[ga] The NC & ICANN Reform

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

Pretty much as expected, the Names Council is marching to the beat of 
Stuart's drum.  

The Lynn plan called for the establishment of a Generic TLD Names Policy 
Council, as well as a Geographic TLD Names Policy Council.  The Names Council 
is now recommending creating a new advisory body for gTLDs, and creating a 
new advisory body for the ccTLDs.  

To support the activities of these groups, the Names Council has recommended 
that ICANN's policy advisory bodies should be made more effective by the 
provision of full-time staff to support all aspects of policy.  This matches 
the language in the Lynn plan that states:  <<In order for them to be most 
effective, each of these Councils should be supported by the appropriate 
staff.>>  As ICANN already provides plenty of staff support to the 
registrars, gTLDs, ccTLDs, and plans on hiring even more staff support for 
these folks, this NC recommendation adds little to the equation (other than 
an endorsement of Stuart's plan and expansive budget which, of course, makes 
no provision for salaried staff support to the At-Large).  

By stating that ICANN policy advisory bodies should formulate policy 
recommendations based on a clear, bottom-up, consensus process of all 
stakeholders that should be managed by the ICANN Board, the NC is effectively 
declaring the NC and the DNSO defunct (as the NC was formerly responsible for 
the management of the consensus building process) and this function has now 
been elevated upward to the Board level.

The NC Chair is recommending that these advisory bodies should elect or 
select a selection of Board members, and this is in keeping with Stuart's 
plan that the Chairs or designees of these Policy Councils select some of the 
five Ex Officio Trustees.  

By proposing that the Board should be set at a size that balances two goals - 
large enough to be representative, small enough to be functional, the NC 
Chair is making yet another typically vague recommendation that will allow 
Stuart's plan for a 15-member Board of Trustees to go unchallenged.  

Stuart Lynn has argued that "with a properly funded and independent Ombudsman 
in place, there is neither a need or justification for some independent 
review mechanism process that creates a "super-Board" for some purposes."  
The NC Chair is putting forward the following recommendation which comes 
straight from Marilyn Cade's BC position paper: <<Create a committee for 
independent review to over see the work of a professional ombudsman. The 
committee could comprise a designee of the GAC, a designee of the IAB, past 
board members, and an ombudsman.>>  Why anyone would have a committee that 
includes an ombudsman to oversee the work of an ombudsman is beyond me, but 
it points to the fact that the NC Chair will advocate for creating an 
Ombudsman position.  Once such a position is created, Stuart, of course will 
continue to see no justification for some independent review mechanism 
process, and all checks and balances will go right out the window (which is 
perfectly in keeping with Stuart's plan).

Judging from the discussion in yesterday's NC teleconference with Joe Sims, 
Stuart Lynn, and Alejandro Pisanty, the ICANN Staff and the Board Committee 
on Evolution and Reform remain intent on pursuing Stuart's plan (no big 
surprise there) as indicated by the discussion on the "forums" that Stuart 
proposed:

apisanty: looking at advantages of forum approach; the forum approach 
definitely seems to be a very good. 
slynn: forums should be much more flexible.
jsims: notion is that today we have a finite and fixed number of 
constituencies. under forum approach no fixed number of fora. 
apisanty: advantages: you get to hear different voices. if you don't read the 
constituency list, you don't see all the valuable points. e.g. a north 
american business forum, e.g. a geographically diverse small business forum. 
still mechanics to work out. 
jsims: forums would provide input to policy councils in stuart lynn proposal.

Members of the NC quickly moved into lock-step mode with their support of 
this portion of Stuart's plan as well:

mcade: forums feeding into policy-development process is fine, but structure 
must be defined.
tholmes: agree that structure must be defined. 
btonkin: support general dynamic concept
hfeld: need for formal structure. 

All that really remains is for the majority of the Council to come on board 
with regard to the Nominating Committee proposed by Stuart... and as expected 
Stuart had some additional comments on that topic:

slynn: nominating committee intended to focus on problem that we want to make 
sure that icann is seen as effective and credible organization. nominating 
committee is one way of dealing with this; many have pointed to the problem 
of 
accountability of the nominating committee, can be improved.

No one argued this point (even though the ISPCP has gone on record against 
this concept:  <<The ISPCP is opposed to the introduction of a Nominating 
Committee and questions whether such a scheme could ever fulfil the 
requirements of openness and transparency required to gain the support and 
trust of the ICANN community.>>).

These leaves us at a point where no one from any constituency has offered up 
any alternative to the Lynn plan.  By heeding the admonition of the Board's 
Evolution Committee to focus on the Lynn plan as a point of departure for 
their comments, they have been insiduously co-opted into supporting Stuart's 
plan instead of presenting any more reasonable structural alternatives.  

Even the recent preliminary proposal submitted by Karl Auerbach and cited at 
http://www.cavebear.com/rw/apfi.htm adopts the fundamental constructs (termed 
modules) proposed by Stuart.  

When no alternative considerations are put on the table, the Board has no 
option other than to endorse the Lynn Plan as modified by the Evolution 
Committee.  Within the Lynn Plan there is no place accorded for the GA, there 
are no more At-Large directors, and even more power and influence is granted 
to the registries and registrars at the expense of everyone else.  

Is this what you all want?  If not, what are you prepared to do about it?








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