after all we exist to participate in the
GNSO, so surely we should be able to know how our reps are
representing us in the GNSO. Especially when we’re being
asked to vote them into ‘office’ (for incumbents) on the basis
of past performance.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>More generally, we have long debated the matter of
coordination among Council reps. Unlike most if not all other
parts of the GNSO, NCSG by charter doesn’t normally do
‘directed voting,’ where the members are bound to vote in
conformity with a rough consensus position. We have a charter
provision to do this in exceptional cases, but I don’t recall
it ever being invoked. We’ve always been content to operate
on the notion that the Councilor does what s/he thinks is in
the best interest of civil society @ GNSO, and if members
don’t approve of anyone’s action they can vote them out in the
next cycle. But as that has not really happened, it’s sort of
a meaningless check and balance. And this is not without
consequence, as we’ve sometimes had internal differences
within our contingent that have arguably undermined our
effectiveness and credibility in the eyes of the community and
staff, and can even allow our various business stakeholder
group counterparts to exploit the differences in order to push
through what they want in opposition to our common baseline
views. So at a minimum, we need to do better somehow at team
coordination and make sure all our Councilors know what each
other is doing and why and so there’s no real time surprises,
especially during meetings with high stakes votes.</div>
<br>
</div>
<div>Thoughts?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Bill</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote></div><br><br>-- <br>Remmy Nweke, Esq<br>lead strategist/group executive editor,<br>DigitalSENSE Africa Media Ltd, publishers of:<br>[DigitalSENSE Business News | ITRealms | NaijaAgroNet]<br>Block F1, Shop 133 Moyosore Aboderin Plaza<br>Bolade Junction, Oshodi, Lagos-Nigeria<br>234-8023122558, 8051000475, 08033592762, 08172004283<br><a href="mailto:Remmyn@gmail.com">Remmyn@gmail.com</a><br>