Question from the Board and our answer

[Stephanie E Perrin]

I think it would be good to reinforce the idea that small teams must 
have balanced stakeholder representation, and that it is doubly 
important in small teams for SOIs to be transparent, and that members 
must reveal (even if to an escrow agent) who they are working for.  The 
reality is that full committee or council review of complex matters that 
have been distilled in small teams is never as good as full 
participation.  Further, those small teams should be fully transparent 
to outside observation of meetings. Several have been closed meetings, 
and this is counter to the open and transparent principles on which 
ICANN is based.

Thanks for your work on this!

Stephanie Perrin

On 2023-03-13 9:19 a.m., farzaneh badii wrote:
> All,
> We have an NCSG board meeting today and the Board is asking a peculiar 
> question:
>
> “The ICANN Board would like to explore how to
> combine the efficiencies of an agile approach to problem solving, like
> the Council’s small teams, with the need for accountability and
> transparency, to make progress on policy conversations. When would such
> an approach be most appropriate and how can we ensure that it does not
> circumvent required steps in a policy development process? »
>
> We discussed this during the NCSG meeting yesterday. In a nutshell we 
> don't think an "agile approach" that is not predicted in the bylaws is 
> appropriate at all. If the Board wants to make the processes more 
> efficient and effective, they can refrain from re-opening the issues 
> and rehashing the policy recommendations that we make in policy 
> development processes. Also adding layers and layers of implementation 
> and enforcement processes such as ODAs don't help with efficiency. 
> Unfortunately the push for efficiency and the board desire to re-open 
> issues or be creative in resolving unsolved matters has led to 
> creating processes that are ad hoc and might not be in accordance with 
> the bylaws. One such group that the board created and we objected to 
> is the group on closed generics. (*we need to discuss this point)*
>
> *this is my opinion which we can discuss:*
> The Council's small teams are not "agile processes". They are internal 
> processes that don't violate the bylaws because the small teams don't 
> make the decision, they just lay the groundwork for decision-making at 
> the council level and they have to discuss all the issues with the 
> council.
>
> Please weigh in so that we can wrap it up by 3 PM. Also what's with 
> the obsession with the word "agile". Somebody got an MBA recently and 
> went to a WEF meeting?
>
>
>
>
> Farzaneh
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