The RALO leadership was asked by the ALAC Executive Committee and Staff
to bring a region's view/draft proposal on the At-Large process to select a
voting Board Member from EURALO until the call scheduled for next week.
For us, there are some basic questions to be discussed and answered first
before a selection and election process can be defined. These questions -
which may be relevant for a better understanding in our community as
well - comprise:
1. What are the differences precisely between the current ALAC Board Liaison
position and the new voting Board Member (besides the voting right, of course
?
2. Does or must this person/function represent, or at least reflect, the view
points and positions of the At-Large and RALO community? Or is he/she just
bound to his/her "own free will"?
3. Who is entitled to suggest and nominate such candidates? ALAC and/or RALOs?
Or other non-community members as well?
4. Who is considered as suitable and eligible for such a voting Board position?
ALAC and RALO members only or qualified individuals – close to us - as well?
5. What are the selection and evaluation criteria for this position?
Thanks for your further consideration of these questions,
Wolf
Wolf, I don't pretend to be the authority on this, but here are my replies. I will generally use the term “ALAC/At-large” to imply the overall structure including RALOs and ALSs.
1. What are the differences precisely between the current ALAC Board Liaison
position and the new voting Board Member (besides the voting right, of course
?
The major issues are:
_a) A Liaison is supposed to act as a conduit between the ALAC (and implicitly At-Large) and the Board. So the ALAC can instruct the Liaison on a message that should be relayed to the Board, and is expected to report back to the ALAC (to the extent that is allowed by Board confidentiality issues)._
_b) When a Liaison speaks, it must be clear to the Board whether the statements are formal statements of the ALAC or not. One would hope that the Liaison would have a reasonable idea of general ALAC/At-Large directions, but it is difficult to formally enforce that. If a Liaison makes statements that are known (or should be known) to be counter to ALAC positions, that would need to be made crystal clear. However, it must be remembered that under current ICANN practices, there are no detailed transcripts of Board proceedings, so we need to have sufficient faith in the Liaison to report what we want._
_c) A full Board member represents no one. They are required by law to act in what he/she believes are in the best interests of the Corporation and I believe under California law for not-for-profit organizations are also required to act in the best interests of the public._
_d) When a full Board member speaks, there is no obligation that they reflect formal or informal ALAC policy/decisions. The trick is to select someone that you have good reason to believe will independently have a similar view and position to that taken by ALAC/At-Large. One of the differences between some of the views held on how to select our new director center around this. Do you want someone who you believe may have opinions similar to those held by the ALAC/At-Large or someone who may be highly respected but may have little connection with ALAC/At-Large (the latter is viewed as a good thing by some, and bad by others). And of course you need to remember that on many issues, At-Large may be divided and may have multiple and differing opinions._
_e) A full Board member may have very little or a lot to do with the ALAC/At-Large. It is a personal decision (perhaps guided by whether they want to be re-elected or not!)._
_f) In summary, a full Board member is pretty close to a politician that you elect. Once elected, you have little control over what they do or say and how they vote during their term. You try to pick someone who is honorable and responsible and has views similar to your own. And who you think will operate effectively in “government” (an important issue)._
_g) If the ALAC felt very strongly that a Liaison was not properly representing them, they could remove that person. In fact, the Board can request such action. For a voting board member, there is no such ability – once they are there, they stay for the full term (3 years for all other Directors, and probably the same for us). There is some discussion in the new GNSO about the ability to recall a Director, but honestly I think the chances are slim that this will happen. Under current rules, the only way a Director (or most Liaisons) can be forcibly removed is by a ¾ vote of the Board (Bylaw VI.11 - http://www.icann.org/en/general/bylaws.htm#VI)._
h) Lastly, although it may be clear to some, the expression "non-voting" is a code word. Non-voting Board members also cannot make or second motions, so their ability to bring (that is force) issues to the attention of the Board is more limited. Traditionally, Liaisons also did not participate in the various Board committees. That has now changed with Liaisons participating as non-voting members of some, but not all Board committees. Since much of the work of the Board is done at the committee level (and this will likely increase following the current Board review), this is a crucial issue.
2. Does or must this person/function represent, or at least reflect, the view
points and positions of the At-Large and RALO community? Or is he/she just
bound to his/her "own free will"?
As noted above, there is no responsibility other than a moral one to represent or reflect ALAC/At-Large views. You have to select someone who you believe will think similarly to you if you want that outcome. In effect, you are putting your trust in that person that they will, based on the answer 1c above, they will come up with the same view as the one that you hold. And the trust that based on the information presented to them as a Board member, they will see when the long-term needs are different from those seen by ALAC/At-Large.
3. Who is entitled to suggest and nominate such candidates? ALAC and/or RALOs?
Or other non-community members as well?
