[NCSG-EC] Constituency review notes

[Tapani Tarvainen]

Dear all,

One item we have on the agenda on Friday is the constituency review.

As we discussed last time, I am drafting a questionnaire to be sent to
constituency chairs, and I will post it here before the meeting, but
here's some discussion and background info you may wish to comment on
already.


The review is described in section 2.3.3 of our Charter. There are a
few small bugs in the text, but the intent is obvious enough that they
should not cause us any problems. Below is the text with my comments
in between:

 "2.3.3 Constituency review for maintaining Recognition

  The NCSG-EC will be responsible for the periodic review of all
  Constituencies in accordance with the review criteria set forth by
  the Board of Directors.

  In the absence of any review criteria from the Board, the NCSG-EC
  will perform a review of all Constituencies every 2 years to
  determine if any recommendation will be made to Board regarding a
  change in status of any Constituency."

So the purpose is to verify how well our constituencies meet
the criteria set out in the charter, and possibly recommend
to the board that some constituency's status be changed.

The text does not explicitly address candidate constituencies,
but we already have our only candidate constituency's status
as a separate item on the meeting agenda, and I'll address
that in another message.

The review should be done every two years. It hasn't been done
yet, but I think we can use that as the time we'll ask about.
That is, the period we'd ask about would be last two years,
or maybe since the beginning of 2015 until today.

  "This review will consider:"

The criteria we must review are explicitly listed:


  "1. Constituencies must still have a defined noncommercial purpose
   and still meet the criteria established n section 2.3.1;"

Besides the lonely "n" obviously meaning "in", there's an obvious
error in the reference, as 2.3.1 talks about participation rights of
candidate constituencies. I assume the intended meaning is the second
(unnumbered) paragraph in section 2.3:

  "A group forming a Constituency should have a common interest or
   background, i.e. be homogeneous with respect to some dimension of
   relevance to ICANN and to the NCSG. Its focus must be sufficiently
   defined and have substantive relevance within both the ICANN and
   the NCSG context and with respect to its core mission. All members
   of the group should already either be members of the NCSG or be
   qualified for membership under the rules established in section 2.2
   on Membership."

So we must ask the constituencies for their defined purpose (which
presumably will be in their bylaws) and a description of the group
and its focus and substantive relevance to ICANN and NCSG.

We should also ask for confirmation that their members are NCSG
members. I read the "or be qualified..." part to be relevant only for
new groups aspiring to become constituencies - feel free to suggest
other interpretations.


  "2. Constituencies must have maintained a dynamic publicly archived
   discussion list;"

This is easy: let's just ask for link to the list archive.


  "3. Constituencies must have participated actively in relevant NCSG
   and GNSO Policy Development Process Working Groups or Work Teams;"

This is fairly clear as well, although the level of detail we should
ask is debatable. I would suggest asking for a list of working groups,
at least the number but possibly also names of people who've been in
them and if any of them have been chairs or co-chairs.

If you think we should ask for more details, suggestions welcome.


  "4. Constituencies must have participated actively in submitting
   comments and other policy statements to the NCSG and to the GNSO;
   and"

Here I'll suggest asking for a list of public comments and other
policy statements submitted: it should be easy enough to compile and
be more informative than mere number.


  "5. Constituencies must have at least 10 participants who sign on to
   an updated SOI for maintaining recognized status as a Constituency."

All we really need is a number here, but I guess we should ask
for a list of names so we can verify them.


Finally, 2.3.3 ends with

  "Any Recognized Constituency that loses that recognition may file a
   new petition in accordance with the Process for Recognition of New
   Constituencies."

This does not matter much at this point (although we should keep it
in the back of our minds that theoretically the review could result
in this).


We should also have an idea of how we'll evaluate the replies.

For the first item, purpose, focus &c, it's pretty impossible to write
down complete, definite criteria, although we could try to come up
with something a bit more explicit than the charter text itself.

Mailing list archive and number of people with SOIs are explicit
enough, though should a constituency fail in either I suggest
we'll simply tell then to fix it within X weeks or something like that.

For the activity questions we could try to come up with more explicit
criteria, a minimum for number of WGs or participants in them and a
minimum number of public comments per year or something like that, but
especially given that this is the first ever constituency review for
us, I suggest we'll leave it open and discuss it when we get replies.
We could then try to come up with suggested criteria or goals for next
review, however.

In general, I think our aim at this time would not be seriously
considering change of status of either constituency, but evaluating
their performance and setting criteria for that possibility in the
future.

With that in mind, besides asking for current status, we should ask
for plans for improvement, especially in areas that seem to need it,
and whether we, NCSG EC, could be of assistance.


Another thing we must consider is the timeline. I'm thinking something
like a month or two to reply to the questionnaire, another month for
possible follow-up questions should we feel some replies require
clarification, and one more month for us to make our conclusions.
That way we should be able to complete the process by time of the
Johannesburg meeting.


Comments welcome.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen