[council] Intake Commitee report for NC meeting 17 August

["Philip Sheppard" <philip.sheppard@aim.be>]

Please find below the first report of the Intake Committee. This should be discussed, amended if required, and adopted at the NC meeting on 17 August.

The agenda for that meeting will be set by NC chair Ken Stubbs as usual. If this report is adopted, the Intake Committee will compile NC agendas for September and thereafter.

Philip.

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Names Council Intake Committee

Report on the objectives of the Intake Committee and rules relevant to meetings of the Names Council August 2000 version 2

Members of the Names Council (NC) intake committee (IC):

Philip Sheppard – chair

Caroline Chicoine

Paul Kane

Chuck Gomes

Roberto Gaetano (GA chair)

Y J Park (apologies)

Michael Schneider (absent)

Destination: this report is intended for discussion and adoption at the NC meeting 17 August 2000.

Implementation: the recommendations in this report are intended for implementation immediately after the NC meeting 17 August 2000 and will thus be in place for the NC meeting 21 September 2000.

 

Objectives of the IC committee

• Proposing the agenda for NC meetings
• Proposing an efficient means of running NC meetings

Composition of the Intake Committee

The IC should be small and flexible to facilitate meetings and discussion.

Explicitly the IC should not necessarily comprise representatives from each NC constituency for the following reasons:

• A situation where one constituency's important issue is proposed to the intake committee who reject it for no good reason and then that constituency says nothing more is highly unlikely. The ignored party would raise a point of order at the start of the NC meeting or lobby the NC chairman or post to the NC list.

• The danger of a "representative" intake committee is that it becomes a forum for substantive discussion and removes power from the NC. The key debating ground becomes the intake committee not the NC.

Rules for proposing an agenda for NC meetings

Listserve

An IC e-mail address shall be created (Intake suggestions) whereby any of the following persons can make proposals for NC agenda items:

• members of the Names Council
• the Names Council secretariat

• members of the ICANN Board
• members of the General Assembly (GA) defined as subscribers to the ga@dnso.org, announce@dnso.org or the GA voting register.
• subscribers to an active DNSO ad hoc working group

There will be a limit of one posting per day and the IC shall have sole discretion to deal with abusive activity. The Intake suggestions list will be publicly archived.

Agenda Items

The IC shall be responsible for:

• drafting and prioritising NC agendas
• combining agenda items with a common theme
• delaying or rejecting proposed items or passing them onto more appropriate bodies if they are not relevant NC issues.

In order for a topic to be discussed at a Names Council meeting, it must be presented to the IC no later than 21 days before the meeting.

The IC shall propose a guillotine (time limit) for each agenda item. IC members are encouraged to remind the chair of these limits during a meeting if necessary.

The IC shall post the agenda for a meeting no later than 14 days before the meeting.

Where there is disagreement within the IC issues will be settled by a simple majority vote or referred to the NC at the discretion of the IC chair.

When there are items which have been rejected for agenda inclusion by the IC, NC members shall have 7 days to submit an objection which will count as a vote against the IC rejection. Non-votes will be deemed an acceptance of the IC’s decision, and a majority of the votes shall rule.

Reports and declarations

No later than 7 days before the NC meeting, all reports or proposed declarations relating to forthcoming agenda items must be distributed to the NC.

Exceptions

The Intake Committee shall have the sole discretion to deviate from these procedures when externalities dictate.

Rules for running NC meetings

Meetings Schedule

Meetings must be scheduled by the NC chair with at least 14 days notice, except in emergency situations which shall be decided upon by the Intake Committee.

Starting on January 1, 2001, and for every year thereafter, the NC chair shall finalise a schedule of all meetings during that calendar year by the last day of January of that year. NC members may request changes to the schedule during the year which may be agreed upon by the chair in consultation with the NC, subject to the minimum period of notice above.

In any given year, the time of the meetings may vary to accommodate the different geographic regions represented by Names Council members. By way of guidance start times corresponding to local time earlier than 06.00 and later than 23.00 should be avoided.

Voting and Quorum

The IC sees no reason at this time to seek a change in the simple majority vote and quorum for the NC specified in the by-laws VI-B 2(h).

Proxies

When an NC member is unable to participate in an NC meeting or NC committee, they may give their proxy (with due instruction on voting where appropriate) to another NC member. Proxies are not permitted to non-NC members.

Speaking at meetings

Both at physical and telephone meetings the NC chair will recognise three types of intervention in the following order of priority:

1. A point of order
2. A point of information
3. A normal substantive intervention

At a physical meeting, an NC member may raise a hand or during a teleconference an NC member may speak over the dialogue and say immediately "point of order". The chair will suspend discussion and hear the point.

Points of information and normal interventions. At a physical meeting, an NC member may raise a hand and wait to be recognised by the chair and during a teleconference an NC member may speak in an appropriate gap and say immediately "their name to speak". This will be noted by the chair who will invite the intervention in due course.

To ensure balance, the chair has the discretion to delay an intervention by a frequent speaker to allow others to speak. By way of guidance for the chair, a NC member is not expected to speak for more than three minutes at a time and the chair should solicit the views of other NC members before returning to the same speaker on any one issue. Such discretion should not be exercised for a "point of information". A point of information is for NC members seeking information from the chair or other NC members about meaning or procedure – it is specifically not intended to provide information.

Names Council chair

The NC chair will be elected by the members of the NC by simple majority vote and will hold office for a period of six months. One renewal, subject to a fresh vote, of six months will be allowed. A retiring chairman will not be eligible for re-election for a period of one year.

Seating

During in-person meetings, the NC Chair should be located so he/she can see all members. Specifically, the IC endorses a better seating arrangement for inter-NC communication than the "panel on a platform" favoured to date by host venues.

 

Trial period and Berkman Center proposals

The IC proposes the above recommendations, which are intentionally simple and flexible, be trialled for 3 months and then adopted. These recommendations have their origin in the detailed and prescriptive proposals made by the US-based Berkman Center for Internet and Society, for which diligence the NC offers its appreciation. Bearing in mind the more flexible modus operandi of the NC in the time since the Berkman proposals were made, the IC does not propose at this time that they are adopted as currently drafted.

See: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/dnso/ncprocedure/

Should there be deficiencies apparent during the period of trial then the IC will return to the detailed suggestions made by the Berkman Center to see which procedures may assist in overcoming such deficiencies. Always an objective will be the pragmatic, flexible, open, and efficient operation of the Names Council.