Letter from a NCSG Volunteer

Sun Oct 25 23:49:38 EET 2020

Dear Rafik the Chair,
Thank you for your selfless service and showing a high quality of
volunteerism.
 Your views and leadership style is exemplary, wishing you all the best in
your next endeavors.

It has taken me this long to read your letter and give a response.
Indeed it is an epistle and guideline for anyone willing to participate,
however, what must how community to do to prevent losing rich resources
like yourself?
NCSG 's attrition rate is quite high.

Once again thank you for all your contributions.

Best Regards,
Benjamin

On Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 2:45 PM h i <hfaiedh.ines2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> A huge 'thank you' to you Rafik for your selfless service within NCSG as
> well as your tremendous IG work for your local and regional community.
> As you said you will surely be there to give a hand and I wish you the
> best of luck in your future endeavors.
>
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 20:07 Olga Kyryliuk <olga_kyryliuk at ukr.net> wrote:
>
>> Hi Rafik,
>>
>> Joining the row of all members who said “thank you”. I believe it
>> couldn’t be a shorter email from you given that huge and instrumental role
>> that you played defending the interests of the community. You’ve did so
>> much and with such utmost dedication. And for that we at NCSG and NCUC owe
>> you the highest admiration and appreciation.
>>
>> Not sure it is a common saying but in my part of the world we would say
>> it is an end of an epoch when people like you are leaving.
>>
>> I wish you all the good luck with the future plans and achievements. And
>> as was said many times before me, hope you’ll not totally disappear from
>> ICANN.
>>
>> P.S. It is close to impossible at this point to imagine another voice
>> explaining all policy hurdles during the PC calls :-)
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Olga
>>
>>
>> * 21 октября 2020, 16:15:18, от "Rafik Dammak" < rafik.dammak at gmail.com
>> <rafik.dammak at gmail.com>>: *
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>>
>> Today is officially my final day as councillor and I wanted because of
>> that to share some thoughts with you. I am not planning to seek any elected
>> role within NCSG or NCUC in near future and hoping to have some time away
>> from ICANN. Sorry as it will be a long message but I hope you will find
>> time to read it and use it as it fits.
>>
>> It was a great 4 years on the council and I believe I could participate
>> in achieving some projects there. I do think the GNSO council is evolving
>> in its role of PDP manager and changing its working methods. However, there
>> are still challenges coming and our representatives there have to be ready
>> and prepared to step up.
>>
>> PDP 3.0: I had the chance to be involved in that project as a member of
>> the council leadership team till being the lead for the implementation. I
>> really urge everyone to read the final report for the implementation to
>> understand the different areas covered and to listen to the webinars
>> presenting the recommendations. No, PDP 3.0 is not the silver bullet, not
>> solving all problems in council or PDP. It is aimed to create a new dynamic
>> of continuous improvement and so the work will continue.  PDP 3.0 is an
>> opportunity and challenge for NCSG. For example, using a representational
>> model can ensure that we are not overwhelmed like in an open working group
>> and give us weight. However, it also means that we have to have enough of a
>> pool of candidates and people who will participate effectively there and
>> keep us updated regularly. The PDP 3.0 needs be also seen with the broader
>> context of board initiative for multistakeholder model initiative or now
>> the new proposal for Operational Design Phase for gTLD Policy
>> Implementation and possibly later the one for PDP lifecycle. We have to be
>> vigilant and ensure that GNSO remains the center point and sole responsible
>> for gTLD policy making and management.
>>
>> GNSO Council: the council is being more assertive in terms of program
>> management and planning the activities. It also added new tools for
>> managing such the overhauled Project list, the new ADR (Actions Decisions
>> Radar) and Project management tool. We don’t want to have 3 heavy PDP WG
>> running at the same time with 2 extending their timelines for almost 4
>> years and another being terminated before delivering. The council also
>> spent time to outline the roles and responsibilities of WG leadership,
>> council liaisons etc. Our representatives have an important role to be
>> aware about the council discussions and topics brought for council
>> attention, report them and participate on all the small teams and drafting
>> activities, review all the documents, ask the right questions and get
>> detailed responses from ICANN staff. Definitely it is not just about
>> attending the monthly council call. Our representatives also have to
>> continue the coordination and be able to vote following NCSG membership
>> positions. Regarding the reporting, we have some experiments with the
>> council meeting summary but personally I couldn’t continue because of the
>> workload. I hope things will improve in that area.
>>
>> Council leadership: I had the privilege to be council vice-chair for NCPH
>> for 3 years and work with 2 different teams. It was a good learning
>> experience and let me participate in setting the council agenda, being
>> aware about the topics discussed and participating at a different level in
>> term of working with staff, WG, board and other SO/AC. I acknowledge that
