[council] Regarding term limits

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

Rather than an unstructured discussion on term limits, perhaps a member
of Council would like to propose a motion on this topic, and then I can
place this on the agenda for discussion.

I may need to get some advice from the General Council's office on how
it interacts with the authority of the GNSO Council.

E.g does the GNSO Council have authority over the procedure of the GNSO
constituencies?

As far as I can tell the GNSO Council has authority from ICANN bylaws,
Article X, section 2 (ii) to:

" GNSO Council responsible for managing the policy development process
of the GNSO"

And from Article X, section 3 (4):

"The GNSO Council is responsible for managing the policy development
process of the GNSO. It shall adopt such procedures as it sees fit to
carry out that responsibility, provided that such procedures are
approved by the Board, and further provided that, until any
modifications are recommended by the GNSO Council and approved by the
Board, the applicable procedures shall be as set forth in Section 6 of
this Article. In addition, the GNSO Council is responsible for managing
open forums, in the form of mailing lists or otherwise, for the
participation of all who are willing to contribute to the work of the
GNSO; such forums shall be appropriately moderated to ensure maximum
focus on the business of the GNSO and to minimize non-substantive and
abusive postings."



With respect to terms of Council members this is covered by Article X,
section 3 (2):

"2. Subject to the provisions of the Transition Article of these Bylaws:
(a) the regular term of each GNSO Council member shall begin at the
conclusion of an ICANN annual meeting and shall end at the conclusion of
the second ICANN annual meeting thereafter; (b) the regular term of one
representative selected by each Constituency shall begin in an
even-numbered year and the regular term of the other representative
selected by the Constituency shall begin in an odd-numbered year; and
(c) the regular term of one of the three members selected by the
Nominating Committee shall begin in even-numbered years and the regular
term of the other two of the three members selected by the Nominating
Committee shall begin in odd-numbered years. Each GNSO Council member
shall hold office during his or her regular term and until a successor
has been selected and qualified or until that member resigns or is
removed in accordance with these Bylaws."


With respect to the Constituencies, the ARTICLE XX: TRANSITION ARTICLE,
states in section 5 (3):

"Notwithstanding the adoption or effectiveness of the New Bylaws, each
GNSO constituency described in paragraph 2 of this Section 5 shall
continue operating as before and no constituency official, task force,
or other activity shall be changed until further action of the
constituency, provided that each GNSO constituency shall submit to the
ICANN Secretary a new charter and statement of operating procedures,
adopted according to the constituency's processes and consistent with
the New Bylaws, no later than 15 July 2003. 


It would appear from the above that the constituencies are charged with
developing their own charter and statement of operating procedures.
Some constituencies do have term limits.

So I guess the GNSO Council can either recommend to the Board that the
Board change the ICANN bylaws, or the GNSO Council could recommend to
each Constituency that they introduce term limits.

I expect that the Board would not want to make such a change in
isolation, but would consider it as part of the process for refining the
GNSO as a whole taking into account the recent GNSO review.   The
Council could make a recommendations to the constituencies, but they may
also decide to wait and see how the overall refinement of the GNSO goes
before changing such a procedure.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin