My first meeting with the nominating committee at ICANN

[Marita Moll]

Bill, thank you for a really good summary of how things evolved in my 
case -- a written summary from someone who was actually in the room. 
Much appreciated.

In my previous message, when I mentioned the fact that reps need to be 
properly briefed, I was alluding to the fact below that the ccNSO rep 
didn't appear to know about the agreement in question.  Sorry if my note 
could have been interpreted more broadly. I just did not want to name 
names as my info was third party. I was obviously not in the room during 
the selection process. In the end, the ccNSO rep was also obviously 
caught in a really difficult situation because he had not been briefed 
on this agreement.  I can only imagine what the fallout was on the ccNSO 
side of the fence.

It is good to hear that one of the things that has come out of this is a 
subcommittee to address institutional memory. Without something like 
this in place, this kind of dispute had to happen at some point.

Cheers

Marita


On 12/9/2017 6:03 AM, William Drake wrote:
> Hi Ayden
>
>> On Dec 9, 2017, at 00:37, Ayden Férdeline <icann at FERDELINE.COM 
>> <mailto:icann at FERDELINE.COM>> wrote:
>>
>> But, this is only useful if the information reaches the NomCom. 
>> Please correct me if I am wrong, but one of the recent issues which 
>> the ccNSO had with the NomCom was they appointed an individual 
>> contravening long-standing guidance 
>> <https://ccnso.icann.org/sites/default/files/field-attached/sataki-to-nomcomm-29sep17-en.pdf> 
>> issued by the ccNSO. This was unfair on the candidate who was 
>> rejected. And from what I understand, it happened because the NomCom 
>> hadn't done their homework and reviewed the advice received on their 
>> evaluation criteria.
>
> Per your invitation, I will correct you.  Each NomCom starts from 
> scratch, and does not have access to records of information exchanged 
> with SOACs in years prior.  When I was on NomCom I argued at length 
> that the NomCom needed to have some institutional memory, at least 
> with respect to organizational process issues (it should not have 
> access to information on previous candidacies, but there’s no reason 
> to be hampered on its own processes and have to reinvent wheels 
> without knowing how others made them).  We eventually set up a 
> subcommittee to look at areas where institutional memory could be 
> improved, and that work continues in the current NomCom and hopefully 
> will also be considered in the current board mandated review, but at 
> the time that the ccNSO thing happened we did not have any access to 
> correspondence between the ccNSO and the NomCom from 2012.  So the 
> NomCom had no idea that ccNSO had given one its predecessors guidance 
> on what it did and didn’t want in a candidate.  This despite the fact 
> that the NomCom had a high ranking member of the ccNSO on it, who said 
> nothing about this when the candidate was being considered because he 
> didn’t know either.  Hence, it’s really not right to assert that the 
> NomCom willfully disregarded “long standing guidance”  and “failed to 
> do its homework.”
>
> In addition, it should be noted how this played out.  In late 
> September, almost a month after the NomCom announced its 2017 
> selections,  the ccNSO chose to publicly post on ICANN’s site a 
> strongly worded letter denouncing the appointment and claiming inter 
> alia that “the proposed appointment contravenes the Nominating 
> Committee’s avowed role and mission." 
> https://ccnso.icann.org/sites/default/files/field-attached/sataki-to-nomcomm-29sep17-en.pdf 
> ccNSO did not bother to privately reach out the NomCom leadership team 
> and say he we have an issue let’s talk about it, instead they went 
> public with an attack on the NomCom and just said the selection was 
> unacceptable.  That doesn’t leave much room to work things out.
>
> Further, the ccNSO’s letter is flat out wrong about the NomCom 
> contravening its role and mission.  The Bylaws say the NomCom is to 
> select people for positions, including in the ccNSO, and those bodies 
> are expected to accept these.  The Bylaws do not say that the NomCom 
> is bound by any advice SOACs may provide, only that selectees must 
> meet the criteria of Section 8.4 (e.g. independence integrity etc.). 
>  I’m told by people who were around then that when the ccNSO was 
> established, it did not like the idea that NomCom should appoint any 
> of their members, given their limited commitment to ICANN generally 
> and a belief they should select all their own people. They were 
> ultimately persuaded to accept this bit of the Bylaws, but it appears 
> that in this case they didn’t like the result so they chose to 
> reinterpret the Bylaws meaning to be “you send us people we want.”   
> Maybe some in ccNSO will use this as a tool in their larger 
> disagreements with ICANN, but that’s not our business.
>
> So in sum, I would suggest not following the ccNSO model of publicly 
> fanning flames based on misunderstandings.  Better to reach out 
> privately to someone who knows the case and get the facts straight.
>
> In light of this experience, the 2017 NomCom recommended to the 2018 
> that they enter into consultations with the SOACs early in the cycle 
> to hear what they are looking for in candidates.  That’s why the 
> NomCom is talking to Farzi.  But bear in mind, NCSG can give the 
> NomCom advice, but the NomCom is not legally bound to follow it. 
>  Which is a good thing.   Imagine if the Board thought it could oblige 
> the NomCom to appoint particular people.  This would render the entire 
> exercise irrelevant and could result in incumbents being consistently 
> reappointed based on friendships etc.
>>
>> I wonder if this might be something we should discuss with our 
>> colleagues in the CSG at the Intersessional [and also amongst ourselves]?
>
> I suppose you could, but to what end?
>
> I think the only real NCPH issue re: the NomCom is the fact that the 
> CSG has a four person voting bloc on the NomCom and we have one 
> representative, from NCUC.   I leave the consequences of this to your 
> imagination.
>
> Best
>
> Bill

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-discuss/attachments/20171209/24f55050/attachment.htm>