>> was not a light workload and sometimes I had to balance between being a
>> NCSG representative and vice-chair. We have now new leadership team and we
>> got Tatiana to be the next vice chair for NCPH. I trust she will do a great
>> job there. It is important to keep asking the leadership the right
>> questions and not just count on them to do everything.
>>
>> Policy Committee, I have been chair of NCSG PC for almost 4 years and I
>> think we did well but there are a lot of things to improve and move to the
>> next level. The PC has an important responsibility for NCSG to shape its
>> policy positions and follow closely all PDP and non-PDP activities, council
>> work etc. That can be only done if all PC members participate actively,
>> between councillors and constituencies representatives. In terms of
>> challenges, the PC has to continue the work on improving the working
>> methods (such operating procedures), improve the reporting to members and
>> how to scale out our participation taking into the new trends and incoming
>> changes in PDP and committees. We had some webinars this year for EPDP but
>> we could do more in several policy  topics more regularly to complement our
>> monthly calls but I acknowledge that will require more work and
>> preparation. Our engagement in ICANN is all about policy and that is what
>> matters. Other issues are more means to achieve that and we need to be
>> careful about where to spend our attention and effort to be effective. it
>> is always tempting to jump between too many issues and forgetting what is
>> essential i.e. defending the rights of non-commercial registrants and
>> users.
>>
>> I also had the chance to work with different NCSG chairs and my
>> conclusion is important to have a supportive chair who else understands
>> their role and limits within what the charter describes. NCSG charter set a
>> clear division of labor and scope for the committees. We just need to make
>> that work more effectively. There is so much to do and few people to
>> volunteer to make it.
>>
>> Regarding participation, I know this topic that was in the agenda of many
>> leadership and candidates, that was discussed several times and many ideas
>> or initiatives suggested or implemented such as policy writing. My take is
>> that participation is at the end depending a lot of personal engagement and
>> commitment. We can create favorable conditions and prepare but there are
>> limits to that. Personally, I believe I grew up and learned a lot as an
>> elected officer but that meant being active and participating. Some
>> experience is needed and effectiveness is required. if you read the GNSO
>> operating procedures, you have already understood a lot about GNSO council
>> and PDP. There are now other resources like ICANN learn. There are regular
>> webinars and policy briefings that anyone can listen or read. My
>> observation is those who volunteered for drafting and/or joined working
>> groups were able to move faster than just counting on any kind of capacity
>> building. I want also to emphasize that most of the work is done between
>> F2F meetings, in numerous calls, exchange in mailing lists and volunteering
>> to draft or review proposals and documents.
>>
>> Future topics: if you check the GNSO work plan , project list and more
>> importantly the ADR you can get an idea about what is coming as work at
>> GNSO level. there is RPM phase 2, the endless list of RDS related tasks due
>> to EPDP etc. But it still doesn’t cover everything. We have to deal with
>> all recommendations coming from the review teams and being assigned to GNSO
>> or even recommendations from WS2. We have possibly also the GNSO review
>> coming and this requires everyone to understand the background of the first
>> GNSO review and how the structuring helped us to be more vocal and
>> influential in council. I am pragmatic and not keen on pessimistic
>> approaches. We need to identify what is coming calmly and strategize how to
>> respond to that by building our initial positions, understanding the
>> parameters and terms of the activity to be initiated and more importantly
>> preparing the volunteers who lead there. We also have new activity now in
>> NCSG that might propose some changes. I think there are a lot of
>> expectations from new leadership to make changes but first it is critical
>> to identify the issues and right priorities. Things can change anytime.
>>
>> I believe in self-criticism and acknowledge that getting criticism or
>> feedback is not that easy. I acknowledge that I made mistakes and failed on
>> some issues. I can only apologize sincerely and take responsibility. It is
>> easy to deny and deflect but it is definitely not the right way. I can only
>> state that I worked with good faith and what I believed aligned with NCSG
>> interests and values. There is temptation to object all the time, to make
>> strong statements but the real work in the trenches is about building
>> consensus and finding common ground. It is not visible, it is not sexy but
>> I believe it has a lasting impact.
>>
>>
>>
>> Finally and with this,  I will be only active as a member and will try to
>> attend calls as much as possible or participate in discussion if I can
>> help. I will be glad to support our elected officers and representatives
>> and give them feedback. Thanks everyone for your confidence and trust that
>> you gave for all those years I was representing NCSG in different roles
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Rafik Dammak
>>
>> NCSG member
>>
>>
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