Procedures/Individual/organizations membership at NCSG

Tue Sep 11 10:22:00 EEST 2018

>
> We should try to make this uncomplicated, whilst protecting against undue
> influence of a particular organization.  As to whether privacy law prevents
> us from asking members who they represent, I am consulting my legal
> contacts because I am sure there is a legally compliant way to do this.  I
> do not share Raoul's view that this is "paranoid".

Stephanie, we can't really monitor who are members of which organisation,
outside the ICANN organisations and we can't store that information because
of the GDPR. Being scared of an organisational takeover isn't a valid
concern to store this kind of sensitive data, that's all I meant about
being paranoid. I'll be gladly admitting my assumption false if your legal
contacts tell you otherwise - I'm no lawyer after all.

-Raoul

>
>

On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 at 17:43, Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu> wrote:

> I disagree, Stephanie.
>
> Indeed, I think it’s completely absurd to have organizations that have
> 45,000 members with the same voting power as an individual. Many major
> noncommercial organizations will simply refuse to join a constituency with
> that kind of a voting structure.  We make a pretty simple and flat voting
> structure, with large orgs, small orgs and individuals. There are more
> individuals than organizations, so it works out fairly balanced.
>
>
>
> I agree with Sam that voting is relatively unimportant except when it
> comes to election of officers.
>
> It takes a lot of trouble and time to organize a vote, so the idea that
> every administrative decision has to be voted on by the membership is
> impractical.
>
>
>
> For those unaware of the history, NCUC started as an organization-only
> constituency, and so did NPOC. Because of the problems many people have
> getting authorization to “represent” entire organizations, and in order to
> allow for broader participation, we allowed individual membership. We
> adjusted voting shares accordingly.
>
>
>
>
>
> Dr. Milton L Mueller
>
> Professor, School of Public Policy <http://spp.gatech.edu/>
>
> Georgia Institute of Technology
>
> Internet Governance Project
>
> http://internetgovernance.org/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* NCSG-Discuss [mailto:NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] *On Behalf Of
> *Stephanie Perrin
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 11, 2018 8:24 AM
> *To:* NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: Procedures/Individual/organizations membership at NCSG
>
>
>
> I agree.  I think it is entirely problematic to provide more votes for
> larger organizations.  I also share a concern about differentiating between
> the participation of a member as a rep of an organization, or as an
> individual.  People should declare their status and that is an end of it.
> If a member who represents an organization has a strong personal view in a
> matter that is not supported by their organization, surely they can explain
> their viewpoint with a caveat.
>
> We should try to make this uncomplicated, whilst protecting against undue
> influence of a particular organization.  As to whether privacy law prevents
> us from asking members who they represent, I am consulting my legal
> contacts because I am sure there is a legally compliant way to do this.  I
> do not share Raoul's view that this is "paranoid".  I think it is essential
> to have sound principles in place in our policies, to protect the diversity
> of our membership, and the essential human rights values of NCSG.
>
> Stephanie Perrin
>
> On 2018-09-10 16:14, farzaneh badii wrote:
>
>
> 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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