[ga] Comments regarding the LSE Report

["Michael D. Palage" <Michael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All:

Here are my comments in connection with the LSE report. As always I
welcome any constructive feedback and encourage other individuals to
speak up as this is an important process to provide stakeholders with an
important voice in the gTLD policy development process.

Best regards,

Michael D. Palage


Recommendation 1.

A centralised register of all GNSO stakeholders should be established,
which is up-to date and publicly accessible. It should include the
members of Constituencies and others involved in the GNSO task forces.
(Paragraph 2.5).

MDP Comments: I do not diagree with this statement but I believe the LSE
people need to elaborate a little more on what they are trying to
achieve and how it would scale.

 
Recommendation 2. 

GNSO Constituencies should be required to show how many members have
participated in developing the policy positions they adopt. (Paragraph
2.14)

MDP Comments: Fully support. With no record of who participated in the
formation of a position, there is no accountability. This is totally
inconsistent with what the community is demanding from the ICANN Board.
In order for the Board to make an informed decision, they must have a
record of how individual members within a constituency voted, not just
how a handful of council members voted. Failure to have a record
provides no accountability. 
 
 
Recommendation 3. 

There needs to be greater coherence and standardisation across
Constituency operations. For this to work effectively, more ICANN staff
support would be needed for constituencies. (Paragraph 2.22) 

MDP Comments: Do not disagree with this statement but believe a cost
benefit analaysis needs to be prepared.  Additionally, there should be
an exploration of the potential use of independent third party
contractors instead of ICANN staff to prevent against the appearance of
any conflict.
 
Recommendation 4. 

A GNSO Constituency support officer should be appointed to help
Constituencies develop their operations, websites and outreach activity.
(Paragraph 2.23) 

MDP Comments: Same comments as above. Need to see a cost benefit
analysis, and need to explore the potential use of independent third
party contractors to prevent potential conflicts.

 
Recommendation 5. 

Constituencies should focus on growing balanced representation and
active participation broadly proportional to wider global distributions
for relevant indicators. (Paragraph 2.39) 

MDP Comments:  I support for this recommendation. 
 
Recommendation 6. 

The basis for participation in GNSO activities needs to be revised, from
Constituency-based membership to one deriving from direct ICANN
stakeholder participation. (Paragraph 2.44) 

MDP Comments:  My personal viewpoint is that the GNSO policy development
process is not working. During a recent conversation with a business
constituency member for whom I have a great deal of respect, I asked the
question why they were no longer actively participating in ICANN. Their
response "nothing gets done." The GNSO is broken and I believe all
options including the current constituency structure needs to be put on
the table for evaluation.

 
Recommendation 7. 

The GNSO should improve the design and organization of the current
website, develop a website strategy for continual improvement and growth
over the next three years, and review usage statistics on a regular
basis to check that traffic to the website is growing over time and
understand more fully what external audiences are interested in.
(Paragraph 3.10) 

MDP Comments: I support this recommendation.

 
Recommendation 8. 
Document management within the GNSO needs to be improved and the
presentation of policy development work made much more accessible.
(Paragraph 3.14) 

MDP Comments: I support this recommendation.
 
Recommendation 9. 

The GNSO should develop and publish annually a Policy Development Plan
for the next two years, to act both as a strategy document for current
and upcoming policy work, and as a communications and marketing tool for
general consumption outside of the ICANN community. It should dovetail
with ICANN's budget and strategy documents. (Paragraph 3.16) 

MDP Comments. I do not object to the concept, however, I have difficult
reconciling the prudence of a two year plan when ICANN's operational and
budget are one year documents.
 
Recommendation 10. 

The GNSO and ICANN should work proactively to provide information-based
incentives for stakeholder organizations to monitor and participate in
GNSO issues. (Paragraph 3.19) 


MDP Comments. I support the LSE recommendation. ICANN should be
proactively looking for multiple and diverse voices to participate in
the ICANN/GNSO process. Increased voices and viewpoints should increase
the quality of the GNSO's work, provided that such participation is
balanced. Thus there needs to be safeguards to prevent special interest
groups from improperly attempting to skew any work.

 
Recommendation 11. 

The position of the GNSO Council Chair needs to become much more visible
within ICANN and to carry more institutional weight. (Paragraph 3.26) 

MDP Comments: I support this recommendation.
 
Recommendation 12. 

The policies on GNSO Councillors declaring interests should be
strengthened. Provision for a vote of "no confidence' leading to
resignation should be introduced for non-compliance. (Paragraph 3.28) 

MDP Comments: I support this recommendation.
 

Recommendation 13. 

Fixed term limits should be introduced for GNSO Councillors either of
two two-year terms (as applied in some Constituencies already) or
perhaps of a single three-year term. (Paragraph 3.30) 

MDP Comments: Term limits are important as it provides a necessary
influx of new talent and leadership. In fact there should be uniform
term limits (2 terms) across all ICANN positions. The only exception
being where positions cannot be filled.
 

Recommendation 14. 

