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

[Raoul Plommer]

>
> 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


We do not need to expand our current travel support. Reducing it will
likely result in less policy done. All the other Stakeholder groups'
members get paid for their work at ICANN. What evidence do you have to
support the claim that we would somehow have even roughly the same amount
of travel slots from ICANN after our fusion, when all the SGs are getting
the same amount of slots based on a number of internal entities(?) ?

It would be a different matter, if we were actually now expanding to create
additional constituencies just to get more travel slots, which would be
less savoury in my eyes too, but taking away 2/3 of the biggest perk (right
after saving the world of course!) of our work seems just silly to me.

How would the amalgamation affect our influence at NCPH, and moreover at
the GNSO? For one, at the GNSO, NPOC was recently mentioned as one true
case of evolution of the GNSO and thus likely to result in NCSG getting
another seat at NomCom. I think to even reconsider Sam's proposal, we need
a serious analysis on the results of such magnitude. I am sure there are
other such examples that we need to find out about.

 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.


People are individuals, active or not. NPOC only allows organisations as
its members and individuals represent those organisations at ICANN. I
represent Open Knowledge Finland. It turns out "Not-For-Profit Operational
Concerns" was never ratified at ICANN. *It has always been Not-for-Profit
Organizations Constituency*. At least if the latest official version of
NPOC charter is to be believed, that is hosted at ICANN's website.
"Operational Concerns" seems just spin and graphics on a website and
business cards some years ago. Nothing official. We have also updated our
charter in our review process to reduce the size of our EC from six to
four, enabling us to send the most active member from the region to every
ICANN meeting with CROP.

We should really be concentrating on our actual work. Our internal
structure seems the least of our problems at the moment and to be perfectly
honest, I don't think the whole discussion is very positive as a whole. I
would certainly like to wait at least until our new chairs are on board to
revisit this discussion again.

-Raoul

On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 at 10:41, Michael J. Oghia <mike.oghia at gmail.com> wrote:

> In addition to Milton's comments on the third point, I want to highlight
> another point. There is so much natural overlap between the issues that
> each constituency addresses that trying to divide or delineate more
> explicitly may end up backfiring or creating confusion and more unnecessary
> work. A united, but still specialised, approach seems more prudent to me.
>
> Best,
> -Michael
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 12:25 AM Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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