comments on the ICANN budget

Tue May 2 17:49:06 EEST 2017

Thanks, Milton. I agree with everything that you wrote. I think our ‘process’ at the moment involves more persuading people to accept the comment that has been written, rather than a fully participatory process whereby we meaningfully invite reflection and scrutiny. I hope we can do better in the months ahead; there are 9 comments closing over the next three weeks, so we have a number of opportunities to do so...

Ayden

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: comments on the ICANN budget
Local Time: 2 May 2017 11:21 PM
UTC Time: 2 May 2017 22:21
From: milton at GATECH.EDU
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU

These are great comments, Ayden.

I don’ t mean to downplay the difficulty of making public comments. I have shepherded a number of comments through the NCSG and NCUC on many occasions over the years, often it is a thankless task. I agree totally that NCSG is not responding often enough and well enough to public comments. I also have no illusions: informing and engaging the membership will not magically solve this problem. Often, it really does require expertise that only one or two of us will have.

Engaging the membership will, however, increase the chances that someone in the membership who knows something or has a relevant point of view will be identified and involved, and increases the likelihood that the comments that are filed actually reflect the views of the membership. (Who knows, help with that comment on Proposal for Ethiopic Script Root Zone Label Generation Rules may just be around the corner ;-)

Creating subteams of the PC worsens the problem – greater fragmentation of the discourse. In crowdsourcing, smaller numbers means less chance of success, and fundamentally we are crowdsourcing our comments. We just need a more organized and systematic process by which the membership is informed of impending comment deadlines and people are identified to execute them. Things get done when individuals step up and “own” a comment. (One would expect the chair of the finance committee to take the lead on generating comments about the budget, for example?) The “owner” doesn’t have to be a PC member. The owner of the comment just has to take responsibility for seeing it through (which is what you have done in a couple of cases, Ayden) warn us of impending deadlines, urge us to read it, etc.

--MM

From: Ayden Férdeline [mailto:icann at ferdeline.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2017 5:45 PM
To: Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu>
Cc: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: comments on the ICANN budget

Lest anyone have the impression that the Policy Committee (PC) has successfully siloed itself away from the broader NCSG membership, I can say, as a member of the Policy Committee, that I often feel out of the loop as well. And it is not just a feeling; some NCSG decisions are being made off-list.

When it comes to public comments, I agree that we need to do a better job at collecting input from our wider membership and feeding these back into our public comments. But we also need to do a much better job at responding to public comments. The amount we do not respond to is greater than the number we do respond to. And that's a real failure which we need to address.

I think it is easy to say that we should delegate things better, or that we need to engage the membership better, and please don't misunderstand me here, because I agree on both counts. But neither are easy nor always enjoyable. I have written a few comments which have been submitted on behalf of the NCSG, and while I like the process of reviewing consultation materials, analysing documents, reviewing the activities of the Working Groups through their mailing lists and relevant transcripts, and writing a first draft, this all takes time.

What I find particularly exhausting is having to then herd cats to get any feedback. Feedback is not just a +1, though they are nice -- for it to be useful there needs to be a bit of meat on the bones. And there are real challenges involved in facilitating this feedback, because we are asking people to comment on an issue that I (or someone else) has spent a great deal of time studying in order to prepare the first draft of a comment. There are probably only a dozen members that we have who possess the subject knowledge to be able to evaluate a comment without first reviewing a great deal of documents. I am not saying we shouldn't engage our membership better - we must! - I am only saying it is not easy to do in practice, and takes away the time of the writer of the first draft from working on preparing additional comments.

Writing comments is not only the responsibility of the PC; anyone can and is welcome to do so. I have previously written to this list asking if we have anyone who speaks Ge'ez, and offering to work with them to draft a response to the Proposal for Ethiopic Script Root Zone Label Generation Rules. I did not hear back, but that offer still stands. I am reluctant to support the idea of PC sub-teams only because that sounds like each one will need a coordinator to take charge, but informally, if we can work together on something, reach out to me. I'd really like to help where I can.

Best wishes,

Ayden Férdeline

[linkedin.com/in/ferdeline](http://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdeline)

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Re: comments on the ICANN budget

Local Time: 2 May 2017 9:57 PM

UTC Time: 2 May 2017 20:57

From: milton at GATECH.EDU

To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU

> -----Original Message-----

> Before Ed came up with his comment, there had already been a comment

> drafted on the PC list (only), he posted there as a reaction to it, and while he

> could at that point have Cc'd ncsg-discuss, anybody else in PC list could have

> done it at any point just as well (or anyone not on the list but interested

That's exactly what I have been trying to say: the PC - not out of ill intent, but out of habit and perhaps a bit of laziness - is increasingly siloing itself and excluding the SG as a whole from important discussions. I understand fully how easy it is to slip into this habit, I understand that it takes an extra bit of effort to include the rest of the membership. For that to change it has to be challenged.

> enough to follow it, after all it is publicly archived).

An enormous amount of information is "publicly archived." One could spend the rest of one's life digging it out.

This is not the way to go. Archives are there as a record.

In real time, it is the _obligation_ of PC members and especially chairs of important committees to _push_ the information out to the membership.

> It's just too natural to follow up discussions wherever they are happening

> without thinking, and it does take an extra mental effort to stop and think

> with every time should I change the distribution now.

I am asking everyone on the PC, and especially chairs and Councilors, to make that extra mental effort.

Always.

--MM
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