[nc-intake] Review WG Timeline

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Pursuant to the adoption of the DRAFT Rules of Procedure for the DNSO Names
Council, v2 on February 26, wherein it is stipulated that, "Any of the
following persons can make proposals for NC agenda items by e-mail to
nc-intake@dnso.org :," and that such persons include "members of the General
Assembly (GA) defined as subscribers to the ga@dnso.org, announce@dnso.org
or the GA voting register", and whereas I, Danny Younger, as a member of
Review Working Group and as an individual listed in the GA voting register,
meet the above criteria, I make the following proposal for an NC agenda
item:  Reconsideration of the Timeline of the Review Working Group - an
amendment to Decision D2.
     Reasons for this request:  When the DNSO Mailing List was activated for
the initial members of the Review Working Group, all of us were presented
with the following preliminary sets of messages:

DNSO Mailling lists archives
[wg-review] Chronological Index
* Thread Index [PARA][PARA]1 (backward)           ( 1 )    >    (forward)
49[PARA][PARA]* 2000 Dec 19 [PARA]o [wg-review] Welcome to
wg-review@dnso.org mailling list DNSO Listadmin [PARA]* 2000 Dec 23 [PARA]o
[wg-review] Review WG Membership YJ Park [PARA]o [wg-review] We are in the
starting line...... YJ Park [PARA]
The very first introductory salutation originated with the List
Administrator, followed by greetings from the Working Group Chair, Ms. YJ
Park.   Our Chair in her second message "We are in the starting line..."
detailed our Terms of Reference (version 0.3).  After outlining objectives,
authority, procedures and approaches, and administrative information, the
lifetime of the Review Working Group was stipulated:

Dec. 19 - open end : Call for Participation in this WG
Dec. 19 - Dec. 30 : WG Charter Discussion
Dec. 31 : WG Charter Finalization
Dec. 31 - Mar. : WG's Interim Report - March Melbourne
June Stockholm: Submission to NC as WG's position under
                          assumption that it can find consensus.

As every one of the 250+ members of this Working Group have read, and agreed
to abide by the mandate delineated in the Terms of Reference provided to us,
we are of the view that our agreed-upon lifespan extended until the
Stockholm meeting in June.

The following individuals also participated in list discussions at the onset
of our Working Group mission and most assuredly read the introductory Terms
of Reference provided by Ms. Park:

Peter de Blanc, Karl Auerbach, Milton Mueller, Ken Stubbs, Philip Sheppard,

None of these individuals, nor any other member of either the Names Council
or the Review Task Force who (presumably in their capacity as managers of
the consensus-building process) were following the work of the Review WG,
raised their voice to object to the stated timeline in the Terms of
Reference so clearly presented to the Working Group at the start of its
efforts.

Collective silence is a tacit admission that it is acceptable to proceed on
the basis of any given document; this principle was last demonstrated by the
Review Task Force when on February 17, the NCRTF Report was submitted to the
Board subsequent to the absence of follow-up comments on the part of Task
Force members.

This Review Working Group has from the very beginning cooperated with the
Review Task Force, extending an inordinate amount of effort through a busy
Holiday Season to provide the RTF with a well-drafted preliminary report on
January 15th so that the Task Force could meet its own set of self-imposed
time restraints.   Since January 15, this cooperation has not been returned
in kind.

When we review the record of Task Force activities over the course of the
last six months, we are appalled by the obvious conclusion that the RTF has
done little more than generate a questionnaire which garnered a mere handful
of comments, and we are sickened by the efforts being made to terminate the
life of a Working Group which by contrast, has taken its mandate seriously
(has generated close to 3000 comments) and continues to strive to fulfill
the mandate established by the Board - a review of the DNSO leading to
recommendations for improvement in both procedures and structure.

One would think that an organization whose stated purpose is the management
of the consensus-building process would value the hard work and dedication
to a noble goal that has been evinced by this Working Group, that such an
organization would respect the concept of presenting both majority and
minority opinions and would thereby have no fear of divergent streams of
thought being presented to the Board.  One would think that the Names
Council would want to encourage participation, outreach, and well-considered
bottoms-up consensus conclusions.  Instead, we seem to be seeing the DNSO
gradually becoming irrelevant as an institution, as more and more policy
decisions are being made by an ICANN staff that drafts policy within the
context of contracts and determines procedures without recourse to the DNSO.
All of this has happened because the Names Council has failed to properly
marshal its resources to do the best possible job in formulating policy
recommendations.

The Review Working Group is one of your best resources; it is a group
committed to the premise that change is warranted and that the ICANN Board
deserves the best that our collective minds can offer.  We cannot abide by
RTF recommendations for additional study at a time when actual solutions are
at hand.  The Names Council needs to prove that the DNSO is not an
irrelevant body, that true consensus-based policy recommendations can be
made in a timely manner.  The Names Council needs to allow us to finish the
job we started.  It is for our mutual benefit and for the benefit of the
Corporation.

I ask you to honor the above-cited Terms of Reference and to allow us to
complete our work on your behalf.
Decision D2 should be revisited.  There is room for both a Task Force Report
and for a Working Group Summary Presentation.   We are a family in our
mutual endeavors; I ask you to mend the rift that has been created.