NPOC Comment Re: Member Admission Process and Member Databases

[Sam Lanfranco]

Rafik,

Thanks for the useful questions and comments, and thanks to Tapani for 
his comments and his expertise. Rather than making a long response I 
would like to extract the key points [numbered] for follow up.

The objective is to manage these two processes while making NCSG and its 
constituency groups, best practice users of the Internet to. This will 
reduce administrative demands on the various executives and volunteers, 
freeing up more time to deal with substantive and policy issues.

One overarching issue has to do with how much ICANN support and 
involvement does NCSG want. Is it is an issue of trust, of efficiency, 
or of optics that suggests that little be hosted on ICANN servers? This 
needs to be discussed, and decisions arrived at. There are pluses and 
minuses whichever way one goes here. At the moment there are at least 
three independent server sites support NCSG and constituency services.

1.We are in agreement with the idea that there should be one application 
form for NCSG that clearly states the constituency (NCUC/NPOC/neither) 
membership options. The form can reside on NCSG, NCUC and NPOC websites 
and report back to admissions email boxes. With regard to application 
improvements, there is no suggestion for over engineering, and in fact 
the opposite. A clear and concise application form will expedite 
application by interested parties, and expedite the admission processes 
at both the NCSG and constituency levels.

2.Glad to hear that application improvement is being discussed, 
including a review of appropriate fields for the admission process, and 
what fields may be needed by NCSG, NCUC and NPOC. The key point is that 
fields should serve both the admissions process and the ongoing work of 
NCSG and the constituencies. Proposals for changes here (record forms 
and fields) should be shared with NCSG members to gather member feedback 
and draw on member expertise.

3.With regard to maintaining the membership database:Best practices for 
maintaining the membership databases should put membership updating in 
the hands of members. While NCSG and the constituency groups may always 
have to chase laggards with faulty membership data, the process should 
have self-administered membership profiles, to facilitate ease of member 
access and to free up executive time and talents for more important work.

4.The aution not adding fields not directly related to applications or 
aimed for specific purpose of course makes sense. Fields can be added 
when parts of the database are imported, for local (NCUC/NPOC) use. One 
way to facilitate that is for member profiles to contain fields for more 
information than just what is on the membership application. This 
doesn’t burden the application process, facilitates profile updates, and 
doesn’t take up NCSG executive time.

5.The question of where to host the membership database and services is 
important and part of the overarching issue referenced above. Hosting 
it, or not hosting it at ICANN, has maintenance implications, access 
implications, and possibly political (optics) implications.

6.The issue of database access is not complicated. Below the high level 
editing access, there can be only edit/view/export  access. NCUC and 
NPOC can export some/all of the database and add whatever they need. The 
NCSG Charter makes the NCSG EC and Chair responsible for maintaining and 
updating the membership database, but that does not mean that they 
should use valuable EC and Chair time to manually do what is an 
administrative task. However that is done, membership profiles would 
help. The current process of having members update records by contacting 
the NCSG chair is needlessly burdensome and inefficient.

7.With regard to where profiles should reside, that doesn’t really 
matter. The prior issue to be resolved is what services should be 
mounted at ICANN, or elsewhere, and how profile access should be 
managed. The profile approach respects the KISS principle, gives more 
power to the stakeholder, and reduces labor demands on the executive and 
administration.

The overall goal is to do these things efficiently and effective, and 
free up executive and volunteer effort to deal with policy and other 
matters of substance.

Sam L.
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