[NCSG-PC] Fw: Re: comments on the ICANN budget

Wed May 3 03:08:13 EEST 2017

Forwarding on behalf of Stephanie -

I agree with Ayden that we could use some cat herders here. Also drafters of course. Had someone hounded me, I might have dragged myself away from a different drafting deadline to go over the draft comment. Cat herding is a great job for someone who feels they might not have the expertise to write the comment....a team of cat herders who could help us watch deadlines would be most appreciated. Some of us are on several committees and working groups, and we just plain forget the time. We do need more people to get engaged, and help.

cheers Stephanie Perrin

On 2017-05-02 17:56, Ayden Férdeline wrote:

Hi Michael,

It is true that cc'ing an extra email into a thread is not a difficult task, and I try to do it where I can. However, it is not that the NCSG's procedural complexity is beyond comprehension, it is that the issues we are responding to often require background knowledge. Please don't misunderstand me here; I think a lot of what we do at the moment in terms of gathering input is mere tokenism and we need to somehow implement a framework with more contemporary notions of participation, but this is not easy to do.

I think the challenge is less that these issues are complicated (though they are) but that we are volunteers and do not have people here who are solely responsible for communicating concepts, facilitating input, herding the cats... I see participation as a lot like eating spinach. No one is against it in principle because we all accept it is good, but there's a real difference between going through the empty ritual of participation and doing it in a way that actually affects the outcome of the process.

Ayden Férdeline
[linkedin.com/in/ferdeline](http://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdeline)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: comments on the ICANN budget
Local Time: 2 May 2017 10:17 PM
UTC Time: 2 May 2017 21:17
From: mike.oghia at GMAIL.COM
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU

Hi all,

Great suggestion Nadira, and perhaps more of this kind of delegation would strengthen engagement, lighten the load on those already volunteering, and provide more decentralized, bottom-up, and inclusive governance.

With that said, I also want to stress that adding an email to CC is far from a difficult task. Not including the community in open deliberations is unacceptable. If our procedural complexity is beyond comprehension, then we need to seriously reevaluate how we expect anyone without 5-10 years of experience and a PhD or JD to get involved.

Best,
-Michael

On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 10:57 PM, Nadira Alaraj <nadira.araj at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Tapani and all,

I wanted to give a suggestion based your following paragraph regarding lack of resource.
"I don't see any reason to accuse or blame anyone here, the fault lies
simply in our lack of resources, too much work for too few people.
"

Given the fact that "NCUC's membership has reached 570 members, including 119 noncommercial organizations and 451 individuals. "

When there is a lack of resources, the community membership is not engaged and that is alerting because no one wants to end up of mere number of membership.

Instead of putting the load on the Policy Committee to do the comments on behalf of the whole community, why not to split their tasks to increase the productivity, by creating different sub-teams to the PC to utilize the diversity of knowledge among the community by assigning theme to each sub-team to prepare the comments with the lead of experienced PC before being shared with the community as a whole.

The question that occurs in any one's mind, what would be the motivation of the volunteers in the sub-teams? What I can think of right now, but others might have other ideas, is to give sub-team members priority over other applicants for fellowships.

Best,
Nadira

On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 7:29 PM, Tapani Tarvainen <ncsg at tapani.tarvainen.info> wrote:
Hi Michael,

Policy Committee is in charge of endorsing comments on behalf of NCSG,
so decisions about that have to take place in PC list and the way for
people to get their comments endorsed as NCSG comments is to ask for
support from the PC.

Of course discussion could and in general should occur on this list,
too, but when time is short, as it regrettably often is, people tend
to do only what *must* be done. It would have been nice for for some
PC member to relay discussion about this to the general list (and as a
member of PC I'm guilty here as well), but sometimes we aren't able to
do things in an optimal way.

You can read the entire thread about Ed's comment in the PC list
following the link he posted below. Ed made a comment and notified the
PC, there was talk about endorsing it as NCSG comment but for whatever
reason that never got anywhere - probably people were simply too busy.

I don't see any reason to accuse or blame anyone here, the fault lies
simply in our lack of resources, too much work for too few people.

