comments on the ICANN budget

[Michael Oghia]

Hi all,

Thank you for raising this Milton, you're absolutely right.

Ed: do you have any comments?

Best,
-Michael

On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu> wrote:

> I was interested in the public comments on ICANN's budget - I believe this
> is the first one since the transition.
>
> I noticed that all stakeholder groups and constituencies except NCSG filed
> comments on the budget. I was disappointed to see that instead of a NCSG
> comment we have a lone individual, Ed Morris, commenting with his personal
> opinions. Since Ed is supposed to be the chair of our NCSG finance
> committee, one would have thought that he would post his comments to the
> NCSG list for some feedback.
>
> Ed's comments (http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/comments-fy18-
> budget-08mar17/attachments/20170428/440be454/budgetcomment-0001.pdf) make
> it clear that they are his personal opinions and not necessarily those of
> the NCSG, but I find this very odd. Normally, if you file comments
> individually, it is because you tried to achieve NCSG consensus but could
> not. In that case, it's OK for folks to file comments to reflect the
> different views.
>
> In this case, Ed made no effort to inform the group of his views on the
> budget, much less attempt to gain some support for them. I think this is
> not acceptable. The Chair of our Finance Committee needs to think of
> himself as a delegate of the SG, not as someone who goes off into a silo
> and does whatever he wants, without even informing the members who
> appointed him.
>
> This becomes more serious when one realizes that in his comments, Ed
> basically threatens ICANN with rejecting the entire budget because of a
> disagreement over a small item. He says:
>
> "Unless bound by my Support Group to support this budget, I would be
> inclined to favor rejecting the entire budget when it comes back to the
> GNSO Council if this amount is not restored to the budget prior its final
> adoption."
>
> I am not sure what Ed means by his "support group" but presumably that
> means his Stakeholder Group and/or Constituency. But how are we supposed to
> "bind" him to favor or oppose the budget if we don't even know that he has
> made this threat?
>
> In sum, I am sure we all appreciate the willingness of volunteers to go
> through the budget and make sense of it, but our delegates to these
> committees have to understand that they are agents of NCSG and it is their
> responsibility to liaise with the SG and inform the membership of their
> actions, and to build consensus on positions when possible. It's not that
> hard to write an email to the list and attach a draft of your proposed
> comments.
>
>
> Dr. Milton L Mueller
> Professor, School of Public Policy
> Georgia Institute of Technology
> Internet Governance Project
> http://internetgovernance.org/
>
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