[bestbits] Call for expressions of interest: 1net steering committee

Fri Dec 6 16:45:39 EST 2013

Thanks Parminder and I should say that I am equally confused.

My primary interest in all this is to ensure that there is a community informatics (CI) voice in pertinent Internet Governance discussions as they go forward; and the CI community is, as we speak, working to formulate rather explicitly what the contents of that intervention should include.

Given the way that things have been evolving and the lack of accountability and transparency in various procedures being followed I have concerns that an “Steering/Coordinating Committee” from CS would not be such as to ensure that the CI voices are heard. But this of course, for me is secondary to ensuring that there is a grassroots/CI intervention into the Brazil meeting and following.

Further the specific role of Inet in all of this is still unclear to me… and whether a priority should be Inet or the Brazil committee ;and I feel reluctant to make an either/or until that lack of clarity has been resolved and at this time feel it necessary to proceed on both tracks at once.

And as with any normal ethical process in this space (or any other) I would as a matter of course recuse myself from any selection process of which I was a direct party.

M

From: bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net [mailto:bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net] On Behalf Of parminder
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2013 3:39 AM
To: bestbits at lists.bestbits.net
Subject: Re: [bestbits] Call for expressions of interest: 1net steering committee

On Thursday 05 December 2013 01:44 PM, parminder wrote:

On Wednesday 04 December 2013 07:25 PM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:

<snip> 

Each of those networks is now urgently reaching out to their constituents, as I'm doing so now, to ask for expressions of interest in serving on the 1net steering committee.  On the part of the Best Bits participants, in Bali we already nominated the same four Brazilian representatives (Carolina, Joana, Carlos and Laura) to be on that committee.  As far as I know, they are willing to continue, but have expressed the wish that someone else also join, who has a closer association with the ICANN community.  That being the case, we need to put forward one name.

Is this a view communicated by all the 4 reps... I am not so sure of the justification. Why not for instance have someone from the ICTD community... I think Carlos have deep connections enough with the ICANN community, no... We need to take the Brazil summit outwards towards key global Internet related public policy issues that are real concerns for the world, and not more inwards towards narrow ICANN issues, which are a very limited set. But I agree that the four existing reps being all from Brazil, a developing country, maybe the additional person can be from a developed country.  Crossing these two considerations, I think Michael Gurstein should make a great choice.

I must confess that I have been a victim of the huge amount of parallel stuff going on, and I really thought I was nominating Michael for CS reps for 'Brazil meeting' organising committee .... 

However, Jeremy, the confusion came from your note above saying that 4 current liaisons to Brazil Meeting will 'continue' and we need to 'add' only one more....  These 4 are not currently on the 1net committee, and so terms like 'continue' do not make sense to me. By the way is it a decided thing that the current 4 Brazilian CS liaisons to the 'Brazil Meeting' would also be 4 persons in the 1net steering committee, whereby the civil society coordination committee will be choosing only one person t 'add'.. If so, who made that decision, which is really a big one...

 Anyway, as I said, I meant to nominate Michael as  a CS rep for the 'Brazil Meeting' .... Well, now since Carlos has stepped down, maybe we can fill that one opening ...

On the other hand, if Michael accepts nomination for the 1net committee, I am happy to do that as well...

Although, I must confess I am still not clear what this steering committee is all about..

Anyway, an earnet request to everyone, especially process responsbility holders - pl clearly mark everytime we talk about selections or any such thing seperately - whether it is about 1Net or the "Brazil Meeitng' for which , as per our present decision we are engaging directly with CGI.Br.

parminder 

parminder 

parminder

If you would like to be put yourself forward to join the 1net steering committee, or would like to nominate someone else, then this thread is for that purpose.  The thread can also be used to discuss the criteria that you think should be used by the joint committee in considering the nominees to put forward.  If you disagree that the four Brazilian representatives should be amongst the five civil society representatives on the 1net steering committee, then you can put forward that view too.

In closing, I do need to acknowledge that the joint committee is still an imperfect vehicle for nominating civil society representatives to the 1net steering committee, because it doesn't yet have an elaborate procedure in place for making the selection - and I know how sensitive some of us are about that sort of thing.  All I can say about that is that in parallel to this call for expressions of interest, the committee is also considering how procedures it could put in place that would satisfy their constituents' expectations for a transparent and accountable process.  Meanwhile, that remains a work in progress.

I will forward the views put forward in this thread to the other members of the joint committee (who are currently from APC, Diplo, the IGC and the NCSG - Michael Gurstein's interest in joining has also been noted and is under discussion).  We will then discuss the nominations within the committee, and attempt to come back to you all with a suggestion that will hopefully be generally acceptable.  If you have any process-related queries, it is probably appropriate that you direct those to Ian Peter who is the independent chair of the joint committee for now.

-- 

Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
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