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1. Term of Appointment

All other appointments to the Board (by Nominating Committee or the Supporting Organizations) are currently for three year terms. The ongoing Board Review(http://www.icann.org/en/reviews/board/board-review-wg-draft-final-report-19sep09-en.pdf),Recommendation #5) is discussing whether this three year term should be changed, but pending that decision, we will use the “three year term” in this discussion. Nominating Committee appointed Board members are seated at the end of the Annual meeting, and SO-appointed members are seated 6 months later. The Board Review is considering changing the seating of SO Board members to coincide with the mid-year ICANN meeting. That Review has also taken as a given that the At-Large Board member should be seated at the same time as the SO members.

Related to the issue of term length is that of the maximum number of consecutive terms. The Bylaws currently allow no more than three consecutive terms, although this too is being discussed by the Board Review Committee.

Alternatives:

Discussion within the Board Review reports seems to assume that the At-Large Board member will serve terms similar to those of other Board members. A number of RALO representatives initially supported having a one or perhaps two year term. There was also some discussion of rotating the position over the ICANN regions to even out representation.

Discussion:

The rationale for a shorter term was primarily to cover the situation where a less than optimal person was appointed. On the other side, there was a belief that it would have a number of negative impacts:

·Three years is barely enough for a Director to start fully functioning effectively: establish credibility, understand the Board dynamics and develop good working relationships with other Directors.

·Shorter terms, particularly if incumbents are not returned for additional terms (as would be ensured if rotation was required) virtually guarantees that the At-Large Director would always be the junior person on the Board, never being eligible for the position of Chair, Vice-Chair or Committee Chair. Several former ICANN Directors confirmed that three years was the way to go.

·In the extreme, for a term of one year, the decision whether to reappoint or select a new person would need to be made very early in the person’s term. Given the sparse information documenting Board discussions, there would be virtually no opportunity to do any sort of assessment of how the person is doing prior to deciding on his/her fate.

It was observed that many who initially advanced the idea of short term limits, once explained the need for continuity and relationship-building, eventually came to agree with keeping the term of the At-Large Director in line with those of other Directors.

Recommendation: 1
The At-Large Board member should be appointed to terms equal to those of the SO members and should be seated at the same time as those members. As a transition provision, the initial term should be adjusted based on the actual starting date, but in no case should it be markedly less than three years to allow the At-Large Board member to properly be integrated into the Board. The number of consecutive terms should be the same as for other Board members.

Notes and Appendices:

Members of the White Paper drafting team

  • Sébastien Bachollet
  • Alan Greenberg
  • Dave Kissoondoyal
  • Cheryl Langdon-Orr
  • Evan Leibovitch
  • Carlton Samuels

Related web pages and links:

ABS%20White%20Paper_FINAL_11012011_EN.pdf

Call%20for%20community%20Comment%20on%20ABS%20White%20Paper_FR_final.pdf

ABS%20White%20Paper_ES_final_08012010-RevisedContent_FINAL-ES.pdf

Appendix 1 - Documentation of Prior Actions

Appendix 2 - Announcement and Minutes of ICANN Board Resolution 27th August 2009

Glossary

Comments:

Comments will be accepted in any of the six UN languages.

(EN) I agree with the whole number of reasons displayed in the discussion. But, also, I would prefer to limit the election to 1 period of 3 years, in order to promote regional diversity in other elections.

(ES) Estoy de acuerdo con todas las razones expuestas en el apartado de discusión. Sin embargo, preferiría limitar la elección a 1 sólo período de 3 años, para promover diversidad regional en otras elecciones.

contributed by investigaciones@densi.com.ar on 2010-01-15 09:15:51 GMT

Andrés, If we set up such a rule, we are guaranteeing that the At-Large director will never have much seniority on the Board, and people with seniority are generally the ones that populate the more important committees, become committee chairs, and serve as Board Chair and Vice-chair.

Even if we would do what you suggest, there is no assurance that the position would rotate among the regions, and even if we did make sure it rotates, a full sequence would take 15 years - a LONG time in this business.

I think that Karl Auerbach got it right when this was discussed during the Oct. 8, 2009 teleconference:

> I would encourage, since we only have one seat, that we view ourselves as one large community rather than regional. And I can guarantee you that once the other areas of the world get organized, North America will no longer dominate, because we're the smallest in terms of population.

Alan

contributed by alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca on 2010-01-15 23:32:53 GMT

—
Alan, we discussed this at last LACRALO Teleconference. We really share your (and Karl Auerbach´s) vision regarding the positive aspect of having some "Seniority" at the Board.

We have a regional position in this particular. We agree definitely with the proposal of having a 3 years period, to making this Director to be in coincidence, at his/her mandate, with the Directors that are appointed by SO´s. We discussed my idea about having some kind of rotation and considering your comments here. We decided that putting a rule like that would be really wrong.

However, LACRALO also makes a strong proposal indicating that the elected director should have a maximum of 2 mandates on the Board (3+3 years) without the possibility of a 2rd re-election (but with the chance of being 6 years, resting 3 and being appointed again).

You can check at that proposal in the Teleconference´s transcript.https://st.icann.org/lacralo/index.cgi?transcription_21_january_2010_lacralo_en

contributed by investigaciones@densi.com.ar on 2010-01-27 12:16:47 GMT

—
Andres, there are good arguments for and against that, but since all Directors (SO and NomCom) are currently subject to the same term-limit rules, I suspect that the At-Large Director will as well. So it is probably out of our hands.

contributed by alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca on 2010-01-27 13:48:59 GMT