That is what we need to decide.
4. Who is considered as suitable and eligible for such a voting Board position?
ALAC and RALO members only or qualified individuals – close to us - as well?
Also to be decided.
5. What are the selection and evaluation criteria for this position?
That answer too is what we need to decide. In my mind, since you will be entrusting this person with a direct input into the future of ICANN, a good starting point should be the criteria that the Nominating Committee use – see http://nomcom.icann.org/invitation-2009.html#cri and http://nomcom.icann.org/invitation-2009.html#roles. Part of that is picking someone who you believe will be able to make the very substantial time commitment.
Then of course, are all of the issues above that will allow you to feel comfortable that the person will well-represent you and us, without having any ability to actually control them, and without even being able to listen to the person to verify after-the-fact that they are echoing what you think they should. If I could tell you how to guarantee that level of trust, I would patent the idea and make a fortune.
Alan
contributed by alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca on 2009-10-04 05:26:30 GMT
Here are my own personal answers to your questions:
1. What are the differences precisely between the current ALAC Board Liaison position and the new voting Board Member (besides the voting right, of course ?
The main difference, to me, is accountability; a liaison can be recalled, a Board member cannot. A liaison can be required to bring ALAC positions to the Board, but an appointed Board member has no obligations to do so once installed.
It is unlikely that the Board would allow for a At-Large-appointed member who was subject to recall. However, it is reasonable IMO that we may request that the term of the position be less than the standard 3-year term of a Director. Having a term of one year would make the position more accountable, or at very least reduce the potential damage from someone who is perceived to act against the best interest of the public once appointed. Of course continuity is important in a position like this – and the incumbent would naturally have an advantage at election time. However I believe that a one-year term – allowing, shall we say, an annual review by At-Large of its appointed Director, at least offers some long-term protection against bad choices.
Having a one-year term may also allow the Director to more accurately reflect the evolving character of At-Large, which itself undergoes elections for many positions annually. To my knowledge, no positions within At-Large are for terms of longer than two years, and many positions (including all Chairs) are for one year terms.
2. Does or must this person/function represent, or at least reflect, the view points and positions of the At-Large and RALO community? Or is he/she just bound to his/her "own free will"?
As Alan said, once on the Board the person has no formal obligation to At-Large of any kind.
3. Who is entitled to suggest and nominate such candidates? ALAC and/or RALOs? Or other non-community members as well?
That is part of what we have been asked to decide. My own interpretation of the Board motion request to create the new Director is that it has specifically instructed the "At-Large Community" to make the appointment. The "At-Large Community" is defined in ICANN bylaws as being the infrastructure consisting of ALAC, RALOs and ALSs. However, the candidates to be nominated do not have to be existing "At-Large Community" members (ie, ALS reps, individual members of RALOs or ALAC). It was the intent of NARALO to enable this when it developed its proposed process for appointment of a Director – anyone may propose a candidate from anywhere, but the nomination must be "sponsored" by at least one RALO.
4. Who is considered as suitable and eligible for such a voting Board position? ALAC and RALO members only or qualified individuals – close to us - as well?
The nominating process may bring forward many different kinds of people, from within At-Large and outside, so anyone is potentially eligible (though we might publish guidelines prohibiting employees of contracted parties, people convicted of Internet-related fraud, etc).
However, the selection of the person – the determination of suitability – is up to us (the "At-Large Community").
5. What are the selection and evaluation criteria for this position?
Alan has made an excellent suggestion that we create and publish the criteria, using the NomComm ones as a starting point. The election process within At-Large – the campaigns and the voting – will determine which candidate is believed to best meet that criteria.
The criteria (for both eligibility and suitability) can be changed over time by simple determination of ALAC (maybe ALAC+RALOs), but the actual selection process will eventually become an ICANN bylaw and is not that flexible to change once implemented.
contributed by evan@telly.org on 2009-10-04 15:33:24 GMT
A few more comments. One is in reply to Evan. In my first post, I tried to be as factual as I could, and did not comment on the purely subjective questions. Here I will.
Q 1 - Liaison vs Voting Board member: I strongly disagree with Evan's suggestion that the term be one year. A large part of the debate surrounding whether we should have voting Board member(s) vs the Liaison has been on the topic of "Is ALAC/At-Large mature enough to appoint voting board members?"
To have us now request that the term be 1 year, essentially because we are sufficiently unsure that we trust ourselves to appoint the proper person, will simply prove that we are not sufficiently mature. Yes, there is risk involved, and having only one Board members instead of the two that SOs have increases the risk. But that should just increase the pressure to select someone with a good track record (in whatever criteria we decide are important) that we can trust.
