[governance] [process] the IGC charter

[Jeanette Hofmann]

Hi, I agree with what Bill recommends regarding the voting procedure, 
which is:

So I'd follow the rules
 > for the election and afterwards try to see if those who've affirmed their
 > membership can't have a useful discussion of what they want the 
caucus to be
 > and perhaps amend the charter if there's sufficient support for that.

However, I am not in favor of Bill's idea to create a formal seperate 
space for the caucus members. This list has always been a somewhat odd 
hybrid of a general platform for disussing IG related topics and a civil 
society space for agreeing on advocacy positions. When I was co-chairing 
the caucus, I was even a bit proud of the growing subscriber list and 
the fact that we got more and more non civil society lurkers who found 
our debates relevant enough to listen on a regular basis. I wouldn't 
want to jeopardize the general platform function of this list. On the 
contrary, I would do anything possible to ensure high quality 
discussions that make it worth listening. A seperation of the two 
functions of this list seems a potential death knell to me.

jeanette



William Drake wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On 7/13/08 8:06 PM, "Avri Doria" <avri at psg.com> wrote:
> 
>> - there is no intrinsic harm in asking people to say they agree with
>> the charter.  in fac as a step between elections as a way to include
>> mew people as members it is a good idea.
> 
> Agree
>  
>> - The charter requires that the vote be sent to all subscribers and
>> that in the act of voting they (re) affirm their membership as CS and
>> in the IGC as defined in the charter.  To use this list as is proposed
>> by the coordinators, to define who can receive a ballot, is in breach
>> of the charter as i read it.
> 
> Avri is right that the charter says this, there can be no denying it, it's
> clearly stated.  However, I also think it's a real flaw in the charter, one
> which I wish in retrospect we'd debated more seriously when we wrote the
> thing. I recognize that there are those who prefer the caucus to be an
> amorphous blob---in McTim's words, a "zenlike/anarchic" space one can decide
> to be in or not "in the moment" depending on the weather, whether they had a
> nice lunch and are feeling mellow, etc.  But a grouping based on this
> shallow a level of commitment to shared values and positions is unlikely to
> be able to agree or achieve much of anything, and indeed the caucus has
> struggled post-WSIS in part because of it.  It's certainly not how I thought
> of the caucus when I joined five years ago (suspect the same holds for some
> others here), nor is it the zeitgeist of other, more effect ICT-oriented CS
> coalitions one could name.  Sorry if that sounds insufficiently postmodern.
> 
> Personally, I would favor establishing a separate space for those want to be
> in the caucus and do public interest advocacy and leave the gov list for
> broader multistakeholder debate and mud slinging.  I think this would be
> liberating both for people who want to be in a real coalition and for people
> who don't and don't want to read angst-ridden sausage making threads.  But I
> suspect I'm a minority of one on that.
> 
> In any event, while I supported Parminder's suggestion of polling to see who
> thinks they're in the caucus and would like to know that myself, I cannot
> see how the caucus as it is can follow an election procedure that is sharply
> at odds with the explicit wording of its charter.  So I'd follow the rules
> for the election and afterwards try to see if those who've affirmed their
> membership can't have a useful discussion of what they want the caucus to be
> and perhaps amend the charter if there's sufficient support for that.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
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