Re: [ga] ICANN Employment Policies and Related Materials

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Danny Younger wrote:
> It would be appreciated it the current version of
> ICANN's Employment Policies and Related Materials
> could be posted.  I am concerned by (1) what appears
> to be a lack of a policy regarding cronyism; (2) ICANN
> staff interactions with the public that disparage
> certain participants.
>
> I recall that such documents were earlier publicly
> posted after Karl Auerbach asserted his right to the
> disclosure of certain corporate documents, but I don't
> recall seeing any updated materials.

One of the things that I *did* inspect was ICANN's employee policies.

It was interesting that the bulk of 'em were created between the time I asked 
and the time I saw, in fact some were created in the few days just before I 
read 'em.

They were perfectly adequate - adequate, not great.  However they were custom 
brewed text from the not inexpensive firm of JDRP.  And they were far from 
complete and were clearly not the work of a single comprehensive, coordinated 
scheme.

There is nothing particularly unique or special about ICANN's employee handbook 
that would suggest that it ought not to be made public.

(ICANN has several very good employees, and care should be taken to make it 
clear that questions about employee policies are not questions about the 
quality of individual employees.)

I suggested, in my recommendations to ICANN - the same recommendations that one 
ex board member has dismissed as irrelevant - that ICANN could have saved tens 
upon tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees (perhaps more) simply by buying 
one of the software packages that asks a bunch of questions and produces an 
employee handbook.  The quality of those software packages and the results they 
produce are usually very, very good.  They tend to have a lot of consistency 
between the various provisions and they are often designed to allow easy yearly 
updates to handle the changes in the applicable law.

Now, one has to take care to distinguish between those people who are actual 
employees of ICANN and those who are consultants.  The legal status is quite 
different, as is the confidentiality of the terms they work, such as the rate 
of compensation.

		--karl--