Private Calls for NCSG Leadership Committees

[Stephanie E Perrin]

Good Morning.

It is great to see people care about policy and meeting discussions.  
Allow me to attempt to clear up what I see as unfortunate misperceptions 
as to what is going on.

First, the discussion with the Board.  For as long as I have been going 
to ICANN and sitting on a leadership position (that would be since the 
fall of 2014 when I was first elected to council), there have been 
informal breakfast meetings with the Board at face to face meetings,  
They were not recorded, and they were also invitation only....they were 
not on the agenda, and different leaders handled invitations 
differently.  I have vivid memories of being chastised for bringing 
along other folks who were at the meeting who were not elected officers, 
and even for bringing elected officers who had not been invited by the 
chair.  So I do challenge Amr's memory of how these things have 
evolved.  However, the important thing to focus on is how well they have 
been running in recent years, the fact that more Board members actually 
come, and that we have a useful and informal discussion of challenges 
and priorities.  Now the question that arose, when we realized we were 
going to be looking at virtual meetings for the foreseeable future, is 
how do we continue this fruitful discussion?  I have tried very hard to 
be more open than we have been in the past, with efforts such as the 
dinner at ICANN 66 to which we invited everyone in NCSG who was present 
at the meeting, not just a selected few.  So I am deeply in sympathy 
with the concept of all NCSG participating, not just the leadership 
team, but it is not accurate to characterize those breakfast meetings as 
having been open in the past, there were never more than a dozen or so 
of us there.

Given the frank and open nature of the discussion, and the fact that we 
are all suffering from zoom webinar fatigue, I discussed it with the 
Chairs and we invited the NCSG EC and the NCSG policy committee.   Now, 
at no time did anyone on the policy committee or EC push for wider 
participation.  As an elected official I know the buck stops with me, I 
am responsible and accountable for this decision.  However, all the 
other leaders had plenty of opportunity to suggest we open this up to 
the list.  The policy committee has broader representation than just the 
councillors, and the chairs also have a duty to speak up.  Frankly, I do 
not think we will have a good discussion with Board members if all of 
our members who are not necessarily following our work closely dial in 
and ask questions, but I am open to debating the issue if you wish.  
More fruitful, in my opinion, would be discussion with your elected 
representatives.  Send your questions in.  Listen to the recordings.  We 
are planning to have another call with Matthew Shears at the end of 
August, and I am trying to settle the date right now so that everyone 
can plan to attend.

There is a broader issue that surfaces in the context of this debate.  
Folks are not happy with the webinar mode for virtual meetings.  They 
want to participate,  There are many reasons why virtual meetings have 
not taken off over the past 20 years as predicted, replacing all travel 
to conferences , and we have COVID 19 to thank for forcing us to try to 
make this mechanism actually work better than it is working right now.  
It seems to me that we will have to find a way for everyone to chat and 
participate during a session, without holding up the discussion that 
leaders or working group members are having.  This is, I believe, why 
chat is disabled for viewers. but it certainly makes webinar mode 
unattractive to non participants.  We are all being subjected to webinar 
contacts in every sphere of life, we want ICANN to remain a leader in 
multistakeholder engagement, and that means everybody gets to speak.  I 
would like to propose that we experiment with this by trying a parallel 
discussion, with a leader managing a parallel channel with observers to 
a call, and if volume permits, allowing interaction with the main 
channel.  Of course if nobody shows up, this is not a problem, but if 
100 show up it can be challenging to have a productive discussion in an 
hour.

This is just a modest proposal.

On to the second meeting, with the Commercial Party House presumptive 
nominee for GNSO Council Chair.

We have been putting this meeting off since the election, because folks 
were focused on other issues, including the KL virtual meeting.  I am 
remiss, we ought to have had this meeting a while ago.  The 
determination of Council Chair is a matter where Councillors will vote.  
Phillippe Fouquart is very open to having another meeting, in August (we 
have a September 1 deadline on this matter).  I made a special effort to 
make sure we found a date that suited Rafik, who as Vice Chair of the 
GNSO Council has a broad perspective on what the Council's needs and 
priorities are, and as part of the leadership team has a thorough grasp 
of the requirements of the job.  Rafik has had a gruelling schedule 
lately involving nighttime daily meetings for Council and the 
Chairmanship of the EPDP.  We picked Thursday 12:00 UTC to suit his 
schedule and Tatiana's.  Unfortunately, the meeting invitation did not 
reach us in a timely manner, my fault for not doing followup on that as 
soon as we landed on the correct time.  My family came to see me this 
week for the first time in 5 months, so I must admit that I was offline 
and preoccupied with my new grandchildren, not the manner in which this 
meeting was rolling out.  Mea culpa.  However, I am following up with 
Philippe to schedule another meeting in a couple of weeks in August, and 
we will agree that date and invite the entire NCSG to participate with a 
minimum of two weeks notice, you have my word.

