[NCSG-EC] Questions to the board

Mon Mar 13 16:40:26 EET 2023

Hi Farzi, Kathy, all,

Farzi, you're correct. The small team only works on and makes
recommendations to the full council about issues brought to the council.
Likenthe board small caucuses,  I think it is difficult to avoid small
teams in the Council. Oversight is in the form of the full council still
being able to choose to either accept or reject what a small team comes up
with. However, there are concerns about transparency of these small teams
to the larger community.

The concern about representation in the small groups are real too. However,
council would argue that the groups are open for any councilor to join, so
nothing stops all 6 NCSG councillors from joining any small team.

I also share Kathy's view but with a lot of caution, that we should support
the ACs early input to the policy process. Like our letter on the closed
generics team said, it is important and critical that we honour the
distinct responsibilities and roles between the GNSO and ACs.

Farzi, please do share your draft, I didn't get a chance to work on it.

Warmly,
Tomslin

On Mon, 13 Mar 2023, 08:22 farzaneh badii via NCSG-EC, <
ncsg-ec at lists.ncsg.is> wrote:

> Hi Kathy,
> the Council small groups are not really "agile processes". They have to go
> back to the council, they can't make decisions on their own. I think
> Tomslin can answer this better.
> That excerpt is from the letter you wrote with Tomslin and Manju when we
> raised concerns about that group.
> Anyhow I have drafted something which will send to the mailing list in a
> minute and then we can discuss.
>
> Farzaneh
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 8:07 AM Kathy Kleiman <Kathy at kathykleiman.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Farzi,
>>
>> As David pointed out yesterday, most of the Board question appears to be
>> directed at Small Team *on the GNSO Council.* Do you want to add anything
>> about that?  Aren't we concerned about that?
>>
>> As for the below, I'm not sure this is right. In narrow areas of
>> intractability - where the Multistakeholder process truly cannot reach a
>> decision (as was the case in Closed Generics) and you have to push forward
>> with some resolution, what do you do?  In this case, the GAC has a lot of
>> say since they wrote the Beijing GAC Advice 2013 that helped stopped Closed
>> Generics and said the fateful (but rather ambiguous words) that "exclusive
>> use gTLDs" (closed generics) need to "serve a public interest."  But what
>> is that public interest?  It's the GAC who needs to explain their own
>> advice, and like anything else in a policy process, that's complicated and
>> hard.
>>
>> In this case, Can't we give some credit to the Board? The last time
>> (2015), they took unilateral action to ban Closed Generics, but this time,
>> they are trying not to take unilateral action. If the Small Team concept
>> can get the Community past a very narrowly-defined bottleneck, that may be
>> a *good idea. *
>>
>> The other is that we - as a Community - *have criticized GAC and ALAC **for
>> coming in at the very end of a policy process and providing major input. *So
>> now GAC/ALAC are being asked to come in earlier so that their concerns can
>> be factored into the process before the Policy Development Process Working
>> Group dissolves.  Isn't it a little unfair to condemn them for doing what
>> we (as a Community) have asked them to do?
>>
>> **Plus, I was wondering *from our Councilors *whether we should voice
>> any concerns about GNSO Council Small Teams?
>> *I worry here that this is a problem as it is a) a new Council method
>> which seems to be operating without checks and balances and b) something
>> that means NCSG has one (rather than six) people involved in a process - a
>> serious imbalanced on these Council Small Teams and likely to lead to a
>> real problem if these Council Small Teams grow in  number or do serious
>> procedural business.  Shouldn't the Council be working as a Council (as the
>> full Council has a balance and checks in its current structure)? *
>>
>> Best, Kathy
>> On 3/12/2023 6:26 PM, farzaneh badii wrote:
>>
>> Here is the relevant part of our letter:
>>
>> “3. Such ‘facilitated dialogue’ is giving GAC a more pronounced role in
>> policy making than its advisory role as mandated in ICANN Bylaw.
>> GAC is welcome to engage in the policy development process in the early
>> stage as any other SO/ACs in order to ensure a policy outcome that takes
>> the multistakeholder perspective into account.
>> That said, it is important and critical that we honour the distinct
>> responsibilities and roles between the GNSO as the policy-making body and
>> GAC as an advisory committee.
>> And for that, it is critical that we make sure the multistakeholder model
>> is fair and balanced. Current practice of ACs participating in consensus
>> vote in PDPs while still enjoying the privilege of having their advice as
>> carrying some kind of different weight than the policy recommendations is
>> creating an asymmetrical power relation among AC and SO. This uneven
>> balance can negatively impact the legitimacy and accountability of ICANN’s
>> multistakeholder model.
>> In light of the above mentioned, it remains unclear how a facilitated
>> dialogue as proposed can create any other outcome than what the SubPro
>> couldn’t have achieved with 5 years of hard work. On that note, the
>> Noncommercial Stakeholder Group would also like to note that this
>> ‘facilitated dialogue’ can create a dangerous precedent of re-opening
>> issues. The community should learn to accept the product of difficult
>> compromise. And we should all learn to draw the line of when policy
>> recommendations are made and resolved by Council/Board, they are regarded
>> and respected as Consensus Policy.
>> The NCSG understands that the issue of Closed Generics remains without an
>> explicit GNSO recommendation as reported in the SubPro Final Report.
>> However, rather than inventing processes and setting a dangerous precedent,
>> we propose using a more balanced multi stakeholder approach in seeking
>> input on this topic. Therefore, we urge the GNSO to reconsider its support
>> to the proposed dialogue.
>> 3
>>
>>  Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group
>> Representing the interests and concerns of non-commercial Internet users
>> in domain name policy
>> Therefore, instead of pursuing a ‘closed dialogue’ with the GAC where the
>> scope and interlocutors are dictated by the ICANN Board, the NCSG
>> encourages the GNSO to seek community comments and perspectives on how to
>> proceed with Closed Generics throughout the already established
>> participatory mechanisms used by the ICANN community (i.e. public comments
>> and PDPs). We trust that a broader conversation can serve as a good
>> experience to collect the main issues and concerns around this topic, as
>> well as guidance to the GNSO Council members responsible for leading this
>> debate internally - should it occur despite our deep concerns for the ICANN
>> Multistakeholder model and precedent. How else will this small team - some
>> with very long-held personal views on the subject - be bound to a
>> discussion on behalf of the entire GNSO Community?”
>>
>> What was the board response? We should draft our response considering
>> that too.
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 12, 2023 at 5:17 PM farzaneh badii <farzaneh.badii at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> If Tomslin has the time to do it I think he is better placed because he
>>> was also involved with our objection to creating the closed generic group.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 12, 2023 at 5:14 PM Johan Helsingius <julf at julf.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/03/2023 17:09, farzaneh badii wrote:
>>>> > I will do the response wording to the board and send it to the
>>>> mailing
>>>> > list. Ill do that tonight hopefully.
>>>>
>>>> Great! Thanks!!
>>>>
>>>>         Julf
>>>>
>>>> --
>>> Farzaneh
>>>
>> --
>> Farzaneh
>>
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