[governance] APC - Forum draft?

[Vittorio Bertola]

Il giorno gio, 10-11-2005 alle 19:23 +0200, Anriette Esterhuysen ha
scritto:
> Perhaps the term 'membership guidelines' would be better.
> 
> Having a transparent process with membership criteria and a nomination 
> process will contribute to:
> 
> - diversity
> - relative representavity
> - legitimacy
> - transparency
> 
> In other words, it will help ensure compliance with the WSIS principles you 
> mention above.

As I was saying, I agree if it is not a mechanism to exclude anyone, but
just to verify applicants on a formal plan.

However, the fact that you mention "relative representativity" makes me
think that you imagine a sort of "quotas", so that you can't accept yet
another civil society group if you already have 100 NGOs and only 5
private businesses (random example). Am I right?

In general, I think you should be very careful about the fact that the
forum is open to anyone who meets some basic, formal, non-exclusionary
criteria. This is what is commonly expected from Internet governance
processes - mostly, people expect to find a mailing list and join,
period. The idea of "bottom-up" is exactly that - all those who are
interested gather and create a group at the above layer.

> > What should such "nomination process" be for - to nominate whom?
> 
> Member of the forum.

So it's like, there's APC and CPSR applying for forum membership and a
nominating committee deciding which of the two orgs becomes a member?
Just to understand.

If I'm right, then I disagree. It seems you have in mind something more
like the UN ICT Task Force, rather than the IETF - am I correct?

I would suggest moving any kind of "relative weight for decision making"
at the level of an executive group, rather than at the level of forum
membership in itself. A closed membership entity (from the UN, taking
over the Internet, etc) would be criticized and discredited on the
entire net in a minute.

> Personally I find the tripartite model of stakeholders very limiting, and I 
> suspect it will be quite shortlived.  
> 
> To reduce the range of stakeholders involved in IG that are neither 
> government or private sector to 'civil society' is very problematic and results 
> in insufficient voice, skill and diversity in what should be processes in which 
> all affected groups (stake - holders) can participate.

Sure, but who decides that "the community of actors involved in
technical aspects of internet development and management" (whoever that
be: does that include ICANN? W3C? ISOC? ITU?) is a fourth category that
is more deserving than, say, the academics, or the engineers, or
individuals, or IGOs, or whatever else? That's why I'm wary - we might
not like the tripartite model, but at least there's decades of practice
in understanding how to manage it, and how to tell between different
categories.

> > >   -  Drafting the member structure
> > >   -  Identifying scope of work and mission of the Forum
> 
> We felt a small group with a fixed term mandate would be  more effective.

Again, on such a groundbreaking development, I think inclusiveness is
much more important than effectiveness. After all, if this Forum is not
"bought in" from the bottom, it will never fly.

> Karen and Willie do not have access to email right now..expect to hear 
> more from them later.

Sure.

On procedures, I share Bill's concern, and I would rather like the
caucus come up with something on its own, rather than adopt a proposal
from a specific organization - even if building over it.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...

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