A Proposal to Merge NCSG, NCUC and NPOC for More Efficiency in ICANN=?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=DNS Work

[Mueller, Milton L]

Hey, Raoul:

Having three ECs and ICANN supporting most of those members to live meetings is a major difference in my view. Almost all EC members should be concerned with policy anyway, so eradicating 2/3 of our travel slots would likely result in even less policy activity.

MM: They don’t actually support all of them. But even if they did, the argument that we need constituencies in order to expand travel support is the kind of trap we need to get out of. I think that the allocation to NCSG for travel support would be roughly the same – the difference would be that a unified SG would better be able to select people to travel based on their contribution to the policy or admin work, not simply because they held one of an artificially inflated number of positions.

Sure, the administrative work is probably doubled with the triumvirate as opposed to a singular structure. However, Maryam gets paid by ICANN to maintain most of the administrative work (just like is done with other SGs) so it's not really eating _that_ much into the efficiency of volunteers.

MM: Seriously, Maryam does not do most of the administrative work. Ask Bruna! The constituency chair has to communicate, develop meeting agendas, hold votes, etc. And we have to find people to occupy those positions.

What WOULD help with the confusion, is to embrace the logical division that is set in the names of our constituencies. Delegate NGO issues to NPOC and individual user issues to NCUC. Very easy to explain to all newcomers.

MM: I don’t think that division actually describes the difference between the two. And I don’t think you are going to get much support for arbitrarily re-dividing the NCSG along those lines.

NCUC has always been composed of noncommercial orgs, indeed we did not even have individual members until relatively recently. My own member org, IGP, is happy where we are; it seems like many of the most active NPOC people are individuals now (Sam?). NPOC was initially founded by big nonprofits with trademarks whose talk of “operational concerns” was kind of a euphemism for trademark protection. NPOC left that behind some years ago however. Most of the policy issues NCSG is active around, such as privacy and free expression, are as salient to individuals as to organizations. So, trying to impose a new division on the two would just shuffle people around and create more confusion.

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