[governance] Innovation

Mon Dec 3 10:21:44 EST 2007

Hi,
I did not have much time for even reading the rich/complex postings here,
even though I wanted to. Here I am.

I was also involved from the very beginning of ICANN and its AtLarge formation,
being the member of MAC, MITF, NAIS, drafting group for ALAC, interim ALAC
and now new ALAC elected from AP-RALO.

The first election was not perfect - as NAIS reported, there were many problems
including one happend in my region and country. The Japanese government
and industry organized a very systematic campaign, nothing against the rule
explicitly, but with different cultural understanding about the
election.  Half of
the members registered are from Japan. Almost half of all who voted globally
were from Japan, and they dominated the Asian region by far. A capture?
Yes or No depends on where you stand. This sent a strong cautious signal,
together with some other regions' activities.

Then 911 came, and as some already wrote "forget about democracy" and
came the "reform - effectiveness, security", etc. Just before ALSC led by Bildt
and NAIS came to consensus on the new election of AtLarge, so-called
"palace de coup" happened, in Feb 2002.

No AtLarge, no democracy, no users was the original blue print of the reform.
ALAC was a last desparate effort to bring AtLarge back to ICANN process, a
compromise from both ends.

The "stupid" three-tier structure of ALS, RALO and ALAC came from the
lessons learned from the previous election and relationship (or lack of)
between elected Board members (as Wolfgang wrote) and voters or
consituencies who elected them. ICANN staff destroyed all the
membership data as soon as the election was over, intentionally, so
there were no real means to keep the membership).

There was more empahsis put on "participation" than "representation"
(by election) in NAIS report as well as some other people's mind.
In a way, global election was totally unaccpetable at that time in
most ICANN constituencies minds.

Then came WSIS, civil society participation, IGC, and attacks to ICANN
from some governments, which gave re-birth to the voices of
users within ICANN process. While intriem ALAC in the early days
suffering from lack of interests, resources, and hostlie attitudes
from most ICANN constituencies.

Now, after WGIG/IGF, five RALOs were setup, thanks to ICANN's
generous funding to bring all ALS reps to one meeting in the region.
And there no longer is interim ALAC. Do we, new ALAC have
sustainable mechanisms? I honestly don't know. Why ALAC now
is not active in policy areas?

Well, we are trying, with 13 of 15 members are all new - less than
a year with ALAC. Many don't know about the history, and may
feel little need to know. (we organized a ALAC one-day workshop
at ICANN LA meeting to address these, including briefing on ALAC
history).

One other element I would bring attention is, perhaps, AtLarge
is the only ICANN component with strict geographic balance,
similar to RIRs, and thus even where there is little "bottom-up"
movement in the civil society, in most developing parts of the world,
the out-reach work by ICANN staff and ICANN community and NomCom
gave ways to more participation from civil society groups.
Are they effective? I don't think so. Are there better ways?

"Self-organizing" is the great principle, but it could sometimes result
only those who have resources can play the game. "Civil society"
has little history in some parts of Asia, for example, thus just
relying on that may not work well unless there is some good
incentives (such as election/voting on the Board).

Coming ALAC review (which is very slow), should give collective wisdom,
hopefully.