In closing, may I say that I have 83 days left in my term as NCSG 
Chair.  I am doing my best to manage this heavily administrative role, 
but I would be the first to say that results are not up to my 
standards.  I am always eager to talk to people, if they have concerns.  
i am not sure that posting criticism to the list is the most effective 
way to solve a problem, particularly when something is a mere oversight 
(as is the case in the GNSO Council Chair meeting) or is debatable point 
that I am happy to discuss (as is the case with the breakfast meeting 
with the Board members).  I am trying to foster a productive discussion 
here, but if nobody talks to me, it is quite difficult.  I hope that 
when Bruna takes over on October 22, you give her your full, whole 
hearted support. There is no reason for drama or distrust here folks, we 
have enough with COVID, we need to all pull together and help one another.

Stephanie Perrin

NCSG Chair


On 2020-07-31 8:12 a.m., Olivier Kouami wrote:
> +2 @Amr. Thanks for sharing your experiences. It's good to know. And 
> this is still weird, for me.
> Kind regards.
> Olévié
>
> Le ven. 31 juil. 2020 à 10:38, Amr Elsadr <aelsadr at icannpolicy.ninja> 
> a écrit :
>
>     Hi,
>
>     You couldn’t be more wrong on all counts, Raoul.
>
>     This wasn’t an NCSG EC/Board meeting…, and in all my years with
>     the NCSG, I’ve never heard of any such meeting take place. There
>     are regular open NCSG/Board Meetings at ICANN public meetings,
>     which anybody (you don’t even need to be an NCSG member) may
>     attend. This wasn’t one of those, though. This was another kind of
>     meeting we also used to regularly have, which is a small informal
>     meeting between NCSG members and Board members from the GNSO (CPH
>     and NCPH appointees). These also used to take place at ICANN
>     public meetings, traditionally over breakfast, and were never
>     limited to NCSG leadership participation only. We even had Fellows
>     and Next-Gen participants attend those in the past. Basically…,
>     anybody who was willing to get up a little early and go to that
>     breakfast. I don’t know where you got the /“This has been going on
>     for many years already and business as usual”/ from, but that’s a
>     factually incorrect statement. Like I said, these have always been
>     informal meetings, and never recorded or anything…, but still very
>     important.
>
>     Also, when you frame my concern as one of “transparency”, and
>     claim it’s overblown, it makes me think you either stopped reading
>     my email halfway through, or you just completely missed the point
>     I was making. I never claimed that there is a transparency (or
>     lack thereof) issue. Never even mentioned the word in my email, so
>     please don’t make this about something it’s not.
>
>     My concern is with how the NCSG’s leadership is organizing these
>     meetings in ways that are counter-productive to the work being
>     done by our members. I gave the EPDP and ATRT as examples of where
>     we have members actively working on issues, where interaction with
>     the Board is vital to how we make strategic plans about the actual
>     work we are doing moving forward.
>
>     This isn’t about virtual handshakes and photo ops (or
>     screenshots). This is about engaging with the Board members we
>     appoint on critical issues like how they’re going to deal with a
>     final report that the NCSG really needs to see adopted, when we
>     have “divergence” on 2 of the recommendations in that report by
>     the EPDP Team. It’s about engaging with them on their plans to
>     work these issues out with the ACs (ALAC, GAC and SSAC) that are
>     doing everything they can to sink all the work done over the past
>     2 years on that EPDP, so that they can work these issues out in
>     closed rooms with the Board and staff, and exclude the NCSG from
>     these discussions altogether. Y’know…, real NCSG work stuff, Raoul?
>
>     When Matthew Shears was up for reappointment by the NCPH, I
>     specifically asked him to make sure to hold these meetings with
>     the NCSG in order to have an opportunity to discuss these very
>     issues, and he complied. It’s our own Executive Committee that
>     failed to announce the meeting to the general membership. That
>     doesn’t mean there was lack of transparency. The call was
>     announced on the EC mailing list, which is publicly archived.
>
>     You also seem to have selectively ignored the second call we were
>     not invited to, which was a call with a candidate from the ISPCP
