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Re: [council] Council work
- To: Council GNSO <council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Subject: Re: [council] Council work
- From: Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 08:57:06 -0500
- In-reply-to: <002f01c84de3$86a62710$e601a8c0@PSEVO>
- List-id: council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- References: <002f01c84de3$86a62710$e601a8c0@PSEVO>
- Sender: owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,
Thanks for the thought provoking post. I will respond to a few of the
issues with my personal and do hope others will join in the discussion
as it does have something to do with how we see ourselves as a group.
And on how we do our work.
On 3 Jan 2008, at 03:34, Philip Sheppard wrote:
Avri, fellow Council members
I am becoming increasingly concerned about the bureaucratisation of
Council work.
As I understand bureaucratization it is involves the creations of
layers of staffers who build a complex system whereby they can make
the decisions instead of the elected representatives. While I do
believe we are talking about details, and process more, I am not sure
I understand where we have created extra bureaus. I also would agree
that e, Chuck and I, have tried to regularize some of our procedures
and perhaps this is similar to bureaucratization.
We seem to have slipped into Council meetings every 14 days whereas
since Council's
inception under Bruce and previous chairman, we always managed calls
every month.
I would prefer meeting monthly. However, after the LA meeting, it
looked like we had a lot of issues to work through in a short time.
So I suggested that we meet every 2 weeks through the shortened period
between LA and ND to try and get as much done as possible during a
short time that was dotted with holidays. While I would say we were
excited about the possibility, the council did agree.
Do we have a significantly increased workload now than before ? No
I believe the answer to this is yes. I certainly believe we have
more issues on the table then at any time since I joined the council.
Are we producing more output and more implemented policy than
before ? No.
This remains to be seen. We have sent a few things along to board. I
am not sure how much implemented policy there is relative to the past
and the reasons for the amount of time it takes for thing to go from
the council to the implementation stage. We have only been doing the
2 meetings a month for a few months now so I would not expect to see a
great deal implemented yet. I do think we are moving along on some of
our tasks.
Instead I fear we are wasting time on calls with work that should be
done on the list and
adding unnecessary duplication.
Examples:
- talking through the agenda at the start of the call - surely we
can all read ?
This take a few minutes at best. Perhaps I go into too much detail
when walking through it. It is really meant to make sure that we all
have the same view of what we are going to spend time on. And to give
everyone the ability to suggest a change.
- talking through the work plan at the end of each call - surely
this admin item is best
left as a web page ?
This is possible. I think of of walking through the list as a way to
keep us on track on all the work we are doing. I put it at the end,
and on those occasions when there are no issues with it, we can go
through it quite rapidly. And when we run out of time we often skip it.
- seeing multiple motions on the same issue - surely the job of an
efficient chair is to
resolve these issues before a call, and present one motion to
Council that has a good chance
of success?
But there is needs to be a balance between efficiency gained by having
a chair doing more back channel work and open participation where the
council view the range of possibilities and makes decisions as the
representative body. I have opted for a method that allows more open
discussion on the various possibilities.
My hope, is that in seeing the motions and on discussing them on the
list and by suggesting edits we would eventually, by working directly
and openly arrive at a motion we can all agree with. When I created
the motions page on google it was meant to be a experiment to see if
we could learn to work this way. Well that and as a means of having a
'whiteboard' visible to all of us during the meeting.
- voting on motions that fail - again more background work is needed
I believe that is is important to know what is decided against. And
that a failed motion has almost as much content as a successful
motion. It is a definite declaration of what the council does not
wish to do. The other possibility is to let things that do not have
support drop quietly on the floor. In this case there is often an
uncertainty in those who depend on the council and its work on the
council position on these issues. while I believe we should talk
things out completely, once al of the viewpoints have been stated, we
should decide whether to go ahead with something or not.
- voting on procedural motions - eg the time line for the WHOIS
study - in the past this
would have been proposed by the Chair on list and acted upon unless
there was opposition -
We made a specific decision that all schedule changes would be
explicit and would be voted on by council. This was a way to keep us
responsible for our schedules and to try and control some of the
perpetual slippage in schedules that was our past tradition.
I certainly have no problem with the council accepting such a
scheduling motion by consensus (if not one has objections), then of
actually holding a vote. I do think that if it is to be real
schedule, it needs to be have explicit buy in from the council as the
schedule should have some degree of commitment from us.
- confusing Council with multiple duplicate mailings before a call -
in the past this
coordination was done off list between the chair and secretariat,
and then one clear mail
sent to the list by the secretariat with all proposed motions in
full text.
My reason for doing this was to give us the ability to start a
discussion email thread on each of the motions separately, which I
tend to find less confusing in the long run. If others find it more
confusing, I can certainly do as yo suggest.
- use of non ICANN work spaces like Google - what is the value of
this above a list e-mail (
I cannot edit it on Google) ?
ICANN does not have such a capability. I checked and if they had had
such a capability, I would have used it.
In terms of google docs you should be able to edit it. Any council
member can go to docs.google.com, log in with their email address and
edit any of the motions, add motions etc... The url I send out is
only the one used by the anyone to read the motions.
If anyone of the council can't access and edit these motions in
google, please check with me to make sure I have subscribed the
correct mail address.
- discussion on admin matters such as establishing a new group to
discuss an issue - surely
this is best done on list ?
I agree and if we did discuss these things on the list, we could just
glance through them quickly in the meetings.
Do you have an suggestions on the issues currently before the council:
- the design team for drafting the proxy voting motion? (incidentally,
the discussion of the memo is the primary agenda item)
In short, more focus on output than process, more focus on policy
than admin and
consequently calls every 30 days would be welcome.
Philip
Again, thank you for our thought provoking note. I do believe it is
important that the GSNO council members be comfortable with and
approve of the the processes we use.
a.
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