RE: [registrars] policy development

["Timothy Denton" <tmdenton@magma.ca>]

To all:
Bob's comments on the fate of our several policy initiatives are accurate.
The registrar constituency has faithfully dveloped consensus policies within
its membership at the request of ICANN and seen them disappear into the
"oubliette" - the round file - somewhere. What gives? Lack of follow
through?

Or was there no need to take them up the chain into the Names Council for
other constituencies to have their say?

While there may be occult forces that steer registrar consensus documents
into the boards (hockey metaphor), the obvious answer is that we have not
had more than one harassed and overworked volunteer until now. After the
elections we shall have four officers, with much less chance that issues
will be lost, or made to disappear without conscious notice and decision by
the constituency.

I am by instinct a careful keeper and tracker of documents, not because I
like the damn things but because they tend to settle arguments: "this is
what we decided"; "this is what the law says", etc. I think one of the first
things a secretary should do for this association (and I am sure Liz Wiliams
would do the same) is to start tracking the progress of documents through
our various task forces. By regular updates of where issues stand, the
constituency will be better enabled to know where various initiatives are
progressing.

It is also a welcome sign that our Names Councillor Erica Roberts is
actively offering assistance in this regard.

We have functioned so far on the minimum of bureaucracy and paper. I think
we are discovering that, though the paper needs to be kept to a minimum, we
should not lose the benefit of our precious collective time, and our
consensuses on various issues, by failure to follow through. Following
through can include a decision to terminate an exercise for any reason.

If it is determined that an issue should not go forward to the Names
Council, that itself is a decision of which everyone should be informed. And
if it required consensus, then the constituency should have voted on it.

One of the major functions of the secretary of this association should be to
track the progress of initiatives through the registrars' association and
the Names Council, with an action/status report at least quarterly and
possibly more often, in plenty of time for our quarterly ICANN meetings.

In short, the constituency needs to upgrade its record-keeping ability so
that we have collective and not selective memory of our actions, and
decisions, including the decisions to do nothing.

Timothy Denton, BA,BCL
37 Heney Street
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1N 5V6
www.tmdenton.com
1-613-789-5397
tmdenton@magma.ca


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-registrars@dnso.org [mailto:owner-registrars@dnso.org]On
Behalf Of Robert F. Connelly
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 12:38 AM
To: Registrar Constituency
Subject: RE: [registrars] policy development


At 05:32 PM 7/19/01 +1000, Bruce Tonkin wrote:

>Perhaps the next issue is to prioritize what policies need to be developed.

The silly thing is that ICANN said they wanted a code of conduct, an escrow
system and they did not want registrars to warehouse --- but none of these
items have seen the light of day.

Regards, BobC



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Measure twice and cut once."
 From "Little Britches".
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