[governance] RE: [bestbits] Call for Transparency Process for 1Net

Fri Feb 14 22:06:24 EST 2014

Thanks for this.

Some questions were usefully answered and others less so. but we get the
idea.

Best and thanks again,

Mike

From: Anja Kovacs [mailto:anja at internetdemocracy.in] 
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 11:56 AM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: David Cake; Ian Peter; Gene Kimmelman; IGC;
&lt,bestbits at lists.bestbits.net&gt,
Subject: Re: [governance] RE: [bestbits] Call for Transparency Process for
1Net

Dear all,

Following up on my earlier email, I also wanted to share with you Adiel's
response to my additional queries regarding who wrote the summary. Please
find our exchange below this message.

Best,
Anja

On 13 February 2014 15:01, Adiel Akplogan <adiel at afrinic.net> wrote:

On 2014-02-13, at 24:27 AM, Anja Kovacs <anja at internetdemocracy.in> wrote:

> The second summary was a collaboration of a number of us, most of whom had
helped with previous /1net efforts.
>
> [AK]: As this was one of the questions specifically asked, could you
please clarify who the "number of us" were? In particular, was this a
subgroup from the SC or were there others also involved?

Hello Anja, there was staff from our various organisations including myself,
they don't want to be listed so label all on just me if the "Who" here
matter that much. I'm taking the full responsibility of it.

Thanks and hope that will help.

- a.

On 13 February 2014 02:15, Anja Kovacs <anja at internetdemocracy.in> wrote:

Dear all,

As I had promised, I asked Adiel to shed further light on the financing of
the website/forum and the summary. Please find my email, and Adiel's
detailed reply below. I have asked him to further clarify who the "some of
us" are who wrote the second summary he refers to, but in the interest of
time thought I'll share the below response with you already. I hope this
answers many of the questions that were raised. 

Best wishes,
Anja

On 12 February 2014 02:21, Adiel Akplogan <adiel at afrinic.net> wrote:

Hello Anja,

On 2014-02-11, at 01:59 AM, Anja Kovacs <anja at internetdemocracy.in> wrote:

> Thanks for all the ongoing work on the website and the transformation of
the summaries on the forum. These are important and positive steps in
responding to some of the questions and criticisms that have been raised.
>
> Within civil society, some people have been wondering, though, how the
work for both is being funded, and also who exactly is doing it. I think
these are fair enough questions, and that it would be important to provide
an answer to them as part of our efforts to improve transparency.
>
> Adiel, could you therefore clarify who exactly prepared the summary (I had
presumed it was you but my apologies if I was wrong!), and how this was
supported financially, if at all? Similarly for the website, who designed
and developed it, and where did the idea for a forum come from? And how
was/is the website funded?
>
> I think it is valuable for the members of the SC as well to have a bit
more of a sense of these issues. My apologies if you already clarified this
in the first part of the call last week, but if not, it would be great if
you could do so here.

Thanks for your email which has some fair and reasonable questions.

To start, I would like to reinsure you and all form the Civil Society that
this is and has always been a collective effort to move /1net from just a
mailing list into something more coherent and structured.

The goal of course is to have the participants organise themselves and make
/1net what it should be by identifying issues and work together to
collectively find solutions and/or ideas. But as with anything in life, and
particularly in self organised environment there is always work to be done
behind the scenes to ensure that the momentum is kept, and it is perfectly
reasonable for people to request who is doing that. But at the same time
people should remember where the whole initiative started from (and it seems
to me like people suddenly decide to forget it).

The short answer is that there have been two main contributions: that of
time and of finances. Time has of course come from a wide range of
participants but in terms of organisational effort much of it has come from
individuals within some of the I* organisations that signed the Montevideo
Declaration (particularly AFRINIC, ARIN, APNIC, RIPE-NCC and ICANN).

The unseen work of /1net to date such as organising meetings, setting up
mailing lists, registering domains, setting up the website have been done by
a range of different staff in those organisations. For example, AFRINIC as
NRO secretariat ran the first mailing list, and we use AFRINIC's web
conferencing facilities to have calls and coordinate that, RIPE-NCC staff
work with the hosting company on the transfer of the mailing list from
nor.net to 1net.org, AFRINIC staff has developed the mailing list statistic
tools and currently helping with some of the logistic of the steering
committee all of that voluntarily as part of their job in our different
organisations. If you look at the Whois for 1net.org you will see that
AFRINIC took over the domain after the first launch of the web site (I am
the individual officially named as the registrant) and ICANN is the tech
administrator. I have been using my time to coordinate the web site
evolution with a team made of staff of a web hosting company and ICANN's
communication staff, but they don't do anything that has not been approved
by myself. They have also implemented the new forum which, some within the
volunteers I* organisations and others in the broader Internet community
offered to help road-test before it was officially launched. I have been
having a weekly coordination meeting with them after the first launch (where
there was some technical IPv6 and DNSSEC and other issues which I and others
worked on with them to fix). The cost of hosting the web site and its
development is currently provided by ICANN.

Gradually coordinating the work behind the scene on these aspects is being
transitioned to the Steering Committee whose representatives have been
chosen by different stakeholder groups themselves. For example, the Steering
Committee also was provided with a link to test out the forum and the new
web site a few days before it went live so they could provide feedback. That
will be the systematic approach going forward.

