[governance] ICANN RFC on its performance

[Guru@ITfC]

"it's obvious: because that's one of the about 400 ways to keep ICANN off
its mission, and distract the public opinion in the wrong direction"

Attributing motives is a zero sum game. 

For any person or institution interested in improving, willingness to listen
to criticism is indispensable requirement. Labelling critical comments or
the people who gave them indicate a closed mind. This is even more
applicable to the 'general manager of public participation' of a global
governance institution.

My first response to Kieren related to the tenor of his communication and
not to his intentions (I do understand and acknowledge his intention to get
feedback for improvement as valid and genuine). His response immediately was
to label my mail as personal abuse! The series of your mails insisting on a
particular format in which we should give feedback and defending icann
against several indicting comments, as also Kierens response to Mike
Gurstein on persisting with a flawed process of consultation suggest that
this RFC process is indeed a "placebo substitute". 

Veni, Kieren .... I echo Karl ...  "If you can't take the heat, get out of
the kitchen".

******* 
My own response to David would be-

Icann claims to be a global governance institution. The accountability
standards that need to apply  to any such 'public institution' cant be
compared to private sector corporate accountability. The stakeholders for a
private entity are likely to be much smaller and then again in most cases,
the accountability would tend to be for making 'economic surplus' (profit).
Private institutions follow the law, while public institutions also make
law/policy and therefore need to be following (and seen to be following)
much higher standards of probity and transparency.

A public institution accountability is wider in both scope (many more
objectives) and extent (number of stakeholders and people). Icann is
accountable to the internet community as a technical manager of the
internet. In its widest (and usually appropriate) meaning, the internet
community is every person in this world. 

The idea of audio recording is a good way to help icann demonstrate
transparency in its internal oversight.  

*******
To go back to Kierens response to Mike Gurstein -

"....I have just made myself directly accountable. Take me up on it."

I admire this cowboy spirit, but am doubtful if it this is the brick with
which we want to build the global governance processes with.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Veni Markovski [mailto:veni at veni.com] 
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 7:40 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; David Goldstein
Subject: Re: [governance] ICANN RFC on its performance

At 19:00 5/13/2007  -0700, you wrote:
>Preposterous is the first thought that comes from this idea, that of 
>audio recording all board meetings and making them available to the 
>public. How many companies and organisations around the world do this? 
>I can only imagine the number that do it for all meetings would be 
>negligible.
>
>I'm all for transparency and accountability, but I don't see why this 
>should be expected.

You don't? But it's obvious: because that's one of the about 400 ways to
keep ICANN off its mission, and distract the public opinion in the wrong
direction. We have a saying in Bulgaria, "Let me say publicly that your
sister is a bad person, and then try to explain that you don't have a sister
at all".
So, when people say that ICANN is not transparent, they say, "You see
- they don't even record their meetings - something which costs nothing, and
we have even volunteers to do that". And somebody may not even ask the
question you are asking, but think, "Hmmm... right - why don't they?"

veni

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