izumi

2007/12/1, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang
<wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de>:
> Two comments to two aspects of the discussion:
>
> Accountability of elected representatives:
>
> Yes, we had five elected AT Large Directors in 2000. I organized from Melbourne onwards until 2002 at seven ICANN Meetings the so-called "Dialogue with At Large Directors" together with Hans Klein. With the exception of one occasion, we never managed to bring all five ALM directors into a dialogue with their constituencies. Very often they had "higher priorities" than talking to their voters during the one week of an ICANN meeting. Karl came nearly everytime, Kato (the Asian At Large director from Fujitsu) and Campos (the Latin America Director from the Bank of Brasil) came frequently. Nii from Africa as often as he could. But Andy Mueller Maguhn ignored it widely. And when Andy, who got such an enourmes support in the elections, ended its mandate as director in 2002 he totaly disappeared from the scene. He did not undertake any effort to fight for a improved at large representation with his knowledge as former ICANN director. Karl did it. Andy did not. Karl voted very often "against", Andy voted very often "abstain". How can election guarantee that you get at the end indeed the people who behave in a responsible way? I know that among all the bad procedures you have at your disposal, fair, free and transparent elections are the best you can get. But while elections are important and an empowring instrument, they do not settle all problems.
>
> Empowering of Internet Users:
> In the reform process ICANN moved from one extreme to another: The original plan in 1998 was to have nine voting At Large Directors. After four years in 2002 you got just one non voting AL liaison. The background for this movement is - as described elswhere - mainly political. We know this.  A big fear and mistrust by some political (and probably also economic) groups was in favour of an exclusion of AL to minimize the risk that uncontrollable voices can make their way to the decisions making process. Within WSIS it was a long way until governments recognized civil society as a main stakeholder and accepted multistakeholderism as a principle. During PrepCom1 at WSIS I in 2002 in Geneva, the doors were closed and CS had no access even to the Plenary. There were a lot of turbulences in front of the closed doors in the ICCG in Geneva. One conclusion which was drawn by CS folks in Geneva was that they have to counter the governmental argument that CS is just a bunch of "individual noise makers" who have no mandate from anybody. The result was the start of a process of self-organisation among CS which procuded the CS Plenary, the CS Bureau, the CS Content & Themes and about 30 caucuses and working groups. One was the CS Internet Governance Caucus (co-chaired first by YJ and me after WSIS I by Jeanette and Adam and now by Parminder and Vittorio). The self organisation of the caucus paved the way for the recognition by the other stakeholders. The IGC became a respected partner in the process, was asked to nominate members for the WGIG and published reasonable statements. It had been the IGC-WGIG members which became a driving force  in the WGIG process itself, which paved the way for the Tunis Agenda. In fact, two milestones of WGIG were initiatited and drafted by CS people: the IG definition and the proposal for an Internet Governance Forum.
>
> Can be lessons learned for ICANN? Yes.
> 1. do your homework in pushing foreward the self-organization process using the existing structures for innovative actions
> 2. pratice what you preach with regard to bottom up,
> 3. draft understandable and rational language with substantial proposals
> 4. make concrete contributions in the acting bodies.
> One outcome from the ALAC review process could be to change the Advisory Committee status into a supporting organisation status which would than allow an ALSO to send two voting directors to the Board.
>
> Wolfgang
>
> ________________________________
>
> Fra: Jacqueline A. Morris [mailto:jam at jacquelinemorris.com]
> Sendt: fr 30-11-2007 16:12
> Til: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Emne: RE: [governance] Innovation
>
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> > From: Karl Auerbach [mailto:karl at cavebear.com]
> >
> > It is good to hear that people are getting interested.
> >
> > Was it you who mentioned previously that you thought that the Director
> > elected for LA in year 2000 did not fully represent the Caribbean area?
>
> Yes, it was. And I note that yet again you write LA, not LAC. So - if as you
> say, the Director was elected for LA - not LAC,  obviously they didn't
> represent  the Caribbean at ALL, as there isn't even the single letter that
> includes us in the regional name.
>
> >   Do you think that the ALAC - a channel in which your regions views
> > are
> > filtered and then filtered and then filtered again - is as good as
> > having a Director you can chose and elect?
>
>
> I disagree with the premise - I don't think that  the views are " filtered
> and then filtered and then filtered again". And honestly, once one elects a
> Director, until the next election, there's no accountability - or that's
> what I am accustomed to here. The elected person or persons can choose to
> put forward the regional views or their personal ones, as they want. At the
> end, they can be voted out, but the next person will do exactly the same
> thing.  In the current case, all the views are going forward, without
> filtration.
>
> > Back here in the US there was a thing known as a "company union" - see
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_union
>
> OK... I don't see the analogy, but ...
>
> > If you were drowning, as internet users are, in a sea of powerlessness,
> > and if given a choice between the ALAC, and its nearly vacuous ability
> > to hold ICANN to account, and real elections for real identifiable
> > people - including themselves if they chose to run, don't you think
> > that many, perhaps most would chose elections?
>
> Yet again, I disagree with the base concept here. I think that Internet
> users in the Caribbean are drowning in a sea of lack of information, lack of
> infrastructure, lack of affordable technology; not powerlessness that can be
> fixed with a vote. We need information, outreach, we need to know and
> understand what the issues are. Then we can determine what we think about
> those issues and then we can say- this is what we want/need. An election
> system won't do that IMO. NGOs and information campaigns and technology
> transfer and training programs will. And the ALSes can work on that, and
> they can get support from ICANN and other organizations to do that.
>
> Honestly, I think that you are coming from a place that is so different to
> the reality here that it's  almost impossible to relate.
>
> Jacqueline
>
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>
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-- 
                        >> Izumi Aizu <<

           Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita
           Kumon Center, Tama University, Tokyo
                                  Japan
                                 * * * * *
           << Writing the Future of the History >>
                                www.anr.org
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