--
Tapani Tarvainen

On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 05:36:09PM +0200, Michael Oghia (mike.oghia at GMAIL.COM) wrote:
>
> Thank you Ed for the clarification. Does anyone know why this wasn't
> discussed more on this list?
>
> Best,
> -Michael
>
> On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 5:30 PM, Edward Morris <egmorris1 at toast.net> wrote:
>
> > Hi Milton,
> >
> > As too often is the case, you rush to personal attack without first
> > determining the facts.
> >
> > From the NCSG PC list (https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-pc/2017-April/
> > 000515.html )
> >
> > ___
> >
> > Hi Rafik,
> >
> > I’d like to thank those who stepped in to contribute to the budget
> > comment. I sadly disagree with the tone and much of the content of the
> > document. I do not endorse it.
> >
> > There was no way for me to edit the document without completely deleting
> > much of what had previously been written there. I just didn’t feel that was
> > an appropriate thing to do.
> >
> > Rather I have completed and submitted to the Comments Forum a Personal
> > Comment, which I am attaching to this post. I welcome those who have
> > stepped up to do the NCSG comment to consider what I had to say, borrow
> > from my post, or disregard it completely.
> >
> > My objection to the NCSG comment as written consists of the following
> > objections:
> >
> > 1. I believe it is too negative and accusatory and fails to recognize the
> > hard work done by Finance and the unique nature of the first year of the
> > Empowered Community.
> >
> > I have major problems with the process, and have expressed them in my
> > Comment, along with suggested ways of improving cooperation and community
> > input. However, I don’t believe any slights were deliberate or intentional.
> > I believe the Community, including myself, erred in placing so many hard
> > deadlines on Finance as part of the budget process in the new Bylaws. This
> > is a year of adaptation but generalized critical comments without specific
> > proposed solutions serve no purpose. And that is what much of the proposed
> > NCSG comment consists of.
> >
> > 2. I find the objections to ALAC expenditures to appear as a stand alone
> > attack on the AC. There are a number of areas of expenditure that many of
> > us would find questionable. Why focus only on these in the absence of
> > criticism of other questionable expenses?
> >
> > 3. I don’t find staff retreats to be among the most pressing fiscal
> > matters. After all, as a supplemental request components of the NCSG asked
> > for their own retreats and the GNSO Council was actually granted one.
> > Should we not first oppose these retreats or is there a reason staff
> > retreats are so onerous?
> >
> > 4. As noted in my personal comment, my biggest concern involves the lack
> > of funding priority for core policy activities. I have focused on one
> > unfunded proposal – that of $100,000 for external PDP support – and would
> > encourage the NCSG to consider adopting this view.
> >
> > Although I can not endorse the comment, out of respect for the work done
> > on the document I will not oppose it. I will abstain and hope my comments
> > above as well as those in my personal comment will be considered by the PC.
> >
> > Regrettably, I have some domestic responsibilities to attend to this
> > evening that must take priority over my volunteer activities here. Consider
> > my abstention to be a permament one and feel free to borrow from, or
> > ignore, my offerings on this matter.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Ed Morris
> >
> > __________________________________________________________________________
> >
> > Public comments are the purview of the NCSG Policy Committee, not the NCSG
> > Finance Committee. With rare exceptions, discussions of the content of the
> > public comments occur within the PC and not on the DISCUSS list. Maybe that
> > is something we should re-think, however that problem is not unique to this
> > comment. If you’d like to know why the NCSG did not submit a public comment
> > on the budget I’d suggest you read the NCSG PC archives, ask the NCSG PC
> > Chair or ask those who volunteered to write the comment at the last NCSG PC
> > meeting.
> >
> > Contrary to your assertion, Milton, as above, I did share my comments with
> > those who stepped forward to draft the comment for the Policy Committee. I
> > should note that I was not one of those who volunteered to draft this
> > comment for the PC. As a member of the P.C., though, I saw things I
> > disagreed with in what was being done and shared my views. We were all on
> > deadline, though, which made things difficult. In fact, one P.C. observer
> > suggested the NCSG might want to endorse my comment (although qualifying
> > her comment by stating she had yet to read my comment and may not even
> > agree with her suggestion) (https://lists.ncsg.is/
> > pipermail/ncsg-pc/2017-April/000518.html ).
> >
> > Not much else I can say Milton. You seem to delight in attacking me
> > personally, facts notwithstanding. I hope you had fun. You can criticize me
> > for being late to the conversation, but this is a volunteer position and I
> > was busy elsewhere early in the comment period. I guess that doesn’t fit
> > your narrative, a narrative which has little to do with fact.
> >
> > Ed Morris
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------

> >
> > On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> I was interested in the public comments on ICANN's budget - I believe
> >> this is the first one since the transition.
> >>
> >> I noticed that all stakeholder groups and constituencies except NCSG
> >> filed comments on the budget. I was disappointed to see that instead of a
> >> NCSG comment we have a lone individual, Ed Morris, commenting with his
> >> personal opinions. Since Ed is supposed to be the chair of our NCSG finance
> >> committee, one would have thought that he would post his comments to the
> >> NCSG list for some feedback.
> >>
> >> Ed's comments (http://mm.icann.org/pipermail
> >> /comments-fy18-budget-08mar17/attachments/20170428/440be454/
> >> budgetcomment-0001.pdf) make it clear that they are his personal
> >> opinions and not necessarily those of the NCSG, but I find this very odd.
> >> Normally, if you file comments individually, it is because you tried to
> >> achieve NCSG consensus but could not. In that case, it's OK for folks to
> >> file comments to reflect the different views.
> >>
> >> In this case, Ed made no effort to inform the group of his views on the
> >> budget, much less attempt to gain some support for them. I think this is
> >> not acceptable. The Chair of our Finance Committee needs to think of
> >> himself as a delegate of the SG, not as someone who goes off into a silo
> >> and does whatever he wants, without even informing the members who
> >> appointed him.
> >>
> >> This becomes more serious when one realizes that in his comments, Ed
> >> basically threatens ICANN with rejecting the entire budget because of a
> >> disagreement over a small item. He says:
> >>
> >> "Unless bound by my Support Group to support this budget, I would be
> >> inclined to favor rejecting the entire budget when it comes back to the
> >> GNSO Council if this amount is not restored to the budget prior its final
> >> adoption."
> >>
> >> I am not sure what Ed means by his "support group" but presumably that
> >> means his Stakeholder Group and/or Constituency. But how are we supposed to
> >> "bind" him to favor or oppose the budget if we don't even know that he has
> >> made this threat?
> >>
> >> In sum, I am sure we all appreciate the willingness of volunteers to go
> >> through the budget and make sense of it, but our delegates to these
> >> committees have to understand that they are agents of NCSG and it is their
> >> responsibility to liaise with the SG and inform the membership of their
> >> actions, and to build consensus on positions when possible. It's not that
> >> hard to write an email to the list and attach a draft of your proposed
> >> comments.
> >>
> >>
> >> Dr. Milton L Mueller
> >> Professor, School of Public Policy
> >> Georgia Institute of Technology
> >> Internet Governance Project
> >> http://internetgovernance.org/
> >
> >

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