[council] AoC RT Endorsement Process, Motion, and Amendments

[William Drake <william.drake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

On Jun 11, 2010, at 12:34 AM, Rosette, Kristina wrote:

> #3:  Understood.  To the IPC, however, having a slightly more complicated 
> process at the SG level is far preferable to having the Council take on an SG 
> role and make nominations independent of the community.  If that's absolutely 
> necessary, the circumstances under which the Council can do so should, in the 
> IPC's view, be narrow, specifically delineated, and of "a last resort" 
> nature. That's what the proposed amendments are intended to do.

Thanks Kristina for explaining your position.  While it's not a huge deal, I do 
have a different perspective.  Since Council will hopefully vote on this on the 
23rd and everyone may not be focused on the fine points of this little item, I 
guess I should say why.

The process agreed in May by the drafting team, which comprised reps of all 
SGs, was designed to facilitate the simplistic, most apolitical routine 
handling of the recurring RT endorsement requirement possible.  So instead of 
having competitive elected slots 5 and 6 as we tried with the ATRT maiden 
voyage, we scaled back to each SG being able to have one endorsement selected 
in accordance with its own internal process—zero inter-SG stuff required.  We 
also downscaled the diversity objectives close to the vanishing point to avoid 
that being a source of stress for anyone (except NCSG, which would prefer it to 
be stronger).  The relevant bit of the latter is:

"3.  In making their selections, stakeholder groups SHOULD [not must] give due 
consideration to the following diversity objectives:
*Unless the applicant pool does not allow, no more than half of the GNSO’s 
nominees SHOULD come from the same geographical region; and
*Unless the applicant pool does not allow, the GNSO’s nominees SHOULD not all 
be of the same gender."

In other words, normative encouragement but not a binding requirement, subject 
to availability in the first place of a candidate pool that would allow us to 
even try (which, it is easy to imagine, may not be the case in some cycles).

"4.  The Council will consider the resulting list of up to four nominees at its 
next teleconference.  If the list does not meet the above mentioned diversity 
objectives, the Council as a whole MAY CHOOSE [or it may not] to endorse up to 
two additional candidates from the applicant pool who would help to give the 
list of GNSO nominees the desired balance. In this case, the Council would hold 
a vote during its teleconference, with sixty percent support of both houses 
represented in the Council being required for endorsement.  If no candidate 
obtains that level of support, the list of endorsements obtained via the 
bottom-up process of stakeholder group nominations will be deemed final and 
forwarded to ICANN."

And to facilitate this, para 2 suggests that, "Each stakeholder group is 
ENCOURAGED to identify in its internal deliberations (notification to the 
Council would be helpful but is NOT required) one or two additional candidates 
whom it could support, if available, in the event that the diversity 
procedure... is to be utilized."

So, for example, a scenario: ICANN puts out a call for applicants, and as 
happened with the ATRT, 12 of them are apps to represent the GNSO (over time, 
and on topics narrower than accountability and transparency, it's likely the 
pools will get even smaller), 8 of which are from the US, 2 of which are from 
women.  And say that from this pool, the SGs endorse 3 or 4 American men and no 
women.  In this case, the Council could decide (or not) that it might be 
preferable for its nominees to look a bit more representative of the global 
Internet community and that we should at least consider adding 1 or 2 more from 
the 8 remaining in the pool, subject to the agreement of 60% of both houses 
(which presumably means that only viable, noncontroversial candidates would 
have a prayer of making the cut).  Of course, even if we succeeded in agreeing 
on such nominations, it's highly likely that (as with the ATRT) the Selectors 
would ultimately pick the candidates that had been supported by the four SGs in 
the first place.  But at least the optics would be better.

What the IPC is proposing is that only applicants that SGs have previously 
designated as acceptable back-ups could even be considered by the Council for 
this purpose.  In which case

*Rather than sort of casually considering who they could support in the event a 
diversity vote arises, each SG would probably feel compelled in each cycle to 
spend time reaching agreement on back-ups and formally notify the council of 
these in order not to be at a competitive disadvantage relative to other SGs.  
So the added cycles of carefully parsing all the files and engaging in 
strategic calculations and negotiations become the norm rather than the 
exception, which is what dropping competitively elected seats 5 & 6 was 
supposed to spare us from.

*One can readily imagine situations in which only a few (or even none) of the 8 
get these second-level endorsements, and they're not the candidates that would 
add diversity to the pool.  Council's hands would then be tied, we couldn't 
even have a discussion about the merits of the others and try to persuade each 
other, even if the prohibited persons actually would add diversity and maybe 
bring stuff to the table that not everyone recognized at the outset.  We just 
lock in on our first preferences, don't budge, and potentially do nothing about 
diversity even when there were reasonable options.

Anyway, relative to other things on council's plate the differences and 
relative merits of these two approaches may not seem like a big deal or 
something that warrants a two-screen email.  But since there is a choice, I'd 
rather go the route that trusts the Council and gives it the option to make 
reasoned choices through community deliberations rather than politicizing 
things and tying its hands.  And on a philosophical level, I guess I don't 
agree that the possibility of Council making a group decision is an improper 
usurpation of SG sovereignty; the nominees are, after all, supposed to 
represent the GNSO.

Some of us at least would like to be able to vote on the original motion agreed 
by SG reps in the drafting team, and as such I regard the amendment as 
"unfriendly" (meaning merely "not better").  If nothing else, maybe we can 
amuse the audience in Brussels.  

An entirely separate matter is CSG's proposed amendment by Wolf-Ulrich to the 
effect that we should only adopt this process for the next two RTs (rather than 
as a standing model, which is what the drafting team was asked to propose) and 
presumably renegotiate the process again (and again...?).  Will IPC and CSG be 
merging their amendments or shall we address these separately?

Cheers,

Bill


***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
 Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
www.linkedin.com/in/williamjdrake
***********************************************************