[governance] Innovation

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

With a certain amount of trepidation (though my skin is already  
rather thick) I think i will weigh in with a few personal  
observations.  Note, I am making to claims of fact, except maybe  
about my own perceptions.

I was an active IETF participant when ICANN was being formed and was  
one of those who was excited about the voting basis of this new  
organization.  What a wonderful experiment i thought.  So i signed up  
as a voter, and duly voted.  I think I even voted for Karl, but my  
memory isn't that good.  I like him and respect him, so I probably  
did.  When voting was abolished, I was outraged.  I understood that  
there had been flaws in the election process and felt that they  
should have been fixed.  anyway, I was so outraged that I decided  
that I would have nothing further to do with ICANN.

And for years, i didn't.  I remained active in the IETF, got involved  
in ICT4D software development, found myself involved in civil society  
and ended up in WGIG.

There i took part in the analysis of ICANN and while I was a  
supporter of the IETF way of doing things, did not consider myself a  
particular ally of ICANN - in fact outside of a few governments I was  
probably one of the the most strident voices for the "ICANN out from  
US domination" movement  (I support the no governments approach to  
oversight) and for demands that ICANN get its act in gear and make  
new gTLDs available to the world in massive quantities.  As a result  
I too got the 'put your action where your mouth is' speech we are all  
hearing and passing judgement on, and decided that yes, as a critic I  
should get involved and spend a few years seeing if i could do  
something.  the jury is still out on that - we still don't have gTLDs  
for the people, whois still plagues the world and governments are  
getting closer to dominating the Internet with every day that passes).

Anyway, in getting involved, i had to subject myself to the Nomcom,  
and while it is a vile experience, and i say this as one of the  
'successful candidates',  i see how hard it works to get balance.  Is  
it better then elections? i don't know but it is different and I  
believe it is a form of democracy.  Coming from a country where  
elections are regularly stolen, I am not sure I am that much of a fan  
of global (or national) elections anymore.  Perhaps there are more  
local ways to build democracy from the bottom-up.  And perhaps we are  
seeing some worthwhile experiments in that.  Another thing on which i  
think the jury is still out.

And i have spent a bit of time watching and interacting with ALAC.

At first I agreed with Karl, it was a pampered pet, with little real  
substance acting under the directions of a dominant staffer.  But  
over the last years it has begun finding its own way.  It is around a  
year since it stopped being an interim ALAC and began its real  
existence. And it is starting to find way to make its voice heard.   
It is also composed of many earnest concerned people (not flocks or  
hordes, but many individuals). And though they still are under the  
thumb of a dominant staffer, they are fighting back.  And this is a  
good thing.

I tend to think that the ALAC now is not the interim ALAC of the past  
and we need to stop looking at it as if it was.  It is something new  
that should be given time to prove itself.  Yes, the structure is  
complicated (gothic even), but that is what you get when you try to  
build democracy from the ground up as opposed to using elections that  
rely on sound bites with little substance.  And yes, we still need to  
learn how to structure this bottom up democracy more effectively so  
that it can be an effective voice and so that it can throw off the  
control of a domineering staff.  I personally advocate an ALAC that  
asserts itself enough as a civil society voice that it becomes the  
real counter balance to the GAC and whose voice the Board must listen  
too, or else.  I believe this is possible, but again, the jury is  
still out.

What is clear to me, is that this is a valid experiment in democratic  
action and that the nomcom and ALAC  are viable parts of that  
structure.  Will it work better then elections where we elect the  
prettiest and most charming fellow out there (see, i really am fond  
of Karl), remains to be seen, but I for one hope so.

Are massive numbers of people joining the organzations that make up  
ALAC?  I don't know and it might be good to have an idea of how big  
some of these ALSes and RALOs are and what sort of growth rates they  
experience over the next few years. Then again what I think we we  
need are committed local internet users who self organize to make  
local, regional and global improvement to the Internet, and that is  
what i think we have.   For now, I think ALAC deserves a chance to  
show what it can evolve into and whether it can do the job.

a.


On 27 nov 2007, at 04.56, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> Kieren McCarthy wrote:
>
>> It is impossible for me to reply to this post without taking issue  
>> with huge
>> chunks of what's in it. Just as a quick example. These two  
>> sentences, stated as facts: "The ALAC's
>> failure is obvious. Internet users have shunned it in droves."
>> This simply isn't true. But what's more problematic is that it has  
>> very
>> little to do with the issue of voting.
>
> You were a writer, a good one, I've seen you confront bad ideas.
>
> I claim (and firmly believe) that the ALAC is a failure.  Disprove  
> me. Show how masses of people are running to it and that its  
> processes actually form a force that can hold ICANN accountable for  
> its actions. Show how it is a better vehicle for the formation of  
> ideas and a seed for the formation of consensus than any group of  
> people who might happen to gather in a non-ALAC, such as this one.
>
> I claim (and firmly believe) that people are shunning the ALAC in  
> droves.  Disprove me.  Show how, even after years of existence,  
> ICANN staff support, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of life  
> support that, the number of people who are actually involved in the  
> ALAC would fill more than the smallest of small rooms - as compared  
> to the nearly 200,000 people who tried to sign up for ICANN's year  
> 2000 elections.
>
> You claim that the ALAC has "little to do with voting".  If so,  
> then how does one answer the fact that ICANN created the ALAC  
> explicitly as a means to end the election of directors?
>
> On the other hand, ICANN holds the ALAC out as a reason why members  
> of the internet community should be satisfied and not ask for voting.
>
> Thus, to my mind, the conclusion is quite the opposite, that, in  
> fact, the ALAC has everything to do with voting, or rather, to be  
> more precise, it has everything to do with non-voting.
>
> 		--karl--
>
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