Re: [ga] The Real World

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 04:45:51PM -0400, James Love wrote:
> Kent, what is the basis for having the ICANN board of directors elect the
> ICANN board of directors?

It is, in fact, quite common for boards of non-profits to select their
own successors.  Let me illustrate why this is so by asking you a few
questions:

According to the website of the Consumer Project on Technology, it is an
organization dedicated to representing the interests of consumers in a
number of areas (ie, it is concerned with regulatory issues), and you
are its director.  Were you elected to that position? If not, why not?
To use your question, what was the basis for your not being elected?

A more interesting question, of course, is how could you (or CPTech)
claim to fairly and transparently represent the interests of consumers
if you weren't elected to that position? Do you believe that the mere
association with Ralph Nader's name is sufficient to remove all
necessity for accountability? If you believe that CPTech can fairly
represent the interests of consumers without holding public elections,
why doesn't that apply to ICANN?  To be concrete, CPTech is doing 
things that may directly impact me, but I had absolutely no say in the 
positions that CPTech is adopting.  Why is that OK in the CPTech case?

Another question I would like to know the answer to is whether there is
a board of directors for CPTech (or it's apparent parent organization),
and if so, are they elected through elections open to the general
public? If not, what is the basis for that.  Note that this basic
information is not available from the CPTech website -- could you
explain why that is? Also, you reference grants, and how people can
donate money to CPTech, but there is no public accounting of how you
spend their money.  How can you justify this?

I note on the web site that three staff members are mentioned; but in a
recent message to the GA list you said "In our office of 25 people..."
Who are these other people and what do they do?

In sum it appears that CPTech, a non-profit organization that is deeply
involved in governance issues, is not at all motivated to inform the
public about its structure, how it is run, its finances, or its
staffing.  I realize that ICANN and CPTech are very different in many
ways, but there are also enough similarities that CPTech's profound lack
of transparency and accountability is rather noteworthy.  Perhaps it
doesn't matter to you, the director of CPTech, that the public doesn't
have access to this elementary information about your organization.  Or
perhaps you would really like to put up that information, but you just
can't find the time (I can certainly sympathize with that). 

Incidentally, did you realize that CPTech apparently has about 50% more
staff than ICANN? (ICANN has 17 people working for it, some of them part
time). 

Kent

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                          lonesome."  -- Mark Twain

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