The learning curve for the ICANN Board is steep, regardless of previous similar experience. Once year is simply not enough to prove or disprove oneself (those who have been around for a while will remember that I have made the same statement about the Liaison position). And one year is just barely enough time to create the credibility within the Board that one needs to function effectively.
Moreover, we have been talking about a selection process that will take many months to do properly. So even if we limit the process to 5 or 6 months, we will start selecting a new board member barely 1/2 year into their term - perhaps after only one ICANN meeting. Do we really think that we can evaluate a person's performance in that kind of time period, especially since we cannot actually see what is going on most of the time, and will have to work based on indirect information?
Q 3 - Who nominates: As I said earlier, this is something that we need to decide. Although it is not necessarily a model that we want to follow, it may be worthwhile looking at the procedures followed by the Supporting Organizations. For example, the most recent GNSO election process can be found at http://gnso.icann.org/elections/call-for-nominations-03jan08.htm. With the reorganization of the GNSO, new procedures are currently under discussion.
Q 4/5 - Qualifications: I mentioned the Nominating Committee reference earlier. Much of the NomCom description comes directly out of the ICANN Bylaws and that set of criteria is not subject to debate - Article VI, Sections 3 and 4 - http://www.icann.org/en/general/bylaws.htm#VI-3. We are expected to come up with a process which can justifiably claim that these criteria are satisfied for all candidates.
contributed by alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca on 2009-10-05 04:58:22 GMT
—
Alan: Fair enough on one year. But the standard three-year term is still two long; there's not a single current position within At-Large which with a term that long. How about two?
As for looking for inspiration from the GNSO Board selection procedures, I don't think that maps well into At-Large. The equivalent of insisting that nominees must be put forward – and seconded – by GNSO Council members, is like limiting At-Large nominations to members of ALAC. I don't think that many will find that insufficient. As I said before, the Board has explicitly said that it expects the "At-Large Community" – not ALAC alone, and not the general public – to find and appoint the Director.
contributed by evan@telly.org on 2009-10-05 16:31:11 GMT
—
Evan, on the length of term, 2 is certainly better than 1 but I see little reason not to be in line with the rest of the organizations and send the message that we have confidence in our process and choice. Clearly one of the things on which opinions differ and that we (or the Board) will have to resolve.
Regarding the GNSO, I was not advocating that we emulate them (and in fact, the GNSO rules for the future are themselves in flux). I was simply pointing out that people who are trying to establish a process for At-Large should at least be aware of what the other groups do to select their Board members.
Regarding the term At-Large Community, what the Board motion says is that they decided to "add one voting director appointed from the At Large Community". This is consistent with the current Bylaws. In the cases of the GNSO, the ccNSO and the ASO, the Board seats belong to the larger organizations (equivalent to the At-Large Community), and the Board members are chosen by their respective Councils. See http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q3/005844.html.
Understand that I am NOT advocating that we emulate this, just pointing out that the use of the global community term does not map to who choses the Director. THAT is what we need to discuss, decide, and have approved by the Board.
contributed by alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca on 2009-10-05 18:32:31 GMT
—
The Draft Final Report of the ICANN BOard Review Working Group has recommended a four-year director term. I don't view proposing an attenuated term for an at-large director to be a prudent course of action.
– danny –
contributed by guest@socialtext.net on 2009-10-07 22:56:02 GMT
—
Alan Greenberg observed that, "we cannot actually see what is going on most of the time, and will have to work based on indirect information".
That is true today, but only because ICANN is not complying with the requirement of its Bylaws that "ICANN and its constituent bodies shall operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner".
An important task for an At-Large member of the Board would be to try to get ICANN to comply with this Bylaw. Neither the At-Large community nor anyone else should have to form their opinion of ICANN operations without as much information as it would be "feasible" to provide.
A major advantage to having a full member of the Board is that a Board member has the absolute right to inspect all ICANN records (as was established by Karl Auerbach's lawsuit). And a Board member can make motions and raise points of order.
For example, a Board member (unlike a "liaison") could raise a point of order objecting to a "meeting" when it would have been feasible to Webcast the audio, but that isn't done.
I would certainly want to know what specific actions candidates for At-Large Board member intend to propose to the Board to address the current failure to comply with the accountability and transparency Bylaws. I hope that other At-Large members would also want to hear about this, and that these action plans on this issue by candidates would be a major factor considered by the At-Large community in the selection process, regardless of how that process is conducted.
contributed by edward@hasbrouck.org on 2009-10-08 16:22:43 GMT
—
Hopefully part of the "selection" process will be a formal structure for each of the candidates to (1) publish their plans, program, and agenda for community comment, and (2) respond to community questions, prior to the selection decision.
contributed by edward@hasbrouck.org on 2009-10-08 19:23:23 GMT
