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

[Raphael Beauregard-Lacroix]

Hi all

Thanks for the lively discussion. As Raoul hints at, we are currently in a
summer lull+leadership transition period, with substantial changes in all
three ECs. As far as the leadership itself is concerned, I believe it is
difficult to move things forward in any direction pending the changes in
October.

Yet as Milton laid out in this thread or the other, there is nothing that
prevents motivated members from starting to look at the Charters and
drafting what could be possible amendments, according to their vision and
understanding. In that regard, I invite everyone to have a look at
amendment procedures for the various Charters.

Finally, speaking only for myself, although I do think it applies to most
of the current+incoming leadership, I can assure you that I am following
the discussion and taking notes of what appears to be the actual problems.
Whatever happens with the merger plan in the end, it is already clear that
there are things that can be improved independently of it, and it is my
plan to work on that along with everyone else in the SG and Cs
leadership(s).

And obviously, feel free to continue to discuss ;)

Have a nice day,


On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 2:01 PM Raoul Plommer <plommer at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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