The GNSO Council and related policy staff should work more closely
together to grow the use of project-management methodologies in policy
development work, particularly focusing on how targeted issue analysis
can drive data collection from stakeholders (rather than vice versa).
(Paragraph 4.14) 

MDP Comments: I support this recommendation.
 

Recommendation 15. 

The GNSO Council should rely more on face-to-face meetings supplemented
by online collaborative methods of working. The Chair should seek to
reduce the use of whole-Council teleconferencing. (Paragraph 4.19) 

MDP Comments: Concerns. The use of teleconferences still appear to be
viable mechanism for the council to exchange views and build consensus.

 
Recommendation 16. 

The GNSO Councillors should have access to a fund for reasonable travel
and accommodation expenses to attend designated Council meetings,
instead of having to meet such costs from their own resources as at
present. (Paragraph 4.21) 

MDP Comments: Qualified support, a cost benefit analysis is needed.
 

Recommendation 17. 

The GNSO Council should make more use of Task Forces. Task Force
participants should be more diverse and should be drawn from a wider
range of people in the Internet community, and national and
international policy-making communities. (Paragraph 4.26) 

MDP Comments: Full support. To date there is not as much diversity on
different Task Forces, with some council members serving on almost every
working group/task force. There should be limits on the number of task
forces/working groups that an individual can serve on.
 

Recommendation 18. 

An ICANN Associate stakeholder category of participation should be
created, so as to create a pool of readily available external expertise,
which can be drawn upon to populate Task Forces where relevant.
(Paragraph 4.27)

MDP Comments: Do not fully appreiate the difference between an associate
stakeholder and regular stakeholder. Would request further feedback from
LSE regarding this recommendation.
 

Recommendation 19. 

The current GNSO Constituency structure should be radically simplified
so as to be more capable of responding to rapid changes in the Internet.
The Constituency structure should be clear, comprehensive (covering all
potential stakeholders) and flexible, allowing the GNSO to respond
easily to the rapid changes in the make-up of Internet stakeholders. We
suggest a set of three larger Constituencies to represent respectively
Registration interests, Businesses and Civil Society. (Paragraph 4.35)

MDP Comments: I believe looking at alternatives to the constituency
model would be helpful as the current model is not working. I support
some of the bigger issues that LSE is raising in connection with this
recommendation. During my initial discussion with various participants
within the various constituencies, almost everyone has talked about
losing or gaining votes. I think this shows how the process is broken in
that consensus should not come down to the mere tabulation of a small
universe of council member votes. I also believe a significant portion
of policy contention within the GNSO could be resolved by a clear
deliniation from the ICANN general counsel as to what is and is not
policy. 
 
Recommendation 20. 

A reorganization of GNSO Constituencies would also allow the Council to
be made somewhat smaller (we suggest 16 members) and hence easier to
manage. (Paragraph 4.36)

MDP Comments: Assuming a diversity of work load among non council
members, a smaller council would be more viable. I believe this merits
additional evaluation.

 
Recommendation 21. 

The definition of achieving a consensus should be raised to 75 per cent.
Weighted voting should be abolished. Both measures could help to create
more incentives for different Constituencies to engage constructively
with each other, rather than simply reiterating a "bloc' position in
hopes of picking up enough uncommitted votes so as to win. (Paragraph
4.38)

MDP Comments: Qualified support. As discussed above, when GNSO
participants are more worried about counting votes, it shows how broken
the process has become. There needs to be mechanisms/processes in place
to achieve concensus based upon meaningful input, not the mere tallying
of 16/21 votes. Removing weighted voting but then replacing it with a
system where certain constituencies would have veto rights given the
higher threshold for consensus results in no net change from the current
quagmire. The removal of weighted voting is merely treating a symptom,
while failing to cure the root problem.

 
Recommendation 22. 

The way in which the GNSO Council votes to elect two Directors to the
ICANN Board should be changed to use the Supplementary Vote system.
(Paragraph 4.40)

MDP Comments: I support this recommendation.
 

Recommendation 23. 

The amount of detailed prescriptive provision in the ICANN Bylaws
relating to the operations of the GNSO should be reduced. ICANN Bylaws
should outline broad principles and objectives for the GNSO but the
detailed operational provision (including the section on the PDP) should
be transferred to the GNSO Rules of Procedure. This would allow the GNSO
to agree amendments and to introduce new innovations in its working
methods and timelines in a more realistic and flexible way, while
operating within ICANN's guiding principles. (Paragraph 5.7)
 
MDP Comments: Qualified support. Any changes must be approved by the
ICANN general counsel to make sure that they are not inconsistent with
ICANN's existing bylaws or contractual obligations. There also needs to
be safeguards to provide all parties within the GNSO predictability and
confidence in the process. If the GNSO council abuse this new discretion
to constantly move the goal post to the detriment of impacted parties
this would be a bad thing.



Recommendation 24. 

Both ICANN and the GNSO Council should periodically (say once every five
years) compile or commission a formal (quantitative and qualitative)
assessment of the influence of the GNSO's work on developing policy for
generic names. This should include an analysis of how the GNSO's
influence with national governments, international bodies and the
commercial sector might be extended. (Paragraph 5.12)

MDP Comments: No preliminary objections.