Procedures/Individual/organizations membership at NCSG

[farzaneh badii]

Farzaneh


On Sun, Sep 9, 2018 at 3:41 PM Sam Lanfranco <lanfran at yorku.ca> wrote:

> Dear NCSG Colleagues,
>
> For private reasons I have been less involved in NCSG/NPOC for 2018. I
> have kept abreast of issues and have long been concerned with those
> surrounding organizational and individual membership. I would like to
> comment here from several slightly different perspectives.
>
> First, while we come from the non-commercial constituencies, we address
> the concerns of the non-commercial constituencies. We do not represent the
> non-commercial constituency stakeholder group nor are we in any formal way
> accountable to it. We simply do our best.
>
> Organizational members may represent the interests and concerns of their
> organization, then again maybe not. Let me be personal here. When asked
> to join NPOC and NCSG I had recently served as Chair of the Board for
> Canadian global health ngo CSIH. This was early in the ongoing discussions
> around the Red Cross domain name issue and concerns about health relate
> gTLDs.
>
> After a couple of years my NGO effectively untethered me, leaving me to
> maintain a watching brief and reporting back on issues that may concern
> them. The rest of the time I could simple engage in addressing the concerns
> of the non-commercial constituency. My ngo views its membership as part of
> its “good works”.  I simply do my best and only report back when a
> relevant issue emerges. I  do not speak on behalf of my organizational
> member.
>
> It would be interesting to know how many organizational members have a
> formal obligation to report back to their organization, and how many
> pre-clear their positions on, and participation in, ICANN policy matters.
> When that is not the case, being also an individual member with the
> associated extra votes raises troubling questions. That is why, although I
> could, I have not applied for individual membership.
>
> To cut this short, most of the serious ICANN work is done among us on a
> consensus basis. What is important is the dialogue, the knowledge sharing,
> and how hard working members produce useful outputs. Voting is mainly for
> selecting among ourselves those willing to put in even more work in
> essentially administrative leadership positions. Those we elect do not have
> extraordinary powers, they have extra duties.  Voting is not about
> resolving policy or implementation issues.
>
This leaves me to wonder why we do not simply have one membership, and one
> vote, per member. Even the large organization small organization
> distinction makes little sense.
>

Totally agree Sam.  Why we are giving organizations more voting weight than
individual members while what they do more or less is the same at NCSG is a
mystry to me. Sometimes organizations have one member or employee! Orgs are
not giving bigger dues (we don't charge dues) they are not contributing
more than individuals do in any other way.



> We, individually or representing the express positions of our
> organizations, bring evidence, logic, and context to bear when deliberating
> policy and implementation issues. Hard fought battles still end in
> consensus. They do not end because the vote was 51:49 and “ever vote
> counts”.  What is important is the integrity of the process and the
> quality of the consensual outputs. The scale and scope of membership and
> voting rights should reflect this. As they stand they address things that
> are really a non-issue here.
>
> While I don't expect this to happen in the short run, I would support
> simplifying participation to one membership and one vote, and returning our
> energies to producing ICANN deliverables.
>
> Sam L., NPOC
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------
> "It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured
> in an unjust state" -Confucius
>  邦有道，贫且贱焉，耻也。邦无道，富且贵焉，耻也
> ------------------------------------------------
> Visiting Prof, Xi'an Jaiotong-Liverpool Univ, Suzhou, China
> Dr Sam Lanfranco (Prof Emeritus), Econ, York U., CANADA
> email: Lanfran at Yorku.ca   Skype: slanfranco
> blog:  https://samlanfranco.blogspot.com
> Phone: +1 613-476-0429 cell: +1 416-816-2852
>
>
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