Re: [council] Additional agenda item for the Council call on 16 Nov - regarding IDN working group

[Mawaki Chango <ki_chango@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Bruce et al.

Thanks for clearly formulating before the council the terms of the
issues facing the IDN working group.

Indeed issues such as:
> - clearly defining the charter of the working group
> - clarifying the rules for membership
are not negligible. Unfortunately, I don't think it would make sense
that rules for membership be defined after electing the chair,
especially if the two problems are being posed concurrently (which is
different from having an existing group and its chair, and then
deciding later to extend the group.)

In another email sent to the IDN WG list, you say:
"I have assumed that constituencies would pass on information about
the group. To my knowledge there has been no public call for
members." You seem to be right on the public call, but obviously we
had different assumptions. In my case, seeing the call to volunteer
for the WG in the council spaces only, without further request or
clarification on the intent, made me rather assume that it was to be
a WG of council members - which I believe is a rather a reasonable
assumption in the condition I just recalled. And as a council member
and as an IDN WG member, I discovered the membership of the WG only
with the announcement of the chair election.

Not that I wish to see a sizeable WG; I'd rather agree with you to
find a way to keep it fit and workable, but not by sacrifying a
transparent and careful design process.

In the same email I referred to earlier that you posted to the WG
list, you quoted the minutes of the council call where it was decided
to reinstate the group:

"In moving forward, there was general support for a working group
model
that would monitor developments in the IETF, receive regular briefing
from the other relevant groups working on IDNs, and could advise the
Council on next steps..."

You may remember that i once wrote something more or less like, if we
don't know what this WG is here for and we are not even clear whether
it has a purpose, then let's dismantle it altogether. For me the
quote above clarifies the mandate that was intended for the WG (at
least by those who discussed the item on the call that day,) and I
can assure you that this has not seemed to be clear from all what
I've heard in this discussion. So it seems on that basis that the
WG's role will essentially be to collect information, digest it and
advise the Council which will be doing the actual work
(policy-related, by definition.) Have we as council agreed, do we
agree, to proceed with that mandate for the WG? 

Whatever the answer to that question, we still need to properly
address the confusion about the membership. So if the council thinks
we really have a substantial work to do on IDN in the near future,
these are my pieces of advice for the way forward:

1) appoint the two nominees to co-chair an interim WG that will
expedite the design tasks and process: rules & procedures; will the
membership be of councilors, or from beyond the council, and if so
how to achieve this while making sure the WG be workable? etc. (note:
this might still be a good option in case of the limited mandate
quoted above.)

2) suspend the election on the basis of flaw/fault in the design
process, fix the membership issue, and resume and complete the
election.

3) dropping the WG approach and having the Council as a whole,
whenever the time is ripe for it, tackle the IDN policy issues.  

All for now.

Mawaki



--- Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hello All,
> 
> I would like to add an additional agenda item regarding the GNSO
> IDN
> working group.
> 
> As you know, I chaired the original working group on the assumption
> that
> the working group had a very short life.
> 
> Based on the last Council meetings decision to re-instate the
> working
> group with no specific time limit, I wanted to hand over the chair
> to
> another person.  There have been two candidates that have been
> nominated
> by committee members - Ram Mohan and Sophia Bekele.   I have thus
> initiated an email election process based on the existing
> membership of
> the working group to put a new chair in place.
> 
> There are however outstanding issues:
> - clearly defining the charter of the working group
> - clarifying the rules for membership
> 
> I have received some requests from people in the ICANN community
> that
> are currently not members of a GNSO constituency, but are members
> of the
> general assembly mailing list.   So far I have been recommending
> that
> these people join one of the existing GNSO constituencies to meet
> the
> requirement of a "GNSO volunteer"   I have since noticed that the
> current definition of a working group in:
> http://www.gnso.icann.org/council/names-proceduresv7.shtml opens up
> membership to "members of the General Assembly (GA) defined as
> subscribers to the ga@xxxxxxxx, announce@xxxxxxxx or the GA voting
> register".     I am not sure if this is the Council's intent.
> 
> The working group is attracting plenty of interest, but my concern
> is
> that without a clear charter that we are setting false expectations
> regarding the purpose of this working group.   We also need to
> clearly
> establish the working group in the context of the President's
> Advisory
> Committee, the ccNSO working group, and the new gTLD committee.
> 
> It has also been noted that perhaps we should hold off on electing
> a
> chair until the above is clearer, and we have done a public call
> for
> members etc.   
> 
> One alternative is that we continue with the current election and
> with
> the current group of members, and that the elected chair work with
> the
> group to finalise a charter and submit that to the GNSO Council for
> approval.   I don't personally have the time to do that, hence my
> interest in handing over responsibility to someone else.   We could
> limit the "initial" term of the chair to three months, and then if
> the
> working group is still operational, we could hold a follow up
> election.
> Alternatively if the two candidates are willing, we could simply
> suggest
> they be appointed as joint chairs for the purpose of moving the
> work
> forward.
> 
> I am interested in ideas on further thoughts via the mailing list,
> and
> discussion on the way forward at the next Council meeting on 16
> Nov.
> 
> Regards,
> Bruce Tonkin
> 
> 
> 
> 
>