>     Constituency running for GNSO Chair. I hope I don’t need to
>     explain the relevance of attending a call concerning that election
>     to you. If you feel I do, I’d be happy to. Now that Maryam has
>     circulated the recording and attendance of that call, it’s clear
>     that the majority of our Councilors did not attend it, including
>     the incoming Councilors who will be voting for and working with
>     the new GNSO Chair. I always have a checklist of promises I ask
>     candidates for GNSO Chair to make, such as a commitment to guard
>     the GNSO’s right to develop gTLD policy recommendations, which is
>     a right always under attack by ICANN ACs. If a candidate is not
>     willing to publicly make this commitment (as an example), I
>     normally advise our Councilors to not back him/her as a candidate.
>
>     So, Raoul…, are you getting a picture of what the big deal is?
>
>     Thanks.
>
>     Amr
>
>>     On Jul 31, 2020, at 11:32 AM, Raoul Plommer <plommer at GMAIL.COM
>>     <mailto:plommer at GMAIL.COM>> wrote:
>>
>>     I think this demand for transparency is somewhat overblown here,
>>     Amr. The board has gotten together with NCSG EC and its chairs
>>     like with all the other SGs. What's the big deal? This has been
>>     going on for many years already and business as usual as far as I
>>     can see.
>>
>>     -Raoul
>>
>>     On Fri, 31 Jul 2020 at 06:58, Olivier Kouami
>>     <olivierkouami at gmail.com <mailto:olivierkouami at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         +1 @Amr.
>>
>>         Warm regards
>>         Olévié
>>
>>         Le jeu. 30 juil. 2020 à 12:40, Amr Elsadr
>>         <aelsadr at icannpolicy.ninja
>>         <mailto:aelsadr at icannpolicy.ninja>> a écrit :
>>
>>             Hi,
>>
>>             From looking at the NCSG EC Archive
>>             (https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-ec/2020-July/date.html),
>>             I see that there are a couple of calls that are taking
>>             place without any notice or invitation being sent to our
>>             general membership. I, for one, would have liked to
>>             attend both calls, and don’t understand why they’ve been
>>             kept from us regular members by the NCSG EC.
>>
>>             The first call, held yesterday (29 July) was apparently
>>             with Matthew Shears, and possibly other ICANN Board
>>             members too. I recall holding a call with Matthew when he
>>             was up for reelection by the NCPH (we were invited to
>>             that call, thankfully), and recall specifically asking
>>             him to hold periodic calls with our members as a means to
>>             keep in touch, and facilitate communication with the
>>             NCSG. Matthew seems to be doing his part, but we’ve been
>>             excluded form participation by our own SG’s leadership (a
>>             presumption on my part, so please correct me if I’m
>>             mistaken).
>>
>>             Right now would have been a really good time to engage
>>             with our Board members, especially considering the EPDP
>>             finalizing its Phase 2 final report, and the Board having
>>             a seemingly strong opinion on one of the recommendations,
>>             which conflicts with our own. There may be other topics
>>             of importance to our members, like the recent ATRT
>>             recommendations, and what the Board’s consideration of
>>             those will mean to the ICANN MSM.
>>
>>             Earlier today, it seems like a second call was also held
>>             (or was at least scheduled to be) with colleagues in the
>>             CSG regarding the election of a new GNSO Chair. Again…,
>>             this is an issue of great importance to NCSG members,
>>             particularly those who are engaged in policy development
>>             in the GNSO. Why were we not invited to attend this call
>>             as well? I hope that the NCSG’s new incoming Council
>>             representatives were at least invited to this second
>>             call, since they will be expected to work with the new
>>             GNSO Chair, and will also be expected to vote in this
>>             election.
>>
>>             I find this kind of disregard to our members’
>>             participation to be incredibly counter-productive to the
>>             work we do, and don’t really care for explanations or
>>             excuses. I’d just really like to see it stop.
>>
>>             Thanks.
>>
>>             Amr
>>
>
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