RE: [ga] Consensus... Definition?

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com>]

I agree with adding the board, but I believe the board has a little
different role.  The board ultimately has to evaluate whether community
consensus has been reached, so they have the responsibility of making a
judgment of the evidence that is presented.  I am not sure that it is the
board's task to do the outreach (although that is okay), rather it is the
boards responsibility to make sure the SO's have done sufficient outreach.
This is an area though where they can have great influence.  If the evidence
supporting consensus is weak and/or incomplete, the board should send the
proposed policy back to the applicable SO for more work.  If they respond in
this way, that will more quickly motivate the SO's to improve their
consensus processes.

One of the trends going on now in the DNSO is to form small task forces or
committees instead of full fledged working groups.  Considering the problems
experienced with working groups to date, this is not surprising, but in my
opinion it is a very bad trend, especially if this is intended to be a
community-wide consensus development process unless the task forces and
committees can demonstrate that they have reached out and included the
broader community of stake holders.

There appear to be some who think that if the NC has a two-thirds vote it is
consensus.  This is bogus in my opinion if a full consensus process has not
preceded the NC vote.  According to the ICANN Bylaws it is the NC's role to
determine whether or not a consensus was reached, not to vote on what they
think consensus is with only minimal involvement from the larger community.
This kind of approach might work if the NC could truly be representative of
the total community but I do not think it is and it seems highly unlikely
that it could ever be representative of the global community.  Therefore, it
follows in my mind that the NC should function as the Bylaws say, as a
consensus management organization.

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: Joanna Lane [mailto:jo-uk@rcn.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 11:10 PM
To: Gomes, Chuck; 'Roeland Meyer'; 'Sotiris Sotiropoulos'; ga
Subject: Re: [ga] Consensus... Definition?


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joanna Lane [mailto:jo-uk@rcn.com]
> Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 9:52
> 
> Do you think that as part of bottom-up ICANN consensus
> development, that the NC and/or Constituencies and/or the GA should
consider
> involving non-members, such as public interest organizations, assimilating
> and deliberating on their reports prior to making policy recommendations?
If
> so, which part of the DNSO is best qualified to undertake this task?
> Also, do you think that the DNSO should develop and implement a policy for
> outreach to attract new participants into the bottom-up ICANN consensus
> development process for reasons of reducing the limitations of the
currently
> small subset of participants? If so, how can we tackle this without
funding?

on 8/16/01 11:57 AM, Gomes, Chuck at cgomes@verisign.com wrote:
> Yes, I do think that the DNSO should reach out to nonmembers as
> part of the consensus process.  The more stakeholders who are represented
in
> a consensus process the more valid the consensus will be.  And I think it
is
> accurate to conclude that the DNSO does not have adequate involvement by
> many stakeholders.  At the same time those unrepresented stakeholders may
be
> impacted by the policy being considered.  I think that the consensus
> development process should include steps such as attempting to identify
key
> stakeholders and then trying to involve any unrepresented stakeholders in
> the process.  If they are unresponsive, the efforts can be documented
along
> with their unresponsiveness.  Then the NC, in its role of managing the
> consensus process and in its responsibility to determine whether a
consensus
> has been reached, would be able to see that efforts were made to involve
all
> stakeholders.  That in my opinion makes the consensus process stronger.


Chuck,

Not only the NC, also the Board. Thank you for making this post. Let's have
more or these, then we can define Outreach as part of the consensus
development process.

Regards,
Joanna
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