[PC-NCSG] Fwd: SCI Methodology for Decision Making

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

this is a note I sent to Marika (slightly edited) on the issue of full consensus voting.  she recommended I send it to NCSG Council members as material you might use in the conversation the council is having.

avri

Begin forwarded message:

I think that the full consensus is important for several reasons:

1. the case of an Operating Procedure (OP) change being approved with a majority vote that affects something requiring greater than a majority vote.  E.g. if we did not require full consensus for a recommendation and only one SG disagreed with a change - i.e. ICANN consensus, we could have a circumstance where some constituency wanted to change the term limit rule (the kind of rule that is most often changed by organizations - not that I suspect anyone of this, it is just an example) to the 50% threshold: If all but one SG agreed in the SCI, i.e ICANN consensus, the council could enact that by a 50% vote.

We could even have a case of a majority being enough to raise a threshold, such as that for an issues report.  If a particular group does not want to see an issue report done that only one SG insists on, they can conceivably get ICANN consensus in SCI on raising the threshold and approve the change by a majority in the council, even though in an open vote on the issues report might possibly pass at the currently low margin.  People will sometimes vote differently on a process issue than they will on a substantive issue.

2. Rules should not be easy to change.  The members of the SCI are all representatives, none of us act on our own. To argue that all of the SG/Cs should come to a consensus on changing rules on something is a courtesy that contributes to a collegiality.  I beleive that this was the thinking behind the rule in the first place - we all have to live with these rules in the long term, lets do each other the courtesy of reaching consensus in the committee.

3. The SCI, other than the council is the only place where we all represent our C/SG, so like the council it is reasonable that it have its own voting structure and not be governed by the WG guidelines that pertain to groups of participants who are not necessarily in a representative role.

4. We have proof in action of a case where only one person doggedly kept pushing us on having not understood the full problem.  If we had had a ICANN consensus rule, we would have been able to just declare ourselves done instead of being forced to give ourselves the opportunity of doing  the hard work of finally understanding the point and fixing a hole in our recommendation. 

5. On rules, for the continuity of an organization, they should not be easy to change on a whim or in the event of a single hard case that moves a majority.  If one SG/C insists doggedly that something should not change, I really beleive we need to respect that.  After all, the GNSO Council does not need the SCI recommendation to do something, but that scenario would have to play out in a much more politically charged arena.