In terms of the summaries produced, there have been two. Staff at APNIC
produced the first, giving a statistical analysis of discussions on the
mailing list. That was well received and at the same time many participants
made it clear they were having troubling following events so consensus was
quickly reached that a summary of content would be useful. The Steering
Committee agreed so we moved ahead. The second summary was a collaboration
of a number of us, most of whom had helped with previous /1net efforts. But
I had the final sign-off (and I shared a version with the SC). As I
mentioned  on the mailing list this is an attempt to help, and nothing in
the summary is to be considered conclusive so can be challenged by anyone if
the find it inaccurate. I have also heard the suggestion on the list to have
a collaborative editing platform to produce the summary. My idea is still to
have a draft that people will play around with. I'm not sure just letting
the group as I see it developing every summary from scratch will work
effectively (my personal view).

Going forward, we will continue to have have the automated mailing list
reports and possibly weekly summaries, depending on whether the lists
themselves show the ability to self-summarise.

As proposed last week and discussed during the last conference call, I think
the Steering Committee need to organise itself to take over these tasks
starting with the Communications and Community engagement group. The idea
seems to have the support of the Steering Committee last week. So that is a
positive and important step. The team is expected to be comprised of a
number of professional communicators and Steering Committee members. The
members aren't decided yet but we'll announce them once they are.

My expectation is that the communications team will make recommendations to
the Steering Committee about the things you reference: summaries, website
and so on. And it will be up to the Steering Committee to decide how to
proceed.

While here, there are two other things I would like to bring your attention.
Firstly, all efforts behind the scenes are focused on how to assist
participants in arriving at solutions to issues that are identified by
participants themselves. It is a true support role in that respect. Nothing
else. As you may have noticed I ahve refrain myself posting directly on some
of the issues being discussed not to be seen as directing the debate or
having any particular hidden agenda. I have heard enough!

Secondly, while some of us from the I* organisations have shouldered much of
the cost in terms of both time and money of /1net so far, the intention
going forward is for many other organisations to contribute to get this
running. The initiative can not sustain itself without all these
contributions.

At the moment we are focussed on preparations for the Brazil meeting but
soon after that, we hope that /1net will have provided sufficient value and
worth that others are keen to support this initiative going forward.

I hope that answers all your questions. If you or others have ideas,
suggestions, offers of help and so on I would be happy to hear them.

Thanks.

- a.

_______________________________________________
Steercom mailing list
Steercom at 1net.org
http://1net-mail.1net.org/mailman/listinfo/steercom

-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

On 11 February 2014 18:35, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

Tks Anja. I'll look forward to hearing back concerning the set of questions
that I posed either from you or directly from responsible others in 1Net.

It would be good to put this matter to rest sooner rather than later.

M

From: Anja Kovacs [mailto:anja at internetdemocracy.in] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 3:31 AM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: David Cake; Ian Peter; Gene Kimmelman; IGC;
&lt,bestbits at lists.bestbits.net&gt,

Subject: Re: [governance] RE: [bestbits] Call for Transparency Process for
1Net

Hi Michael and all,

Regarding the summary and forum/website, I am happy to find out more about
how they were financed. I can share with you already that both were shared
with the 1net SC before they were shared with the larger list. To my
knowledge there was little involvement of the SC in their conceptualisation
until after their launch. The SC has since been making suggestions on how to
improve both, and this is being worked on now (for example, there have been
requests by many to try and provide functionality that would allow a user to
interact with the forum completely through email, in which case for that
particular user the experience would actually not be very different than it
is now). I foresee that these will continue to evolve over the weeks to
come. 

Hope this is helpful, and I'll get back to you as soon as I find out more.

Best,
Anja

On 10 February 2014 13:51, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

A simple detailed reply (1-2 hours max) to my initial request would be more
than sufficient to stem any further debate on the internal functioning of
1Net (certainly by myself). 

My question is why those who have wasted far more of their (and my time) in
arguing that such is unnecessary are not directing their efforts toward 1Net
to have them stop this discussion immediately through a useful response.

M

From: David Cake [mailto:dave at difference.com.au] 
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2014 6:54 AM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: Ian Peter; genekimmelman at gmail.com; governance at lists.igcaucus.org;
bestbits at lists.bestbits.net

Subject: Re: [governance] RE: [bestbits] Call for Transparency Process for
1Net

On 10 Feb 2014, at 6:16 am, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

Precisely what are people afraid of in insisting that 1Net, a formation that
was interposed and interposed itself between "CS" and the Brazil meeting,
make transparent its decision making processes including in the crucial
areas of financial supports and expenditures and decisions as to inclusions
and exclusions.  

            I am not afraid at all of 1Net increasing its transparency and
accountability mechanisms - on the contrary, that would clearly be a
positive outcome. But I am quite afraid that we will spend a much larger
amount of time debating the internal functioning of 1net, which at this
point is largely a mechanism for dealing with administrative issues to do
with a single event, rather than focussing on the substantive policy
outcomes of that, and future, events. 

            Regards

                        David

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     bestbits at lists.bestbits.net.
To unsubscribe or change your settings, visit:
     http://lists.bestbits.net/wws/info/bestbits

-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in <http://www.internetdemocracy.in/> 

-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in <http://www.internetdemocracy.in/> 

-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in <http://www.internetdemocracy.in/> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/bestbits/attachments/20140215/34200dd5/attachment.htm>